I bought it on Xbox 360 marketplace forever ago, and at some point, it disappeared from my games list and local drive. When I tried to re-download it, it no longer showed up in my purchases. This was a few years ago and before Xbox Live shut down for the 360, and all my other digital purchases were available, just not Syndicate.
Fast forward to now, and I can’t find the game available anywhere (Gog and Steam at least).
I remember it having an all-star cast (Brian Cox and Rosario Dawson, specifically) and some really cool game mechanics and story.
Did that game just get memory-holed? Wikipedia says it was banned in Australia, but that doesn’t apply to me.
Edit: There are used copies I can buy on eBay for the 360 (mine somehow still works) but I was looking to buy a PC version for longevity/future proofing since I like to revisit old games every so often and my 360 is already on borrowed time.
Some 360 games run on current hardware if you bought the disc based Series X. Looks like Syndicate is one of them.
https://delistedgames.com/syndicate-2012/
“The cause for the initial delisting is uncertain but could be related to licensed content or Electronic Arts’ desire to sell the game directly. The game remained available exclusively on EA’s Origin service until some time between Late May and Early August of 2021. Electronic Arts then announced in March of 2023 that the game’s remaining online features would be retired on June 15th, 2023.”
Another reason Physical >>> Digital.
$17 and change on Amazon.
I just have a Linux-based “DIY Steam Machine” so it’d have to be able to run under Proton. I may just buy a physical disc on eBay for ~$22 and hope my 360 doesn’t crap out on me lol. It’s the later “slim” model with an upgraded hard drive, so as long as I can install it and it reads the disc enough to start the game, I should be okay.
You can softmod the 360 now using the BadUpdate exploit, using it through ABadAvatar makes it pretty much seemless, I would highly recommend checking it out. I’ve had four different 360 disc drives die on my across a range of different hardware revisions, they’re wildly unreliable!
Ooh, nice. I wasn’t aware there were softmods available for the 360 yet. I avoided modding it at all because I played a lot on XB Live and didn’t want to get it banned but since that’s shutdown, I may revisit the mod scene. Glad to know there’s a softmod. I did the MechAssault one on my OG Xbox and it opened up all kinds of doors.
If you’re open to piracy, it looks like Dodi has a repack of Syndicate (2012) up. That’s very good news if you’re on Linux; in my experience Fitgirl installers almost never work, but Dodi’s have never failed me.
Load up your launcher of choice (Lutris, Heroic, and Faugus are the three I’m familiar with), run the installer through that, and you should be set.
Does Dodi have the reputation of Fitgirl? I’m very cautious about pirated games.
I don’t think anyone has the reputation of Fitgirl, but other than her, Dodi is definitely the most reliable name I know of. He also recently said he’s gonna do a soft retirement and not release as much stuff in the future, so, idk, doesn’t seem like the behavior of someone who might be building a botnet lol
Xenia is starting to get good. Might be worth looking into.
Or you could pick up a cheap used Xbox One or Xbox One X. Anything with a physical drive.
For the DIY Steam Machine, yeah, what others are saying, disc image + emulation.
I believe the Xbox One and Series consoles don’t actually use the disc for anything other than a license check, then they download the backcompat game from a microsoft server
Correct, they aren’t truly “backwards compatible” it does use the disc as a license to download a new file that is compatible.