I bought it on Xbox 360 marketplace forever ago, and at some point, it disappeared from my games list and local drive. When I tried to re-download it, it no longer showed up in my purchases. This was a few years ago and before Xbox Live shut down for the 360, and all my other digital purchases were available, just not Syndicate.
Fast forward to now, and I can’t find the game available anywhere (Gog and Steam at least).
I remember it having an all-star cast (Brian Cox and Rosario Dawson, specifically) and some really cool game mechanics and story.
Did that game just get memory-holed? Wikipedia says it was banned in Australia, but that doesn’t apply to me.
Edit: There are used copies I can buy on eBay for the 360 (mine somehow still works) but I was looking to buy a PC version for longevity/future proofing since I like to revisit old games every so often and my 360 is already on borrowed time.
Disappointing sales iirc, complete change in gameplay from the original syndicate, and not much replayability. Plus, some of the mechanics are maybe a bit spicy for modern sensibilities.
I think using the Syndicate name was something of a poison pill for the game. People who liked the original Syndicate and Syndicate Wars would be turned off by it being essentially completely unrelated; people who didn’t care about the original probably wouldn’t care about it using the same name. That, and at the time there was a glut of FPSes being released.
Not that you’re wrong (Wikipedia alludes to the same thing) but the only spicy mechanic I can recall is hacking an enemy’s brain chip to make them temporarily fight on your side and commit suicide after it wears off. That’s literally the exact same thing as “Possession” in Bioshock: Infinite that came out a year later.
And it caused a shitfit in 2012, before people started freaking out about depiction of suicide to the extent they do now.
Cyberpunk 2077 has a pretty straightforward suicide hack though. People don’t truly care if the game is good.