There's a story in here - of machines that want to wipe out humanity, so you invade their headquarters to put an end to this action. But the only important thing is that Synthetik is a roguelike. That is, you fight in procedurally created levels, to eventually die and start all over again. In the course of a run, you'll find additional weapons, improve your abilities and get modules with which you can actively or passively cause additional damage or protect yourself from it. In this way, you not only survive against the increasingly stronger foot soldiers but also defeat bosses as well as particularly hairy situations.
And the core of this two-stick shooter is simply fabulous! After all, as ordinary, as Synthetik may seem at first glance, it differs greatly when you take a closer look. After all, here you don't just fill your weapons with new ammunition now and then but should press the reload button a second time at the right moment, similar to Gears of War, to speed up the process. If you catch the perfect timing, you even get additional bonuses. You also have to manually pull the magazine out of the gun and lose all the ammo still in it. So it's not just about firing and hiding quickly; movements and weapon handling have to be coordinated in the sense of a tactical shooter.
This is all the more true because you also have to aim for the head, which is rarely possible when shooting from the hip. Therefore, you often position yourself in front of the enemies and only pull the trigger after a short delay, so that the potential dispersion is as low as possible. Of course, it's a pity if the weapon suddenly suffers from jamming or if you shoot so wildly that it overheats and you lose health. On the other hand, with certain settings, you can only inflict a lot of damage above a certain temperature.
Fortunately, many of these aspects and their consequences can be freely selected or deselected, and thus the difficulty level can be regulated.
Conclusion
The always uniform level design is not exactly praiseworthy and small bugs occasionally disturb the picture - apart from that, however, Synthetik is an excellent shooter, which above all gives me the feeling of handling powerful weapons instead of just playing another "hold X to shoot". You can deselect various mechanics for a relaxed introduction, but the shooter comes into its own with all the subtleties of active reloading, overheating, and possible jamming. Then you don't just blast away the central processor of aggressive tin comrades with rich headshots, but also place turrets to flank the enemies afterward and create cool equipment sets with strong active and passive abilities with every run. You'll learn very different play styles thanks to eight character classes and independently optimize the fighters in many ways. It's on par with the best roguelikes!
