PC Gaming: Syndicate (2012, Starbreeze Studios / EA)

Some more up to date PC Gaming this time round. This time it's (as the title suggests) Syndicate, A First Person Shooter from Starbreeze Studios and EA, also available on PS3 and XBOX 360, sadly however there is no SEGA Dreamcast port... For which I blame EA, and with that said, the lack of a Dreamcast port is not the only issue with Syndicate that EA are to blame for.

Luckily I found this game, and another one on offer from ASDA (supermarket in the uk now owned by walmart) £5 off so the game was only well £5 and although not a new game still a good price and a game I wanted to play, the other title was only £3 (both PC) and delivery was free so all good there.

Now if you are old enough to remember the original Syndicate games, they were a completely different genre and style of game play, so this being such a departure from the original concepts may piss some people off, while I do love the original games and gameplay I also welcome some innovation and a refreshing change when it comes to doing a reboot of a franchise or dusting it off for another release, as trying to copy the original almost always falls well short of hopes and expectations, so I like to keep an open mind.

The Aforementioned Issues:

So this being a recent EA release mean it requires the use of Origin (EA's digital content service) which has improved a lot but is still not great and also not really necessary, seen as more of a burden than anything by many gamers, but that's another rant. Initially I ran into two main issues with this game I will go into below and the solutions to them, but simple but irritating and should have been fixed prior to release if not patched after, which from what I've read the developer wanted to fix at least 1 of them but was not allowed / given the opportunity to do so.

• Issue One: Installation complete, update complete, now time to play the game right? Wrong! the game attempts to launch but does not, a loading splash screen appears with a progress bar and then promptly disappears and then nothing, This seems to be down to EA's DRM and is easy to fix.

Fix: Navigate to "C:\ProgramData\Electronic Arts\EA Services\License\" (or whichever drive your ProgramData folder is located on if you have more than one, I have 2 ProgramData folders on separate drives so keep that in mind, however most people will have just one on their C: drive) There will be a file called "71061.dif" you can either Delete this file or rename it to something else, make sure the game process is not running in the background and close down Origin also or it may not let you do anything with this file, Once that is done, Launch Origin and the the game and it should fire up nice and quick.

• Issue Two: The Game incorrectly thinks you have a 360 controller connected, this can happen if you have other USB devices attached to your computer when the game is launched, like joysticks game pads usb audio devices, bluetooth dongles and in my case a gaming keyboard, meaning all the controls and prompts show up as controller buttons like (X) and (A) etc instead of the keyboard and mouse buttons.

Fix: To fis this, you will need to either disconnect the offending device, which sometimes isn't possible nor practical. The fix involves editing the Msystem.dll file which is located in "Syndicate\System\Win32_x86_Release\" where you've installed the game make a backup of this file before editing it with a Hex editor, there's loads out there free and easy to use, I used one from here: http://www.hexedit.com/download.htm.

Once that's installed and you have the copy made, right click on Msystem.dll and click "Open with HexEdit" then go to edit > Go To and put "15 F3F0" in the box which will highlight the row we need to make the changes on, on column's 0C,OD, and OE, change the values to 30, C0, and 90, then SAVE and exit.

This will disable controller detection completely so if you want to use a controller with the game in the future just restore your backed up Msystem.dll, it may also be a good idea to also backup your edited one in case a patch or update / reinstall replaces it.

Fire the game up again and enjoy!

Note: You may also want to mess with the mouse sensitivity as it didn't feel right for me to begin with, but that's personal preference.

Thanks for the fixes goes to:

twiddle87, DoCmOdGod, SpikeBlack

over on Starbreezeforum.se

Issue One original link(post #63): http://www.starbreezeforum.se/viewtopic.php?id=1280&p=3
Issue Two original link: http://www.starbreezeforum.se/viewtopic.php?id=1246