Game Review: Syndrome Review - Welcome to the master class in shitty game design

"Finally again a nice survival horror game with a sci-fi setting". Games that strongly relate to Dead Space or System Shock always give me the hope that they will take over the good ideas of those games and hopefully match or even surpass. Syndrome appears to be a title that reminds you of the time we spent in Alien Isolation on the Nostromo and the time we counted countless Necromorphs with Isaac on the USG Ishimura in Dead Space. Unfortunately, syndrome is a game of another caliber.

Welcome to the master class in shitty game design

Chief techie Galen wakes up from his cryosleep and sees that the spaceship 'Valkenburg' is in ruins. The crew is dead or nowhere to be seen. What he does encounter is an army of mutated cyborgs. Slowly, he learns that this was the result of bringing a strange object on board that eventually caused the crew to get lost. Is it known to you? Then you probably played Dead Space, because the story seems suspicious. At first, it all matters - at least you think so. "Looks good," I still say, but then...

The first task is to close the blast shields to protect the ship. Its implementation comes down to the following: search in the dark corridors to two terminals and activate the blast shields. You do not yet know which objects are interactive, so you try to print in vain everywhere. In the end, it appears that only red terminals are interactive. Once you have closed the blast shields, you must unlock the door to the lobby. To do this, you are looking for the third red terminal. Once in the lobby you are instructed to restart the engine of the ship. Find a red terminal. To start the engine, you must first activate two support systems. Find the two terminals.

Anyway, this joke is repeated infinitely. Later in the game you will need to find terminals or keycards that can be spread throughout the ship, which means you have to backtrack with an uppercase B. Syndrome is artificially long because backtracking is a fundamental part of the gameplay. Within 15 minutes, you will start the interior of the Valkenburg. It seems that the ship on-the-fly was designed by the developers because logic is far from searching on the Valkenburg; who is now designing a spacecraft in which the number of dead-end corridors occupy a large part of space?

The control of Galen is also not great. This way you can occasionally stay behind objects without reason. Crazy can sprint for a few seconds, but when his stamina is exhausted, wait until the cooldown is over before you can run again. Perhaps meant to increase the tension with your enemies, but enemies have lacquer on your ability to sprint and therefore it feels unnecessary. Enemies sometimes spawn in the space in which Galen is located, with a possible instakill as a consequence.

You may hope that you saved the game, because you can only save manually in Syndrome. No problem would you say, do not you know that some storage points involve too much risk to go there. Then you can go to a different level, provided you are prepared to tolerate a few load screens, with no guarantee that no enemy will spawn you. Just back on the enemies in Syndrome: the enemies and their AI are laughing, as well as the woody animations with which they move. There is also no moment when you feel real fear.

As a candle on the cake we also need to quote the audio. The first impression is good until you come to the aforementioned lobby. From that point, Galen smashes an angry cry every few minutes, regardless of what happens around him. The audio has little to no relation to the events at the Valkenburg. All added, Syndrome is an amateuristically disassociated product. But wait, we're not done yet!

"We have to put VR on the box!"

If you look at the spec sheet of Syndrome, you'll see that this game supports PlayStation VR. However, it is not the single player campaign you can play in virtual reality. This is a "Endless" mode in which you should try to survive as many days as possible while the cyborgs bump you from all sides. You're looking for keycards while you're on health and ammunition. The biggest problem with this is that it gets very boring very quickly. Enemies can also spawn right here on your bakkie, so you'll be killed right away if you're unlucky. The view in VR is limited to fifteen meters so you do not have an overview of which enemies are coming from you. Moreover, the VR support is so limited that it is a shame that there is "PS VR compatible" next to it. It's no more than a tech demo,

Look, every game has its drawbacks and of course you choose to accept it. You then make a distinction between what a game you are going to cost and how much fun you think of it. If a developer dares to request $39.99 for his/her game, that creates certain expectations. If I had bought this game for $39.99, I would feel terribly disappointed. Should the game cost about $10, - it would still be too much, but it would be more in proportion to what you expect and eventually get.

In addition, there may be people who purchase this game for the virtual reality component. Here too, we can not emphasize enough that the label 'PS VR Compatible' takes too much credit to the available VR mode, because it is very kind and you are very excited. Normally, i would not deduct a separate paragraph from the price, but in this case the price you pay is out of proportion to what you get and it feels my responsibility to make it clear to you.

Conclusion

Syndrome is a terrible sci-fi survival horror game that should give you all three platinum trophies in advance if you have 2 hours of playtime. The graphics and controls are jerky and I have never had to backtrack as much as in Syndrome. The title supports Endless mode in VR, but it is purely meant to put VR on the box in the hope that people drove the insane amount of $39.99 for this. If you really want to play a good sci-fi survival horror on your PS4, please donate Alien Isolation (or play it again) because Syndrome is a real torture. The setting reminds me of toppers like Dead Space, System Shock and Alien: Isolation. Make everyone a favor and let Syndrome be far left.

Pros

➕ Sci-fi horror setting

Cons

➖ Cut / paste graphics
➖ Bad live design
➖ Terrible control
➖ Bad VR support
➖ Backtracking to art exalted
➖ Delicious asking price
➖ Bugs

Thanks for your precious time.

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