For a century or so after the events of Syndicate, in which the player guided a shady business cabal to world domination via the actions of four impressively armed cyborg agents, the world was quiet. Some bright spark in the Eurocorp syndicate began to wonder if the syndicate could achieve something from the billions of minds they had controlled and linked together in their UTOPIA network, and so brought together a conference of Eurocorp's ten best scientists to work on the problem.
The scientists suceeded in producing a drug/implant/thing which enhances human perception, awareness and speed of thought, and allowed limited sharing of thoughts through UTOPIA, thereby enhancing the individual minds. One of the scientists decided to use this experimental device on himself. Cue massive power struggle between that one and the previous leader of the conference, ending in a large explosion in the town of Nuuk, Greenland, where it was being held. When the dust settled, it appeared that the eight other scientists had been persuaded to use the device on themselves.
It worked superbly - they produced new discoveries in all fields of science; their Codex was the greatest scientific tome since Newton's Principia. It had the slight side effect that it drove them utterly insane.
So, they decide to destroy the Syndicate. Drawing on their insanity, they form the Church of the New Epoch, a fringe religious grouping preaching a coming cataclysm only the worthy will survive. Drawing on their brlliance, they forge a series of exceptionally powerful weapons including incredibly cool lightning guns and laser-firing arachnids. They release a computer virus into the UTOPIA network and start crashing mind-control chips. Predictable chaos ensues.
Which is where you come in - command the Syndicate's cyborgs to restore peace and order to a shattered world, or bring about the holy vision of the Nine through the high-tech weapons of your Church Zealots. Either way, expect a large number of hit-and-run missions, wielding weapons ranging from Uzis through sniper rifles (which accelerate the bullet to Mach 5.2 on a monopolar sled, if you believe the manual) to plasma lances, pulse lasers and hand-held nukes. You have to balance the books whilst doing so - the traditional method is to invest in some high explosives and level any bank vaults you might find during city missions. Doing this every four missions or so normally brings in enough income to keep yourself up-to-date.
Great fun, if a little frustrating on occasions (you only have 4 agents in play, and eight in total, and replacing them is impossible, so the later missions get very hard). There's something of the order of 20 missions on each side, some of which have several arenas, so the game had plenty of lifespan. The game ran fine on my PIII 600; I haven't tried it yet on my shiny new P4 so I don't know how well it survives on modern computers - speed might be a problem since even running at slow speeds it is occasionally very difficult to have your team respond properly when under fire - and you often will be, since traditional tactics are "Fire, run away whilst reloading, Fire, run away...." which requires useful mouse control, especially if you want to switch weapons. Especially since the other time-honoured tactic involves the weapons switch LR Rifle (fire) -> Rocket Launcher (fire at the onrushing enemy, after you killed one w/the rifle) -> Electron Mace (duke it out in close combat w/your weakened foes).
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