Synduality: Echo Of Ada

Nonsensical name, enjoyable game

FORMAT PS5 / ETA 2024/PUB BANDAI NAMCO DEV GAME STUDIO INC / PLAYERS MULTI

Usually we here at PLAY love rain. When the sky is weeping outside, we have the perfect excuse to stay inside and play Baldur's Gate 3 all day. But Synduality's toxic showers have us swearing off stupid skywater for good. What's the point of a game that puts you in a massive heavily-armed mech if you're just going to be destroyed by a light drizzle?

The mech's name should've been a red flag. We're piloting a Cradle Coffin, a moniker for a machine that feels like it's really tempting fate. The apocalypse happened, and the planet's surface is now more hostile to humans than a Covid strain made of wasps. There's the aforementioned killer rain, plus deadly creatures called 'Enders' prowling the abandoned cities, deserts, and lakes. Oh, and the game's a PvPvE extraction shooter, so if you meet another mech, you'd better pray they're reaching for the wave emote and not a massive shotgun.

You live below the surface and have to brave trips above ground to scavenge for resources. But if you fail, you lose everything. Your weapons, your mech, everything. Even Dark Souls never went as far as taking the shirt off our backs! While this is often devastating, it gives the game great tension, making up for some of its more generic elements. The Enders look like slightly flatter versions of the machine dinos we fought in Horizon Zero Dawn. Your starting guns are fine, but nothing that'll have Armored Core worried. And the 'speed boost' is laughable, only speedy compared to the glacial trudge of your normal walking speed.

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