Frozen Synapse

[Murdoc]

How is the singleplayer on this? I realize its intended mp, but it seems like one of those games I'd really enjoy if I was any good at, but would probably get plowed online and never touch it again, hehe.

[toblix]

I had the impression the sp campaign was terribly broken and unfinished, but then Steve Gaynor sang its praise in Twitter, so now I don't know what to believe anymore.

[a purple future]

eurogamer spoke highly of it and i have to agree. of the 10-12 missions i've played through, there's been good variety and some interesting level design. plus if you fail, the stage gets re-rolled (sometimes it's just the starting locations), so it stays kind of interesting. it's really quite good!

oh also it seems to be less buggy in windowed mode for some reason, in case you're having issues

[toblix]

Oh, I always play in windowed mode because I'm a huge giant pussy.

[Erkki]

Just bought it. Seems interesting so far, but for some reason it's tiring on eyes/hands. Maybe i'm just tired today, but it seems like my eyes and the mouse cursor is jumping all over the place, especially in the tutorial.

[toblix]

There is some weirdness with the user interface. The game sometimes freezes and skips weirdly, depending on where I put my mouse. Seems like some unchecked bug is using 100% CPU when everything is just right.

[Erkki]

This game falls annoying narrowly short of what it should be. There are many issues that could be very simply solved better. What's with the pause before executing the plan? Even if there are no computer controlled units left on the map, and all I have to do is reach the map edge it still takes a long time. Also, maybe 5 seconds for turn is too much -- it leaves you no time to react usually if an enemy unit takes a different route than you guessed and planned for.

etc...

[Cigol]

Valid points, but hopefully someone buys the rights and remakes it into an atmospheric first person shooter instead.

[Erkki]

Still haven't tried multi, but the single player is getting annoyingly broken and crashy. Has anyone completed the level where you have to defend a single small room in the center of the map while new Enyo:Nomad units keep on coming?

That room has so many doors/windows that I find it impossible to defend -- the computer units finding some ridiculous angle to get a shot at me from between some random walls. The two rocket launchers are mostly useless and shotgun guys have a hard time closing the distance on multiple enemies. Only one machine gun...

[Erkki]

I tried to send this to youtube, but according to the game it "failed for some reason: 6"

Here's a picture that illustrates this (especially look at the sniper angle)

[brkl]

Your own guys are just as good given the chance. You just have to be really careful in the game and try to plan so you're not just hoping the enemy will take a specific path.

I can't speak for the mission design of the single player campaign, but the mechanics in the game are robust.

[Erkki]

Haha. There's a MAZE level. That is one single 50 second turn. At least the computer seems to come up with the same solution every time, but it's more like a ridiculous space-time puzzle than like the rest of the game.

Does anyone know a solution to that? Youtube found me nothing.*

Also, the story is dumb, the more towards the end the less I bother reading the dialogues.

*edit: ok, it wasn't that hard. there was a certain point where i went to intercept them in the maze where amazingly my 2 guys defeated 5 enemies that were coming in a close formation, then ran back to the middle to defend the room. With one way blocked, it was much easier.

Edited June 19, 2011 by Erkki

[Erkki]

Frozen Synaps called me a Fucker as a reward for completing it.

The single player campaign kind of sucked, but the gameplay was interesting at least half of the time. So over-all, I give it a . Now on to the multi-player.