Horror games are the kind of games you just can’t love while you’re actually playing them. Otherwise they must be bad. But Syndrome does not disappoint! I hate this game so much but I love it as a horror game!
Syndrome is a typical stealth horror game. Much like Alien Isolation (which is one of my personal all-time favorites) and SOMA. You are playing as Trent Galen the spaceman. Suddenly you wake up from a long cryosleep. You still suffer from the side effects but you don’t have much time to rest. Almost the entire crew is dead and you are alone with the other crew and the things that lurk in the shadows.
So we start off slow assessing the situation. Finally I could play the game. I am not a keyboard gamer, but even though Camel 101 said the game has full controller support, I had to play it with keyboard. But let’s move on. Slowly but steady you get to know what happened to everyone.
You almost have no space and all you can walk through are claustrophobic long hallways. You know those kind of hallways where suddenly something pops up at the end. This is also a thing the game likes to do. It likes to mess with you. For instance you can see your enemy on a camera display until it disappears. At that moment I was frozen completely. I could not look away. Afterwards I saw that the spot it viewed was right next to me. Scary stuff.
Of course it has the usual douchy horror game elements. For instance broken pipes that suddenly blow out air, the far away sounds and the sudden music when things are about to happen. And I kept the worst thing for last. Robots. Those giant idle bastards had to fall out just after a corner to make you jump. But hey they were idle at least. Where they?
Sometimes games let you sink in slowly to the horror. Syndrome does not. When things go down, they go down well.
There are a few minor things in this game. Some are personal wich I will discuss, because maybe you don’t like those arguments either.
The horror in this game is very good! The atmosphere really does what you’d expect from a science fiction horror game. The whole game exists of long endless hallways like I said before. But when the enemies start popping up I was a bit disappointed. Ok they were scary but these things were slow and a bit goofy. They looked threatening but in my opinion their animations did not fit with their appearance. (I don’t want to but I have to make the equation) In Alien Isolation those androids really had something that made them so horrible. Maybe because those droids looked so humanoid while in Syndrome you can clearly see they were droids. In Syndrome you also don’t really know what is hunting you, while in Alien you knew well enough what is sneaking behind your back. In Alien Isolation you were a witness to how the “working joe’s” turned to killing machines. While in Syndrome you are just dropped in the madness.
But I guess it is unfair to compare a big budget game like Alien Isolation to an indie game like Syndrome. Also Alien Isolation speaks to us because it has a massive franchise behind it. We know how the Xenomorphs look and what they do. That is why we are so scared of them. Syndrome does not have this advantage.
Conclusion:
Well I think this game really is good. The atmosphere is really good and the scares can be intense. The voice acting and some other things are a bit goofy, but I really can’t complain for an indie game. I would recommend it to hardcore fans of the horror genre. The awards the game is nominated for really are not stolen.
