I stare at my screen, thinking of every way to get out of this mess. What if I send my lone soldier down this corner and make him carefully sneak forward. I put in the commands and preview what would happen. He would die, quite fast even. I cancel the commands and think again.
This is one of the greatest strengths of Frozen Synapse, it makes you carefully consider every command. The worst word in this game is "commited"; you can't do anything now. You have cast the die, now you will have to await your fate and see if you chose correctly. By now the errors in your plan are painfully obvious and you regret everything. However it is too late, your opponent has made his move as well and now it's out of both of your hands. All you can do now is sit, and stare as the drama unfolds.
Frozen synapse is a strategy game highly reminicent of the older rainbow six games. You tell your units where to move and how to act, your main objectives are to take out the enemy and survive. There are of course other objectives such as taking out a VIP, securing an area or protecting an area. These objectives, however important, come secondary to one thing: Survival.
The controls are quite easy to get the hang of. You control your units issuing commands with your mouse. You can tell your soliders to ignore all enemy units in order to get them to a better defensible postion or ignore specific enemies if you feel like they are too exposed. With a quick right click you get a list of commands to chose from all of which are needed to achieve your objectives. Even a small mistake can doom your unit to extinction. You do get the oppertunity to learn the controls through through an interactive video, or tutorial, but the best way to learn is through playing the game itself.
There are five different units in the game. The machine gun unit who is excellent at mid range combat and an all around decent unit. The shotgun unit who is fast and has the best reaction time (can see a enemy and shoot the fastest) but suffers from very low range. The sniper who has a very high range but uses a long time to aim. The grenade launcher unit whom can bounce granades off walls and hit enemy units behind cover. Last, but by no means least, is the rocket launcher unit who can blow up walls and basically turn any combat into a chaotic mess.
Since each unit has its own pros and cons gameplay is very balanced focusing on strategy and clever moves more then anything else. Every fight is automatically set up with your units randomly chosen for you and randomly placed on the map, in multiplayer both sides have the same units which makes each game balanced and fair.
During each engagement you can preview how your commands will shape the fight and see a computer simulation of how your choices would affect the battle. However the computer lies, it only takes into account your commands. The hostile commands are not known and therefore aren't included in the simulation. Every command that you have chosen with care to guide you on the path of victory, have instead landed you on the brink of defeat. That however is also a great strength of the game, it tells you that you should not rely on the computer to magically save the day. You have to think for yourself and find out what your enemy would do.
The game gets even more intense during "dark" matches where you can't see your enemies postion. Guessing where people are and putting your units on the line is a terrible feeling that at the same time is simply fantastic!
He's dead Jim.
Frozen Synapse's singleplayer campaign is solid. The story centers around the future city of Markov Geist. A semi digital/real place where everything is connected to a main hub tower that is controlled by Enjo:Nomad, a huge corporation who control the city. Your job as the aptly named Tactics (great name), an AI who's only programmed to plan and win fights; is to make the rebel group, Petrov's Shard, rise up and take back the city. Mix in cyberpunk elements of politics, a few smart ass AIs, a dash of religion, sprinkle it with a few moral quandries and add an entity called Charon's Palm, and you've got a pretty decent story. There is no voiceacting, but every conversation is accompanied by a picture, so it's easy to tell who is talking to you.
The multiplayer is well designed. Each player plan their moves and their turns are submitted to the server. Only after reciving turns from both players does it show you how your choices have affected the battle. There is no timelimit on these turns. This way you can play sevreal games at once and have some game last for days simply deciding on what to do next.
Every match is recorded on the server so you can at any time view a match that any user has played. Which can help you improve your own understanding of tactics. It even includes an IRC chat system which you can type in at any time.
If you think this sounds/looks Deus Exish, then I would agree. It is quite similar to Deus Ex. Its simple graphics helps enhance the cyber punk theme. Something which further enhances the experience of being an entity programmed simply to fight battles and plan tactics. Your enemy is red, you want to kill them, and your units are green, you want to protect them. You have to carefully plan your way to victory, if not you will lose. Sometimes you can be left with objectives that seem morally wrong, but you have no choice, you are an AI you do as you are told, and you do so gladly.
One of the strong points of the game is the music. Done by nervous_testpilot, these scores make the game world feel much more vivid, and can really help make the battles more intense.
Sooo goood in 2.14
All in all this is a highly entertaining title with some deep mechanics and well thought out strategy elements. For an indie title this is a great buy and since every pack comes with 2 games, you can give/sell the second copy to someone else and play with them. I highly reccomend this as this is one of the best games so far this year.
Hopefully we'll meet in the battlefield sometime in the future.