Frozen Synapse! Here come the indies...

Maybe it’s because the last $50 game I bought (Brink) was a burn. Maybe it’s because there aren’t usually many big releases during the summer. Maybe it’s because I want to pretend to be the videogame equivalent of a hipster. Or maybe its because even Seth Borko, wielding a Macbook Pro, is playing more indie games than me, but today I’m finally going to talk about a relatively low-profile game developed by around three people called Frozen Synapse. Spoiler alert: it’s excellent.

Frozen Synapse is a turn-based strategy game with only a handful of units that players maneuver simultaneously. Players take their turns simultaneously, with each turn lasting five seconds. There’s no economy. There’s no “macro/micro.” This is a videogame for people without the reflexes to play videogames. And yet it maintains the depth that might just appeal to the average Starcraft or DOTA veteran.

Games take place on maps that are usually a maze of blue walls filled with green men (your units), red men (enemies), and occasionally yellow ones (allies). That probably gets across exactly what the game looks like. It’s simplistic, but visually very pleasant.

You spend the bulk of the game planning out orders for each of your squad members, who have different roles such as rifleman (medium range), shotgun (close herp), and sniper (long derp), as well as RPG’s and grenadiers who blow up walls as well as people. The maps are usually randomized to a certain degree whether you’re playing the campaign or multiplayer, meaning you can never plan out perfectly what to do beforehand.

Frozen Synapse’s signature feature is probably how it lets you simulate each turn before committing to your orders, allowing you to give your enemies orders and simulate what you think your opponent will do. You’ll spend a lot of time agonizing over every move, making Frozen Synapse a relatively slow game.

The game gives you a ridiculous amount of control over your units. You’ll set up waypoints for them to move and you can alter their behavior from point to point, telling them to floor it to the next point or aim carefully in case they encounter an enemy. The game’s logic is pretty easy to follow: still units beat moving ones, units in cover beat exposed ones, and aiming units beat running ones, all with range taken into account. The basic tactics take a relatively short amount of time to synthesize, allowing you to focus on actual strategy within a few hours.

While a mainstream RTS like Starcraft requires not only strategy but an incredible level of mouse dexterity (I’m not bitter, I swear), Frozen Synapse, as its title might suggest, forces you to slow down (especially if you’re waiting for someone else to submit their orders online). You need to consider as many possibilities as possible, and often test out multiple solutions, because your opponent will surely be doing the same, whether a human enemy or the surprisingly competent AI. That doesn’t mean Frozen Synapse is boring, as those five seconds when the actual turn occurs usually turn out to be incredibly exciting, given all the time you just invested in it.

The game of course features 1v1 multiplayer, but I found the campaign to be the most fun part of the game. Set in a cyberpunk universe where people can enter an alternate reality called “the Shape,” the campaign features quite a few varied and exciting missions, and you’ll likely see several variations of each mission if you fail as much as I did.

The game costs $25, which is expensive for an indie title, but it comes with two copies of the game so you can give one to a friend who might also be interested (cost-splitting optional). Even though it’s a somewhat simplistic world by modern standards, it’s hard to argue against $12.50 for a game that’s addicting, cerebral, and social. And it’s compatible for both PC and Mac, making this a perfect title for anyone interested in gaming on a Mac or any computer with low system specs.

The developers say they’re considering bringing Frozen Synapse to other platforms, and I can easily see the game being at home on iOS or Android, perhaps more so than on either the Xbox or Playstation. Frozen Synapse is a rare game, one that feels like it could appeal to both The Hardcorzz and the dreaded Casuals without having to pervert its core gameplay to appeal to one or the other.

When this type of game is the norm in the future, you’ll know we have the indies to blame.

Back From the Brink!

Time to restart this blog with a word or two on one of this month’s big releases, Brink! I know, I know, talking about a game weeks after its release? Well, given how many people have complained about the pros reviewing an essentially broken version of Brink (the one without the day-one patch) for the sake of an early review, I’m sure a review after the game’s been patched a couple of times is quite relevant!

For any who would take offense at my little snipe against those who stood up to defend what they thought was a good game, a brief disclaimer: I was like you once. I admit I wanted Brink to be good, but was perfectly willing to accept that a new series by a developer with a short history (though I’m told Enemy Territory: Quake Wars was quite good) might not come out swinging (and Bethesda doesn’t have an immaculate track record as a publisher, Rogue Warrior anyone?)

Without going into detail, some of the reviews I read raised my eyebrows. Most glaringly, it seemed as if everyone was heavily criticizing the bots and the single player of what was clearly meant to be a primarily multiplayer game. Gameplay videos I watched after the release made the game look like something I could have fun with, so I happily plunked down $50 for something I hoped would be fun but knew could well be quite flawed. I had to see for myself, and I’m happy to add another voice to the conversation for those who are still on the fence and don’t have $50 or $60 for an experiment.

I’m going to get this out of the way first so I can spend the rest of this review complaining: if you like medium-scale team-based multiplayer games like Team Fortress 2, you’ll definitely find something to like in Brink.

Brink is a multiplayer shooter focused on teamplay and different classes, all with a comic book aesthetic. If that sounds exactly like Team Fortress 2, well, it’s not far off. In the same way that the recent Crysis 2 was pretty much Call of Duty with nanosuits, Brink is really just Team Fortress 2 with a much more complex objective system.

Brink sets itself up as a new kind of multiplayer shooter, one where players can do more in any given game than just pile bodies in a few choke points. Through its “objective wheel” interface, players can choose between a few different objectives to focus on that change depending on their class. While the game depends entirely on winning or losing one main objective, taking side missions can help with that objective by opening up new paths, building machine gun nests, or capturing command points to give your team buffs.

The unfortunate reality is that the level design ends up restricting players to a few choke points anyway, and the side missions don’t usually provide an effective alternative that makes the player feel like they’re helping the team more than trying to break the stalemate over the main objective. The vaunted SMART system of movement, which lets you hold down a button to maneuver around the environment almost to the degree you would in an Assassin’s Creed game, is similarly wasted on levels that are mostly flat with a few crates to climb up here and there.

The classes are well-balanced, and since Brink makes your choice of weapons dependent on your character’s body type (heavy, medium, or light), you could well be a chaingun-toting medic or a light and nimble soldier. Though there are a large number of guns that can be greatly customized, they make so little difference that you’ll face roughly the same number of real choices as you would in a Call of Duty game.

Further potential is wasted on the story. Brink gives you quick cutscenes before the matches on the conflict consuming the futuristic city known as the Ark, where one faction is rebelling to escape and the other is fighting to keep law and order. The bits of story manage to cram compelling writing on the issues of this sort of timeless, brother-against-brother warfare, framing the game in a world more interesting than the one you’re actually playing in.

The best that can be said about Brink is that when everything comes together, there’s no doubt that the game feels epic. With everyone working together as different classes across multiple objectives, Brink provides the thrills found in the best team-based games. It was this kind of experience everyone was looking forward to with Brink, and very often it’s there to appreciate.

But when it’s impossible to find and join a smooth game successfully, when the audio drops out randomly during matches, when the maps give you no other option than throw bodies into tight corridors and the game turns into a slideshow with all settings turned down on a capable computer (to say nothing of the alleged console bugs), you’ll at least get a sense of why this game is so polarizing.