Flow Fire Games‘ SYNTHETIK: Legion Rising offers bombastic top-down sci-fi shooting action together with rogue-lite elements and lots of customization options.
It’s time again for the machines to take over Terminator-style, which means that humanity hasn’t much of a chance of survival if it weren’t for a human consciousness set in an android prototype that can make use of enough firepower to take up the fight. Going up against a relentless army of smaller and bigger threats of steel, the player has to shoot his way through each floor of a citadel in order to save humanity. As one can guess from this plot, it serves more as an excuse for blowing stuff up, and judging by the big explosions making the screen tremble, there isn’t a minute when one isn’t on one’s toes, especially since permadeath can mean doing it all over again.
Thankfully, there are 60 weapons that can be upgraded in various ways, 100 items that can help along the way with their offensive and defensive attributes, while choosing between the 4 classes Guardian, Rogue, Commando, or Specialist, adds to even more customized play. If it would all just be blasting away with bigger and better weapons, then it wouldn’t make the game much different from other titles, but taking head shots into account or how weapons can suddenly jam or overheat if one isn’t careful enough, makes for more strategic play than simply mowing down the opposition. If the action is too much for one player, there’s also a 2-player co-op mode, although this is only available online. This is too bad, because this is certainly a title that would be great fun as a couch co-op game, too. But who knows, as the game seems to be constantly updated, there might be a chance to see it someday. As it is, the title looks like frenetic arcade action fun with some colorful graphics and smooth animations and is a good alternative to all the recently released turn-based sci-fi strategy indie games.
SYNTHETIK was already released on PC in March 2018, but as it wasn’t available on GOG at that time, there’s a 10% launch discount for it, including Legion Rising that has recently been released as a free update for owners of the base game. The offer will last until October 10th, 4PM UTC.
Buy the game for PC on
GOG
Steam
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