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This review is coming a little late because unfortunately we didn't receive this game, but thanks to Nuuvem, we were able to access it and we're finally here. This has been a busy start to the year for the PlayStation 5, with several quality console-exclusive games coming out, such as Granblue Fantasy Relink, Final Fantasy VI Rebirth, Rise of The Ronin and Stellar Blade.

But one accessory that is unique in the realm of consoles is the PlayStation VR2, which, contrary to what people say, receives new games all the time. And one of these is SynapseThis game is available exclusively for Sony's virtual reality goggles, without a PC version.

What's it all about?

Ever since it was announced, the game caught my attention because of its visuals, which are almost black and white, but with color highlights for interactive elements, enemies, etc. As I've already said, we didn't have access to the game at launch, but I've seen a lot of people speak highly of it.

Since then, a month has passed and I've always been curious to find out what it was all about, but I usually don't go too far into the games I'm interested in so as not to miss out on too much of the experience. Well, this habit of mine can sometimes be a double-edged sword, and in the case of Synapse, it was more or less.

When I logged in for the first time, I discovered that the game was actually a rogue-like, which is not a genre I like. But okay, I got the game to analyze, so let's get into this possibly arduous task. I played it once, twice, three times, four times, and one thing remained: the desire to keep playing.

I picked it up to try it out on a Saturday morning, and there was a Chelsea game on, a team I've supported since I was a kid (which has been a pain lately). Surprisingly, the team was beating their opponents, but even that didn't make me want to stop playing.

So that's the first and biggest plus point of the game: its fun. In the game, you have to survive a few "stages", with the aim of finding an agent who had rebelled by completing all the objectives. In each "stage", you have to defeat "x" number of enemies to move on to the next.

Frenzied shooting

To do this, we initially have a pistol, with limited ammunition, and the power of telekinesis. Then you set out to defeat as many enemies as possible to continue the game's story. And the gameplay loop is very interesting and fun.

I feel that many virtual reality games, in search of greater reality and immersion, take away some of the dynamics, especially in shoot-outs. Some games make you reload your weapon step by step, taking your attention away from the action you're immersed in. E Synapse does this in a very simple and effective way, with a single movement, without taking away your immersion.

You can grab some objects from the scenery using telekinesis and use them to attack your enemies. Other objects are explosive and are a great help in defeating them. Some enemies release ammunition when they are defeated, as well as petals, which are used as money during runs.

With this money, you can use some status effects during the run, replenish your ammunition, change your weapon, among many other things. But at first, most of these things aren't available, and that's one of the game's good ideas. Whenever you die, you return to a central area, where there are two trees.

Lots of possibilities in the game

One of the trees contains various challenges to be completed in the stages, such as defeating x enemies with an explosion, passing x stages, among other things. When you complete one of these challenges, as well as unlocking the coveted trophies, you also receive a kind of money, which you can use to access the second tree.

This second tree is a skill tree, and in it we can unlock various things that greatly improve our progress through the stages. We have "paths" related to the character's life, telekinesis, weapons, and each of the "leaves" of the tree that we unlock make a big difference to the gameplay.

In each stage, you face a surprisingly large number of enemies. At first, it seems very challenging, but as time goes by, things go very smoothly. The enemies vary in gameplay, as some attack from far away, others from close up, some have x weapon, while others have y, not to mention the bosses you encounter in the game. Oh, and I couldn't fail to mention that, as you progress through the game, the levels of the enemies increase, making everything very challenging.

Resources

As I said, the game is exclusive to PlayStation VR2, so it takes advantage of some features that are only available on Sony's virtual reality glasses. So, if you're going to play, you can expect to use all the features that the headset makes available to players, but if you don't like them, you can disable them too.

Telekinesis is activated using the L2 trigger, and when you pick up an explosive item, you pick it up by pressing L2 halfway, because when you press it all the way, the item explodes. In case you didn't know, this function is called adaptive triggers, and it debuted this generation with Sony's console.

To choose the items you want to interact with using telekinesis, you just have to look at them, and by detecting the movement of your eyes, the game correctly interprets which item you want to interact with. It's a feature that always impresses me, regardless of the game, but in some it's not always used very well, but that's not the case here.

And all the other features available will also be here, be it the 4K resolution, the vibration of the PSVR2 Sense and the headset itself, the Tempest 3D AudioTech. And of course, being a PlayStation-funded game, in addition to all these features, we also have localization in our local language, which is always welcome.

Is it worth it?

If I could define Synapse In a word, it's fun, as already mentioned. The game simply isn't tiring. Of course, if you play on a shovel, your body gets tired, but in terms of gameplay, it's not. It's another virtual reality game that surprised me positively, offering hours of content at a price that's not as expensive as we're used to.

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