It’s been a while since I’ve played a good horror game and even longer since that game was set in space. I’m a big fan of the Dead Space series, and Syndrome manages to slip somewhere between that franchise and Alien Isolation in its design, pacing, and presentation while paying homage to numerous sci-fi cinematic staples. Alien fans will certain find countless familiar nods to their franchise from the opening presentation style that ends with you on a ship not unlike the one used by the Colonial Marines to the cryogenic sleep pods that surround you when you awaken to unspeakable terror.
A quick glance at the nearby terminal reveals more than 300 are dead and you are among less than a dozen survivors who have scattered to various parts of this enormous ship. Each faction will soon be in touch to engage you with a seemingly endless barrage of fetch quests that often require excessive backtracking throughout this massive ship – a ship so large you will constantly be referencing a poorly rendered map to figure out where to go and how to get there. In a game that looks so good I had to wonder why the map was so ugly; perhaps crudely drawn is more appropriate, with orange number blocks and no standardized font size and even line thickness that varied per map and level.
Syndrome is more of a psychological experiment than a horror game, or at least that was what I was telling myself near the sixty-minute mark after I had jumped three times and let out at least one audible yelp…all for nothing. Syndrome is the king of jump scares and atmospheric terror. Every time a new door opens to unexplored territory expect a cacophony of synths and instruments will have your cat sticking to the ceiling. For the first hour your greatest enemy will be your imagination (and the sound designer). Flames, sparking wires, broken hissing steam pipes, and all sorts of creaking, skittering, groaning sound effects will assault you from up to seven discreet directions if you have a proper surround sound setup or good pair of headphones.
Much like Spielberg’s movie Jaws; your terror ramps exponentially at what you cannot see. There is almost a supernatural/demonic element to the sound design that works in tandem with dozens of dead and dismembered bodies lying around the ship, or even worse, strung up from the ceiling dangling like blood-dripping piñatas. Observant players will eventually start to notice other creepy changes. That giant deactivated security robot that you’ve passed by four times is now gone. That can’t be good.
About an hour into the game, you’ll need to find a giant wrench to proceed through the story, and this becomes your first weapon. Later on, you will get other weapons, but it won’t take more than a few encounters to realize you are better off running from most of the smaller enemies. Combat is disappointing at best, and I actually believe this game would have been even more terrifying if you had remained unarmed and simply ran and hid the entire time, or better yet, setup traps with electrical wires and steam pipes so they would inflict damage on someone (or something) other than you.
There are no checkpoints or auto-saves in the game. Instead, there are save stations clearly marked on the map and I highly recommend you stick your arm in one every time you pass by. It’s probably worth going out of your way to hit these about every 10-15 minutes unless you like replaying lengthy portions of the game, and since this is fairly linear and scripted, it’s pretty boring replaying a game that relies on jump scares when you know what’s coming. And it is fairly easy to die. Before I even had my first real enemy encounter, I had lost about 90% of my health from environmental hazards, so keep an eye on that health bar and be sure to heal with health kits and random bits of collectible food and drink.
Syndrome falls into its genre rut all too quickly. Locked keypad door? Find the tablet or computer screen with the email, log, or journal entry that has the code. Locked keycard door? Find the dead body of the card holder and claim it. Things get laughably preposterous when they start stacking these fetch quests. Early on you need to get into engineering but the guy with the access is in the brig so you need to get into the detention area on another deck by unlocking the door from an office on another deck. I appreciate trying to maximize your gameplay in the limited confines of a spaceship but at some point, it just gets annoying, and doors off the beaten path are usually locked or “jammed” to crush your exploration cravings. They’ll open when the story demands it.
Syndrome has an authentic sci-fi look about it with narrow corridors, lots of crazy lighting and creepy shadows. I had to wonder who installed all the yellow fluorescent lighting inside the air vents. They must have known these were going to be used for alternate access when the ship was constructed. In addition to the insane audio effects Syndrome has plenty of haunting visuals. The screen will blur, ripple, and distort. You’ll have sudden horrifying visions then things will snap back to reality. Creature design is genuinely scary at times if you let them get close enough to appreciate. As mentioned previously, the map is functional but not easy on the eyes, but the rest of the interface and command pop-ups are fine. I appreciated the minimal approach to the HUD with only health and stamina as two thin bars in the bottom corner. The inventory screen looks nice but needs hot-commands to use/equip items rather than having to navigate to the appropriate button – especially in a game that is always in real time, so that monster is still stalking you while you are fumbling around trying to eat a sandwich.
Syndrome should take you roughly 10-12 hours to finish depending on if you take the time to find all the tablets and non-mission critical computers and read all the notes and backstory fluff. There is no reason to revisit and honestly, much of the scary stuff would be lost or at least less effective in a replay, although you can certainly have fun watching somebody else squirm during their first trip through the game.
I’m a big fan of the horror genre in both movies and games. Scary movies suck these days and scary games just don’t seem as abundant as they were back in the days of Dead Space and FEAR. Syndrome has some rough edges, especially in pacing and the sheer amount of mundane tasking and backtracking you will be forced to endure, but as long as you save often the presentation and sound design are enough to allow me to give this a recommendation for horror fans at full price, but more casual (or less patient) outer space survival horror gamers should probably wait for a sale.
