Synnergist Review

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Synnergist

Review by LakerzJuly 2003

Now here’s an adventure game that one doesn’t hear much about, partly because of its Europe-only release. Synnergist was the first release by then-newcomer Vicarious Visions. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I popped open the CD tray and went through the installation process. However, if there’s one thing I do enjoy, it’s games about a mystery. The back of the box sets up the game well:

2010 AD: New Arhus; a city tormented by every crime imaginable; murders, muggings, drug dealing and prostitution. Tim Machin, a reporter both underpaid and overworked, finds himself on the trail of a sinister force that appears to be connected to the crime and killing. Unable to ignore the evil events surrounding him, Tim finds himself drawn further and further into a potentially fatal web of secrets that threatens the future of the city. What is the significance of the disturbing visions that plague Machin’s mind? What effect will they have on his sanity and what role will they play in protecting the future of New Arhus … ?

Okay, I’m hooked. Let’s get this party started and unravel these mysteries! Only one little problem to deal with before playing, however. This game can be a challenge to install and get running properly, and that may be putting it a bit lightly. Synnergist needs DOS in order to run, although the manual makes mention of a special method to run it in Windows 95. Given the problems one can experience just running it from DOS, I didn’t feel the need to further tempt the fates. Fully 75% of the manual is dedicated to installation and technical help. Now, in my eyes, this is both a good thing and a bad thing: A good thing because it’s nice to see a company do all it can to get the user running the game, and a bad thing because it gave this DOS newbie the willies just thinking about getting Synnergist running. Eventually, however, I was successful, using an older computer running DOS 6.2 and Win95.  Just for kicks, I tried to install Synnergist on a Win98 machine but had little success. I suspect it might be possible, but it just wasn’t happening for me. Now that I’ve harped on the difficulties of installing this game, I also should note that the game was very stable once running. It only crashed to the DOS prompt once during the entire game. Not too shabby.

Once the intro sequence was finally rolling, I was pretty excited.  After the opening movie, you find Tim Machin getting chewed out by his boss at the New Arhus Chronicle, Mr. Hallmags, for not getting his stories in on time. He makes it very clear that we must complete two stories posthaste: an interview with the great humanitarian Victor Ambrose and a restaurant review of the Skyline, a swanky new upper-class eatery. With over a dozen locations to visit and cause trouble in, there is a lot to see and do. In pursuing these stories, the player soon finds out that all is not well in New Arhus. There is a killer on the loose who is leaving severely mangled bodies and baffled police in his wake. Perhaps Tim has even bigger stories than restaurant reviews to pursue after all! I’m not about to give away any of the plot twists that occur, but I will say this game had my attention from beginning to end. Be prepared for a roller coaster ride.

The interface for Synnergist is very clean. Put the cursor over an item and click the left mouse button to read and hear a description. Yep, I said “hear.” Every line of text displayed on the screen, whether it’s a description or dialogue, is spoken.  The sole exception is with Tim. His only voiced dialogue occurs in some of the interlude scenes. Either the text or the voice can be disabled should the player have a preference. I was happy with both activated.

In order to interact with an item or to talk to someone, all it takes is a right-click. This takes a little getting used to, but after a few hours of exploring the city of New Arhus, it becomes second nature. Push the cursor to the top of the screen, and the inventory window drops down, displaying all of the items found thus far as well as access to the save/load/quit screen. I was impressed with how many saved games Synnergist allows. The manual boasts up to 512 saves! Quite a refreshing change from all the games that inexplicably force you to manage with only a few measly save spots.

Traveling from one location to another is very easy thanks to the subway system in New Arhus. Clicking the subway icon in the inventory window whisks you off to the overview map with all discovered locations visible. Click on where you want to go, and you’re there in a blink.  Every once in a while, there will be an interlude in the subway where Tim mulls over some of the evidence he’s come across. I liked these scenes as it made current developments a bit clearer for me.

The graphics in Synnergist are pleasing for the most part.  For a game published in 1996, I wasn’t expecting graphical splendor like most modern games provide, and true to form, the low-res, 256-color palette showed its warts in spots. Still, Synnergist compares favorably with its peers of the time. The graphics are a mixture of third-person 2D, with a dash of first-person perspective mixed in. All of the characters are live actors, which was a nice surprise to me. With every dialogue, a small window pops up in the upper left, showing the person you are conversing with. The digitized actors are definitely pixelated, but I marked it down as just a drawback of the technology at the time—there’s only so much you can get out of a low resolution. Truthfully, the storyline was interesting enough to me that the graphics played second fiddle, which is always a sign of a well-made game. FMV cutscenes are sprinkled liberally throughout the game, providing a nice change of pace.

As far as the music is concerned, I thought it blended nicely with the scenes. It didn’t make me want to hum along with it, but I don’t think there are many sounds that come from a Sound Blaster 16 that would have that effect on me. My only complaint, really, is the fact that it was a bit soft volumewise. To get the sounds to my liking, I had to go into the options menu and max out the music while turning down the sound effects. There also is an audio effect in one particular song that sounded like it didn’t really belong.  The first time I heard it, I thought the serial killer was out to get me!

The voice acting for Synnergist is up and down, with most of the performances being satisfactory though a bit cheesy. With over 70 actors and five hours of digital sound and speech, there is a lot to hear. Some of the characters are quite funny, too! You communicate with the game characters through the good old dialogue tree. There is no trick to getting through the dialogues—just keep clicking through every choice, and sooner or later you’ll hear everything a character has to say. I’m not necessarily knocking this system, but it does get a little boring after a while.

The story pacing and puzzle difficulty are just about right. None of the puzzles are unfair, but a few veer toward the tricky side, especially near the end. It is possible to die in this game due to a foolhardy move, so making good use of the 512 save spots is recommended. One good thing: I didn’t come across any dead ends in Synnergist. Hurrah for that!

The back of the box claims over 50 hours of gameplay. I wasn’t keeping track, but I’d guestimate that I was playing for a little over 30 hours before reaching the end. There are multiple endings depending on certain actions taken during the course of gameplay.  I’m not a big fan of multiple endings, but I know others are. I’ve discovered two different endings, but there may very well be more.

I’ve also gotten wind of possible secret location(s) within the game that explains the plot more thoroughly, and why the game is named Synnergist!  No, I haven’t found them. No, I don’t know for sure if they exist or not. It’s an intriguing thought, though, and I wouldn’t mind learning more about the title choice as I still don’t have a clue! So if anyone has uncovered one of these secrets, please drop me a line to let me know.

My overall impression of Synnergist is very positive. Here is a game that has an interesting plot with many twists and turns, nice graphics, unobtrusive sound and music, easy interface, and a good number of varied locations to explore. Synnergist has a similar mood and style to Noctropolis, with a little Gabriel Knight–type understated tension thrown in. It ended up being more macabre than I was expecting, which is a good thing in my book. I’m a sucker for any game that’s sinister and foreboding without being too over the top. It’s a shame that Vicarious Visions didn’t follow up Synnergist with any other adventure games.  It’s a testament to them, though, that the company is still around, unlike a lot of other adventure game developers. Here’s hoping that they decide to do another adventure game in the same vein as Synnergist down the road. Maybe next time it will get the attention it deserves. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Vicarious Visions Publisher: 21st Century Entertainment Ltd.  Release Date: 1996

Available for: DOS Windows

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System Requirements

486 66 MHz or better 4 MB RAM (530 KB free conventional memory required) VGA (VESA local bus video card recommended) 4X CD-ROM drive MSCDEX version 2.22 or above 4 MB free hard disk space DOS 6.0 or above EMM386 memory management only Mouse and keyboard

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16 Responses to Screw the Internet

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    God damn, Scout, I’d never heard of this Lanier fellow, but that’s pretty profound.

    Information is not a manufacturable item… as you said, we are making less and less. This is either indicative of a larger-scale societal transformation, or a bad thing. I’m afraid I’m inclined to assumed the latter.

    Thanks!

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Steerpike, that was exactly the argument Lanier was having with callers on the BBC. Lanier was all fatalistic about society’s drop in real productivity while his opponents claimed that this was a huge transformation and that he was just too old to grasp the coolness of it all. If you notice, the web address of that first Lanier link is well.com. I mean, that is old! The Well?

    Lanier’s thoughts were pretty much echoed by David Simon, one of the creators of The Wire. Here he speaks with Bill Moyers about the fate of paid journalism in the face of the web.

  • Spike

    I’ve read many criticisms of Facebook et. al.  I’ve also read contradictions of those criticisms, namely, that social sites are making people more connected than ever.  I think that that connectedness is an illusion.

    For several months at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 my daughter badgered me to join FB.  I could connect with her and some of her friends that I know as well as renew old acquaintances with some of her friend’s mothers.  I finally signed up so she’d quit the badgering. I used to check in every day to see what daughter and friends were saying because if I didn’t she’d ask if I saw her post, or a friend’s post. 

    What I’ve learned is this:

    1.  “Karen Likes John’s photo (or post)” IS NOT communication.

    2.  The reason I lost contact with some of these “friends” in the first place is that we no longer had anything in common.

    3.  I am bombarded with so many ads in so many places that I can do without more.  My policy is to never click on ads on FB or on many other sites. 

    4.  While FB’s original mission was connectedness/communication, I think it has become “Let’s make as much money from these fools as we can.”  “Wanna have gobs of fun playing a free game on FB?”  That game is gonna cost ya big, folks. 

    5.  Social sites are just more places where your personal info can be stolen.  There’s enough risk out there as it is.  Additional risk is not providing any valuable payoff for me.

    6.  Why do I want to “friend” a certain handbag manufacturer?  Why do I want to take a quiz that tells me what my personality is?  FB content providers tell you up front that if you click the link to take their quiz (goes for other types of content as well) you are giving them permission to access your profile info.  That’s ok.  I’ll also give you my SSN, bank account number and the key to my front door.  Not.

    7.  Don’t even get me started on the number of people who start an account in a pet’s name, and even have the pets making friends and posting.

    “…he was just too old to grasp the coolness of it all.”

    No, it’s just that most of us get to the age when we demand a bit of wheat with our chaff.

    At 38 my daughter is older than the average demographic of social sites although I know that that demographic is skewing up.  She seems to be cooling on FB.  Some of her 221 friends are as well.  Many of them do want some wheat.  When more cooling has taken place I will unjoin.

    I wonder, though, what new fad will come along when FB, Twitter and others run their course?  MySpace, anyone?

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    My favorite line from the BBC interview was when Lanier was comparing MySpace and Facebook. He admitted that MySpace had some eye gougingly bad pages but said that he liked the “strangeness” of personalities that you get with it. With Facebook, he claimed that it was like looking at a tax form. A boring, watered down, bland presentation of people.

    I joined Facebook almost exactly a year ago. Apart from sparking up a new friendship with a very dear buddy, I’ve gotten about zero back from it. I sort of read with bemusement the activities of people I hardly know and could care less about. And when you consider how much information the devs harvest there…it’s scary. Lanier claims that the information is so far worthless to the investors and that the whole thing has become a sort useless ritual serving no purpose. He claimed that Google’s ads on the other hand will probably turn out to be the greatest advertising model ever created. He also thinks Google should stop before it’s too late but says they probably won’t. Just a glance at the side bar reveals about 4 ads for advertising agencies. Heh.

  • lokimotive

    Has anybody read Anti-Oedipus? I’m slogging my way through it (the third attempt I believe), and Deleuze and Gauttari’s ideas seem relevant to this in a way that I’m not sure I can articulate. This probably has something to do with a conversation I was eavesdropping on that, coincidentally, mentioned a lot of Deleuze and Gauttari’s theories. Someone was talking about another theorist (whose name I didn’t catch) who was defending “Generation Y” essentially. The argument went that Generation Y is an example of a “de-Oedipalized” cultural group (that’s Anti-Oedipus jargon, just stay with me). Apparently this meant that they made connections in a different manner than other generations, the idea of bricollage was brought up and things were generally mired in a lot of reasons why I don’t have my Masters in English. What I got from it was this Generation Y shoots out connections everywhere and attempts to make up a whole idea with them as opposed to relying on predefined pathways. In Deleuze and Guattari’s language: the schizo as opposed to Oedipus. In language that probably makes sense: Peer to Peer as opposed to client-server.

    So, of course, no one’s really right. I’m skeptical of the idea that Generation Y (full disclosure: I’m 29 so I’m part of that group) has enacted some sort of paradigm shift in how to operate in social systems, but facebook has changed how I connect with people. Then again, it’s not like I don’t value face to face communication.

    The future is somewhere in between. I’m really not cynical enough to believe that we are at the end times of civilized society because of Web 2.0. Instead society will change and stay the same because that’s what it does. Facebook is not the future; it’s probably a rung up the ladder though.

  • kaythomas

    To me, Facebook and Twitter are 0’s. They are not worth my time.  I do not care what someone I know or don’t know did a half hour ago or will do next.  I have met up with people on facebook I had lost contact with.  But, in truth, the reason I had lost contact was I was not that interested in staying in contact.

    I think for many people the Facebook/Twitter world is great.  For me it has nothing to offer. 
    kay

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Tap has an automated device that twits… tweets… whatever whenever someone posts a new article. Just in case it draws some visitors.

    To be honest, though, I’m on Kay’s side of the fence, I don’t understand Twitter and I don’t understand why it’s so popular. I barely care what I’m doing from moment to moment, why should anyone else?

    I don’t get Facebook either, though I’m a member to keep track of all the girls who wouldn’t give me the time of day in high school.

  • Lewis B

    Tweets are great for giving me snippets of news.  If I like what I’ve read in the short paragraph tweets give, then I will visit the main page for that tweet. (Very good for following world news, favourite columnists, etc.)

    However, reading tweets from people such as “Just woke up, Madonna is giving me a massage while I shave my nuts” is not my idea of a good read.

  • Toger

    I use tweets the same way Lewis does. Of the people/things I follow, if the tweet is interesting I’ll follow the link to read the entire article. I follow fairly intelligent people, so I’m not subjected to the idiocy of “Just brushed my teeth while sitting on toilet”.

  • Gregg B

    @loki: I’m afraid I’ve not heard of them. I’m a couple of years below you so that puts me in the same Generation Y as well. I read through a few of those links Scout posted as well as a few more on Lanier’s new book “You Are Not a Gadget” and it took me a fair while to get to the crux of what he is saying and he has a lot to say, most of which I find very confusing.

    As a graphic designer the whole “everything is becoming advertising” thing has been bothering me for years. The incessant barrage of advertising is like fingernails on the chalkboard of my soul, which sort of makes me a hypocrite. After all the years of tuning my art and design skillz my creative abilities have amounted to nothing more than crafting pretty ads that sell things. Non of it speaks any truth or has any sort of ‘beauty’; it’s just stone cold mechanical capitalism. Granted there are ads out there that are beautiful, clever and visionary but the front line stuff is as dull as it gets. I’m sure this isn’t strictly what he’s getting at but it’s definitely something that irks me in relation to Scout’s last remark.

    Anyway, I remember Twitter just exploding in what seemed like the space of a week and I still can’t fathom the allure of it aside from providing a direct stream of consciousness from famous folk to their ravenous fans. I wish I’d thought of it to be honest. I can see the creators sitting around a table staring at Facebook and then saying “I know! We make a website that’s just about status updates! You can even update them with your mobile phone!”.

    With regards to Twitter news snippets, unless it’s for a phone, I don’t see the point because RSS feeds do a great job. At present too great; I simply can’t keep up with my subscriptions. There’s too much information on this super highway.

  • Jen

    Twitter is officially the dumbest thing ever.

    That said, it looks like I will have to be the official “tweeter” for my day job before too long. I can’t wait! (roll eyes)

  • xtal

    I’m with everyone else here. I’m glad to say I’ve never signed up for Facebook; I fear that if I ever had I would have long ago died from loss of brain cells due to reading moronic status updates. It’s as Kay said: ninety-five per cent of people with whom you lose contact are probably no longer in your life because you have nothing left in common. And echoing Steerpike’s comment, me eating toast and jam on a Sunday morning watching Fawlty Towers is not interesting, not to me. Why the hell would anyone else give a shit?

    Twitter I signed up for about a year ago, not really understanding what it was. I now understand it…but don’t care to use it often. I have made 58 tweets over that year. I suspect for some that is a daily or weekly average. It’s just Facebook status updates without all the drunken photographs. I admit it can be mildly useful for following, say, a news site. Usually when I hop on my twitter (once every two weeks??) it reminds me that I should read The Onion more often. That’s about it.

    Let’s see… looking at the actual humans I follow, um… Wil Wheaton is happy that the LA Kings have won 9 games in a row, my sister-in-law thought our dinner tonight was “delicious,” and Kevin Smith’s batteries are recharged … or something.

    Wow, my life is already getting better!

    p.s.  <—– Gen Y'er (can we call ourselves that?) and proud that when I Google my own name a real estate company pops up.

  • Fraser

    Twitter is exactly as useless as the person who’s writing it. If someone is telling you boring shit over Twitter, it’s the person wasting your time, not the delivery channel.

    MySpace is the same, but it seems more intrinsically garbage because for some reason almost everyone who used it was an intellectual embryo with a fetish for unreadable hyperneon text on top of garish uninteresting photos. Facebook’s great trick is that it prevents you from realising that most of your friends would make a brutally hideous homepage for themselves if they could.

    That’s the argument against the whole of this post: the internet isn’t evil, but the people who use it might be. It’s people who make business models successful; people who make money flow to advertisers instead of artists, by buying into the advertising.

    This has been a pretty didactic post, so let me compensate by saying VIDEOGAMES WOOOOOOO!!!

  • Gregg B

    Good point about not blaming the delivery channel Fraser. I seem to recall Lanier saying that he preferred the personality that MySpace has over Facebook despite its Craptastic Pages of Illegibility. I’m trying to think of something intelligent to follow that up with but my brain is failing me at the moment, so…

    VIDEOGAMES WOOOOOO!!!

  • Jason Venter

    Fraser, I really loved your following comment:

    “Facebook’s great trick is that it prevents you from realising that most of your friends would make a brutally hideous homepage for themselves if they could.”

    I think that may just be one of the most hilariously true comments I’ve read in a comments area on any video game web site ever.  That sounds overly dramatic, I know, but I actually mean it.  Kudos to you!

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Yeah but don’t you miss all the ugliness of MySpace? All those hideous pages at least had personality or what Lanier called the “strangeness of the person” to them.

    I actually don’t agree with a lot of what Lanier says esp “the hive mind must die” stuff. But I do think he is right about the spirit shriveling blandness of Facebook.

    I also suspect that Twitter is going to be around for a while. It will be more and more influential. People are simply not as willing to ingest huge amounts of information in the form of pages of text anymore. The delivery systems that succeed will be those that can communicate a lot of information in a short amount of time. Most days we want “glimpses” or “snapshots” not total immersion. Lewis, Toger and Fraser are correct in that you get out of it what you decide to follow.

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