Game Review - SYNCED

Game Review: SYNCED by NExT Studios
Score: +1/-14

SYNCED is a futuristic free-to-play co-op shooter developed by NExT Studios and published by Level Infinite. You will deploy with your squad or fight alone with your tamed Nano. Venture into the collapsed world for intense PvE and PvP combats.

There are two key things you need to know about SYNCED:

• There are bad design decisions that other games already tried and abandoned.
• It is not just another looter-shooter. It is more like a hybrid of Souls-like boss-fights, rogue-like random powers, and weird passive powers. The shooting part of the game is really terrible so if that's what you like, choose something else.

-1 There's no story here.

• Or at least not an interesting one that you can see any clear progress with. It's like those mobile games where you hit some kind of progress wall and have to grind to see the next 30 seconds of dialog that "advances the story".
• And the story so far is "we are researching these extra-bad nanos, so go kill some for us". Based on that type of story hook at the start, there's little reason to trust that there'll be a good story worth grinding for.
• So right away, you better like the repetition or there's no point playing the game at all.

The shooting game in this looter-shooter is terrible.

• -1 Most weapons have very wide spread and terrible accuracy in a game where they want you to hit weak spots on enemies.
• -1 Weapon modding is done by unlocking various upgrades, which you do by repeatedly using the weapon to level it up. The levelling rate is extremely slow, and for melee weapons the benefits are entirely cosmetic.
• -1 You start each mission with one weapon, one sidearm, one melee weapon.
• The sidearm and melee weapon are your basic useless last-resort weapons.
• Your one weapon is supposed to be your main, except if you want to carry something special, like a rifle that shoots like a short-range grenade launcher, you now have to scramble around in the field to find a second weapon that's more generally viable. Which is a lot harder than it sounds plus what you can find lying around is random and not upgraded.
• Or you can take a more generally viable weapon and all the fancy weapons you've collected can just be useless.
• +1 -1 The mods you equip give a variety of powers, some quite interesting.
• But this plus the random powers you can buy during a mission really start to overshadow the game. The game is really mainly about these powers helping you kill trash mobs. This game is definitely not about shooting.

The various mechanics are all against the core gameplay loop, making it tedious. The design choices here I think really say something about the development team or at least their goals. Why make your core gameplay loop tedious? That just diminishes any fun in the game.

• -1 There is a type of "danger meter" that keeps increasing. When it reaches 100% you take damage periodically. So they want you to rush. OK. Except you have other gameplay systems that require time.
• Dauntless used to have a danger meter making players rush to the one boss on each map. They removed that. It ran counter to other systems such as looking for crafting materials during a run. And now here's another studio copying a tried and failed mechanic. This seems to be a trend -- developers reinventing square wheels to make the same mistakes others did years ago.
• -1 A core feature about the game is fighting with a "nano", which is basically a companion with a set of powers that make them tank or damage-dealer. You have to go and "sync" one on every single run.
• -1 Guns need ammo. But on the big overland maps, it's surprisingly not that easy to actually find an ammo crate to restock. Meanwhile, every few minutes they spawn a large wave of enemies. So now you have two choices:
• Run away and not get any currency to upgrade your gear and get powers, hampering your ability to kill the final boss.
• Fight and hope you find more ammo soon. Because you need to keep moving because of the Danger Meter.
• Fortunately at the final boss typically there is an ammo crate so if you feel you have upgraded enough you can just keep running away.
• Non-overland maps like missions that take place in a building that you basically go through linearly aren't as bad. If only they stuck to those instead of having overland maps.
• -1 You need to upgrade your gear and powers.
• Just reading the powers at the upgrade station takes time. Remember the Danger Meter that's still ticking?
• Power upgrades aren't so bad since there are stations all over the place, but gear upgrades -- armor and guns -- are harder to find on overland maps. You can keep wandering around until you find one, but the real problem is the Danger Meter that keeps climbing.
• -1 There are data collectibles scattered on the map in apparently random places.
• Even in non-overland places like buildings where the route is basically linear, they can be hard to find because they don't always show up so you have to go everywhere. Except there's also a Danger Meter so you don't really have time to do that sort of sightseeing, especially in the expansive overland maps.

-1 Bosses are suddenly very difficult.

• Once you get to the final boss you are likely to get wiped out the first few times because the difficulty generally spikes up. Either the boss is very strong or there are mechanics like fast, deadly sweeping lasers that take out huge chunks of your armor and health or something else.
• -1 There's basically no respawn.
• If you are playing solo, there's basically no respawn. You just fail the entire mission and have to do it all over, including the tedious gameplay loop we explained above.
• There are some mods you can get which give you a limited opportunity to respawn but that's quite late into the game, if you last that long and haven't uninstalled.
• If you are playing in a group you might be able to get revived, but more likely the person trying to revive you will also get killed by the same environmental mechanics that killed you.
• Even if your group does manage to revive teammates, there's the Danger Meter that's still ticking.
• So, similar to a Souls-like game, you repeatedly re-try until you figure out the mechanics and succeed. And in between retries you have a tedious mission to redo.
• Souls-like games have a very specific audience that doesn't mind repeated failure. But it is a very different audience to looter-shooters. You do still get to keep any mods you find during a run, but would you prefer to experience repeated success or repeated failure?

-1 If you cannot pass a mission you are stuck

• The mods you get are your character's progression. Mods determine your Power Score which in turn determines how much damage you do and how much damage you take.
• Each mission has a fixed range of Power for the mods that can drop. If you cannot succeed in the mission there is basically no recourse. You are stuck because you cannot get better mods to help you.

-1 Events are at the endgame or close to it

• If you are a newer player, grind first to get your Power up before you can even try the events.
• This just encourages players to rush, and in doing so try all sorts of shortcuts such as looking for established players to carry them.