This is the flashy, digital age, so let’s follow that immediacy and get to the point of Desync’s core in a, over-simplified, one-liner: Desync is the better parts of Bulletstorm, mixed with the usual awfulness of Dark Souls.

Now, let’s elaborate on that, end line.

A first-person camera shoots incoming bodies that bee-line to the screen, much like the Serious Sam series. There are rewards for disposing of fodder in creative ways. Dodge, shoot, explode, impale; the more elaborate the combination, the better. That’s Bulletstorm.

Threats are numerous and escape routes are limited, often rigged with traps, leaving the space between enemies and player to be small, heightening adrenaline through claustrophobic means. This design requires dexterous movement and precise attacks at all times, or else. That’s Dark Souls.

Desync,Review

Now, let’s extract:

Desync uses a heavily grid-based neon color look, equally heavy on scan lines and screen distortion; nice in aesthetic, less handy in execution. A “synth” look, as is popularly used. Movement glides swiftly, favoring brisk, aggressive action and that for both player and enemy. Stages are comprised of secluded kill rooms that need to be cleared before advancing. So, the game takes “retro” inspiration not only from its looks, but also from the classics in its shooter genre, such as Serious Sam, Painkiller, Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament and so on. It’s a real nostalgia trap out here.

So, how does Desync operate?

In basic format, the game plays in straightforward fashion. Shoot, switch weapons, use alternate fire; the building blocks that are present allow for fun, creative solutions. In a classic case of keep-away, a lot of backpedaling is required while handling enemies, stunning some in place and keeping situational awareness on others. It’s a fast and furious world, as accelerated as its digital hooks. Ammo and health, however, are extremely limited, so those few shots matter. In fact, precision is mandatory.

And this is where we veer from the joyous pleasure of impaling mobs to frantic management skills. Error.

With fewer resources, Desync becomes increasingly more difficult. Larger enemies shrug off weaker weapons, requiring even more escaping and so the ball rolls on. That, in itself, is fine or at least doable. Getting out of a tight situation with a well-timed headshot is exactly that fine line the shooter wants to propel itself on.

Desync,Review

The problem lies within the game’s high standards of precision, so much so that above 70% accuracy is considered fairly poor, meaning every shot must be dead-on or else the punishment is a huge hit on health. Two or three strikes and it’s game over, because that’s the elevated bar the game sets, so the stakes keep getting higher, while the technical design struggles to keep up.

Supplementary items that can boost stats fall flat, since regenerating health is the only reliable solution. Making matters truly desperate, parsing any information at all with the game’s distorted look is an uphill battle. If anything, lacking info is Desync’s biggest issue. Trying to fight its unfair fight wouldn’t sting as much if the game at least had the decency of laying out its tools properly.

Menus are barely coherent, leaving already mostly unexplained systems to be confusing or not used at all. Enemies, and this is really the worst immediate effect, offer almost no feedback. Mob attacks blend in their neon wireframe appearance and make virtually no sound, until it’s already too late, making backpedaling almost impossible. In a game that requires constant motion, not being able to rely on full freedom is an absolute death knell. There’s no indication enemies spawned in invisible places, so a lot of deaths come at the hand of cheap sucker punches.

Worse than that, however, which is where the trapping of any Dark Souls-inspired “so hard it hurts” ideology appear, is the game’s tendency to not respect the same strict rules it demands from its audience. The distorted, first-person view skews the narrow space that can be navigated between attacks, making bosses with huge ranges especially troublesome. A sword could be two dashes out of range or five; there’s no real way of telling, until it’s too late. Is there a glitch in the system? Then the player picks up the tab. Restart.

Retrying a session, after it arbitrarily breaks down and throws up another “reconnect” screen, gets less enticing each try and those attempts can come quick. The combination kill synergy that throws down ammo and health, finding side arms or doing the ridiculous, harder challenges that require an extra set of hands all fall short at the game’s fixation on rigidity above all. And that’s without the pointless trial and error problems that bounce off things like rooms that would never be revisited.

Desync could’ve been the best shooter since Bulletstorm, especially since that road hasn’t been trotted to death, but it simply doesn’t get past its own vain design issues. Both grating in looks and execution, trying to dig deeper into its interesting mixture of quick and ingenious kills is barely worth the hassle. Whatever satisfaction one part of the game may offer is fully snuffed out elsewhere.

End program.

Daav Valentaten, NoobFeed (@Daavpuke)

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