Synced: Your new daily routine?
SYNCED (Early Closed Beta Review)
Open Beta Available: December 9th until January 15th
Price: Free to Play
SYNCED is a team match-based rogue-looter shooter in a techno-apocalyptic future after the cataclysm known as the Collapse. You are a Runner who joins the war with deadly techno-creatures called Nanos inside the sealed off zone known to many as the Meridian.
It's slow, repetitive and missing a reason to continue playing in its current state.
Customization
The character choices
The game currently offers 3 playable classes. You can unlock more by checking back in every so often to pick up your daily login bonuses.
While it does feel a bit restrictive, each character does have their own unique skills and powers, so you're bound to find someone that fits your playstyle.
Deadcut - Grenades as your special
Glory - Poison as your special
Dr. Stone - AoE healing and Revive as your special.
Ragna (Locked) - Detect and Leeching as your special.
Park (Locked) - Chain strike bomb as your special
It also seems that you currently can play multiples of the same runner per team.
Weapon and perk modifications for yourself and your companion
While you are restricted to a specific runner instead of creating your own from scratch, you have plenty of ways to modify each runner to your preference.
This could be with weapon attachments, weapon mods or perks you find and get as rewards for completing different jobs and successful extractions.
You also have access to one of 4 Nano companions per run, these aid you in combat in many ways, but do not assist you when and if you get downed.
Crusher - Large and agile close quarter combat.
Suppressor - Long-ranged support.
Guardian - A frontline tank for support.
Seer - Detects and tracks enemies
The incentive to continue keep you playing
Daily login bonuses
There are daily rewards, so logging in goes from something you could do to more or less something you should do. While some see this as a good thing others might tend to procrastinate, and end up not playing that game at all.
Normally when I start playing a game my goal is to play the game. Conversely when I log in to collect the daily reward I immediately "complete" the task I mentally associated with the game, and don't have any impetus to keep playing, because I wasn't actually logging in to play in the first place.
Ideally a game should be as fun as it can possibly be, to the point where people want to play it because they enjoy the time that they spend playing it.
But many games are designed these days with psychological tricks to keep people playing, even when they are not having fun.
Dailies are one of these, they attempt to turn the game into a regular part of their daily routine, whether the player feels like playing the game or not.
Synced rewards you not for doing something, but rather by waiting until it is available, which is just like the aforementioned method, you end up logging in to see if the reward is available, rather than to actually play the game.
A high success rate Leaderboard
Leaderboards can allow dedicated players to show achievement and skill through points or badges. These can be made easy to provide quick rewards and incentives to continue or to compete with rival players for the #1 spot.
Sometimes it creates fun mini narratives within the span of the match and serves as a warning to a less skilled player when the good player is around.
Sometimes it can create chaos hierarchy that tears a rift between the community, making it so that if you're not on a leaderboard, you're nothing.
However, it doesn't seem to fit in here. It's not a ranked leaderboard or anything of that nature, it just serves as a placeholder to show you the highest win rates.
Jobs
If going in on a straight mission to level up and unlock new guns, cosmetics and weapon mods is not enough motivation there are also jobs that you can take on to give you more purpose out on the Meridian.
However, you are restricted to only having 2 active at one time, making it more of a grind to do them all, especially if it takes many runs to complete.
The core gameplay
The core gameplay feels pretty solid and responsive, the game suddenly takes a massive jump in unnecessary difficulty proceeding into the second stage of the first mission, regardless if you rush or take your time, it makes no difference.
You'll spend the next 10-20 minutes trying to take down a vortex crystal that continues to pulsate in a rotation every few seconds, only to be destroyed and cycle through even more Nano creatures to slowly mow your way through.
This essentially goes on multiple times, it's not fun but rather more tedious.
Getting downed feels terrible compared to other games
When you get downed you have two choices to make, you can look for a nearby low health enemy to try to finish off before you slowly bleed out and flatline or you can resign. Seems like a pretty straight forward dilemma no?
If you recall the previous issue, everything is a bullet sponge and there aren't a lot of Nano creatures around to give you the benefit to do so, not to mention you don't really have much freedom and take seconds to shoot a single round.
Games like Borderlands 2 do this very well, even when in a downed state there is always a fighting chance to get back on your feet and into the action.
PvP and PvE gamplay
If you like casually playing games rather than playing competitively, then you're in luck! This game offers the choice of PvP and PvE gameplay, both alone and with others, however, it's practically suicide to go in on a solo-mission.
Each mode is different and feels alright but could be fleshed out a bit more with time in development.
Would you recommend this game?
It's going to be free to play so why the heck not
In the current state of Early Closed Beta (6 days before public release) it offers enough to make you curious as to what the game has to offer, but slowly becomes a sluggish and repetitive point A to B rotation.
I found the game interesting in some aspects, but quickly became exhausted with how slow paced and bullet sponge Nano creatures became over time.
It’s likely that a lot will change between now and the official release, but for a closed beta this shows plenty of promise even if it does feel like it's lacking.
The biggest downside is that the game is exclusively online, meaning if the servers are down you can not play or if your internet is down, same problem.
This concludes my review of this game, while my opinions may be met with criticism, that's what makes gamers unique, you don't have to like the same things that others do, nor do you have to agree with them.
If you would like to catch me during one of my streams or find me on social media, you can find me at these following locations listed below:
- Pawkt
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