Syndicate Wars

Syndicate Wars' instruction manual specifically addresses the player as a newly hired EuroCorp executive; however, they can choose to control agents from either EuroCorp or the Church of the New Epoch.

The game preserves the isometric view of Syndicate, while adding rotation and pitch controls over that view. The player commands four agents (or acolytes, when playing as the Church), either singly or in groups, to complete a series of globally-located missions, the objectives for which include assassinating a specific target, or stealing a specific object. Although the general mission structure remains consistent when playing as either EuroCorp or the Church, they are made distinctive by differences in the pre-mission briefings which are delivered to the player in the form of a fictional email system.

Syndicate Wars follows on from to the events in Syndicate, taking place 95 years later (in the year 2191). At the game's opening, the player-controlled syndicate (called EuroCorp) is at the peak of its power (achieved during the previous game), a megacorporation controlling the world through a combination of military and economic power, and technological mind control, using the CHIP implant technology they developed. Corporate decisions are facilitated through a number of AI entities connected through a global communications network.

As the game opens, this totalitarian status quo is threatened by the emergence of a virus named "Harbinger" in the global communications system, damaging mind-control CHIP implants and leaving citizens vulnerable to co-option. Some of the newly liberated persons, dubbed "unguided citizens", choose to engage in an armed insurrection. The Unguided appear in early missions as random antagonistic elements, but over time form a well-organized militia.

Syndicate Wars was developed by Bullfrog Productions using a modified version of the engine used in Magic Carpet. Mike Diskett recounted that:

... in the first [Syndicate], one of the biggest complaints was it was an isometric view and if you walked behind a building, that was it, you couldn't see yourself. So now you can walk behind buildings and simply rotate the map so you can always keep yourself in view. We had to wait for a while for the technology to catch up so we could actually do that.

A reviewer for Next Generation described Syndicate Wars as "even more dark and menacing than the original." He said that while the graphics suffer from chunkiness and ragged characters in the standard VGA mode, in SVGA mode they are stunning. While he complained that the control interface is a pain to adjust to, he found the new weapons, completely interactive environments, and numerous missions make it worthwhile to do so. While similarly praising the polygonal graphics, interactive environments, and numerous missions, Greg Kasavin of GameSpot found the characters to be overly small and hard to discern between, even in SVGA, and complained that the rotational graphics engine often results in enemies getting free hits. He nonetheless concluded, "Syndicate Wars masterfully recaptures the dark, deadly emotion of the original, adds to it a huge variety of weapons and scenarios, and refurbishes it with a gorgeous new coat of paint."

The game won Computer Games Strategy Plus's 1996 action game of the year award.