14 DAY TRIAL // 
Satellite Reign will initially appeal to those who are still looking for a modern game experience that can approximate the awesome memories that Syndicate created when we were young, which is pretty much impossible to do given that they are largely positively colored by nostalgia.
The title created by 5 Lives Studios manages to be close to the core ideas of the classic title but also has a personality of its own, with a cool world that gamers can explore and a set of mechanics that create interesting situations that will require both solid thinking and quick action from players.
Satellite Reign takes gamers to a future where technology has evolved and fed a culture of over-the-top capitalism, which means that huge corporations now dominate almost all aspects of life and the only way for a smaller company to become important is to kill or hack its way to the top.
The player controls four very clearly defined characters: a soldier, designed for close quarter kills and soaking up damage, a supporter who has a better understanding of the world, a hacker who can disable tech threats and an infiltrator, who is best used for long range attacks.
They exist in an open world, a medium-sized one, where they received a variety of both core and side missions that they can tackle in almost any order they want to.
Satellite Reign is a real-time tactical and exploration game and 5 Live Studios has managed to create a medium-size open world that can be explored at will, with missions organically emerging from the environment.
Gamers will have to move across the city, find the best target given their current situation and skills, and then make plans to infiltrate facilities and try to execute them as well as possible.
Satellite Reign is not all about combat or all about stealth, and players who want to reach their objectives will have to mix and match different techniques to move across the compounds, take out lone sentries, disable security systems (including deadly turrets) and then get out without being noticed.
The game rewards careful scouting of the objective and quick and decisive movement once the operatives are in, and I often failed because I dithered too much and failed to continue with the plan I had first chosen.
“Satellite Reign is best described as a game about infiltration, with clear links to both Syndicate and the Commandos series, where the means of access are less important than the results the player manages to extract.”
There are moments when the game feels a little dry and the world is too crowded, with the architecture all weird and designed to thwart player access, but these are small issues given the amount of content that 5 Lives Studios has crammed into the game and the many ways that gamers can engage with it.
Satellite Reign also allows players to evolve their characters with new abilities and improved skills, choose the equipment that they use and customize their looks, and a research system is also present to deliver improved tech, needed for the toughest of missions.
One slightly disappointing element of the game is the tutorial, which feels a little too long and fails to make all mechanics clear to someone who does not already know Syndicate.
There are also moments when combat feels too hectic and I instinctively reached for a pause button to try and make sense of the situation before acting.
Satellite Reign manages to deliver a good-looking version of a cyberpunk future, with constant rain covering a city that's dominated by neon and industrial looking buildings, with the world seen from an isometric perspective.
The game is best enjoyed from a zoomed-out position, mostly because the detail for both the characters and the actual city is a little disappointing up close, but during action and exploration sequences the game looks good, especially given the limited size of the team that worked on it.
The user interface is also well thought out and immersive, and it combines well with the soundtrack that manages to convey the strange nature of the future and to underline the tension that combat and infiltration moments are laced with.
The Good
- Engaging infiltration mechanics
- Open world structure
- Syndicate vibe
The Bad
- Some spaces are weirdly designed
- The storytelling can feel limited
Conclusion
The development team has managed to make the cyberpunk city feel alive with quests and events while also giving gamers the freedom to explore it how they see fit and tackle missions in whatever order they want.
Satellite Reign can be a little bit fiddly during the most intense action scenes, but gamers always have the options to take their cloned characters and try again, tweaking plans and execution until they reach the desired result.
I hope that the reception of the game and the revenue derived from it allows 5 Lives Studio to create other adventures in the same world, offering them a chance to both polish the core ideas and to tell new cyberpunk stories.
