The first thing I always think when I’m playing a VR game is ‘why is this in VR’? I don’t resent virtual reality exactly, but every game I play in it needs to offer me a meaningful reason as to why I’m standing in my living room with a plastic contraption strapped to my head. Synapse, the latest VR game from nDreams (best known for Phantom: Covert Ops andFar Cry VR), stutters and falls in the face of this question. The FPS roguelite works in virtual reality, but I am slightly perplexed that it’s VR only rather than having that be an extra mode in a regular FPS.
This is a running theme, because I’m also confused as to why this needs to be a roguelite at all, when a linear game might have offered a more focussed, more rounded experience. At a certain point, I’m moving into ‘I prefer games that do X, Y, and Z’ rather than meeting Synapse honestly. An FPS roguelite in VR feels quite novel, and there’s something in the looping structure (the full run must be completed three times) that works. But this loop falls apart when you fail, and with a roguelite, that’s the whole point.
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In the reviewers guide, these three runs are billed as Easy, Medium, and Hard, but that feels like cruel framing, at least initially. My first runs were disastrous, ending in deaths that were often as embarrassing as they were unavoidable. But as I completed challenges and earned currency, I doubled my health, unlocked better guns, and earned two resurrections. With all those equipped, I made it to the final level on my first and second run, and cleared it on my third: Easy mode indeed. But rather than feeling that I had fulfilled a power fantasy, that I had earned one through my hard-fought efforts, it felt frustrating that the game had locked away its best features for entirely arbitrary reasons.
Some of these progression elements made sense: you get better guns and more health the more you play. Sure. Classic progression arc. But the game also emphasises your secondary ability to grab items telekinetically, and without upgrades, all you can do is meekly lift up cubes that serve no purpose but to be lifted up. Rushing through the game once you’re upgraded lets you toss enemies aside, crush the grenades that they launch, and slam foes into the dirt - the game should have been this way from the start, and the more you play, the more you feel like the roguelite framework was a way to stretch out a fairly short game into a more meaty experience. But with each run taking 45 minutes at a time, it’s caught between that bite-sized, one more go flow and the committed, in the zone sensation.
As for the gameplay itself, when you have some decent upgrades, things are fast and furious. While you can hold on to cover, the game incentivises getting up close and blasting enemies away through rapid lurches forward. It may cause some motion sickness for players, but the best the game has to offer is in zipping around the map, even if reloading means bashing your expensive VR remotes together in your palms. However, before you manage to upgrade your guns, you’ll find yourself running short of bullets with nothing but an ineffective telekinesis throw to help you. It’s a game that deliberately annoys you over and over again in the hopes that you’ll be grateful when it stops. Your mileage may vary on that front.
It’s taken me a while to get to the major selling point of the game -Jennifer Hale and David Hayter. That’s because they’re not really in it. The game takes place inside Hayter’s character’s brain, with Hale the voice in your ear guiding you through. But as you reach milestones rarely and fail often, what you mostly hear are generic grunts from Hayter’s brain guards who shoot at you to protect his memories.
These grunts are solid enemies most of the time, dealing decent damage but dying within a couple of shots as you clear the map of between 25 to 50 of them each level. There’s also decent variation, with regular gunners, rushing enemies that explode, flying enemies with laser beams, and tanks. However, they aren’t always used fairly. The exploding enemies can spawn behind you, causing damage before you even know they’re there, and when you shoot them they fall forward, causing them to damage you anyway despite defending against them. Worst though are the tanks.
At level four, the halfway point, you face a mini boss. They’re a huge hulking creature with a gatling gun whose armour must be ripped off, and when underpowered, almost all of my deaths were to this brute. In time, he became a little easier, because that’s how roguelites work. However, once I had beaten him twice, he started spawning earlier, which hardly seems fair when he was also still in his regular position. In fact, as I got further through the game, even without reaching the end point of the loop, I noticed he would appear more frequently on subsequent runs. It was like the game was rubber-banding itself, stopping me from getting too far ahead lest my runtime be too short.
Ultimately, Synapse is good at what it does - the FPS gameplay has range and versatility, with great speed and enemy diversity, despite the frustrations. The roguelite structure also offers frequent and relevant rewards you earn through achievable goals, even if it means starting you at a lower point to let you build up to tolerable standards. I’m just not sure it should be doing what it does. I don’t know why it’s VR, I don’t know why it’s a roguelite, I don’t know why it has a stellar cast it barely uses. It has all the gear, and I have no idea why.
Score: 2.5/5. A PS VR2 code was provided by the publisher.
