Frozen Synapse

Frozen Synapse is a turn based strategy where you set instructions for each of your soldiers to execute in the next 5 seconds. Each player takes their turn at the same time, and the results are then showed in real time.

You usually command 3 or 4 soldiers. The available soldier types are machine gunner, shotgun, sniper, grenadier and rocket unit.

The maps are a combination of rooms and open spaces. Sometimes the walls will be mid-height, representing windows that you can shoot through. There are some objects scattered around that you can hide behind.

The graphics and colours are very simple. The environment is different shades of blue, and the team's soldiers are simple colours. It's green vs red, with yellow being your allies.

The main instructions are setting numerous waypoints and specify the direction to aim. Your soldiers will engage when enemies enter your range of sight and dependent on the range of their gun. Engaging may not be beneficial because you may know you will lose the gunfight or be taken out by another enemy. You can instruct your soldier to ignore specific enemies, or to not engage at all – maybe you just want to run into cover. You can add delays to your instructions to make your soldier wait at a way-point, and can duck to completely hide behind cover.

When you are ducking behind cover, you do not fire. If you want to fire,you need to stand which puts you at a disadvantage because your time to fire will have increased. If you duck whilst out of cover, then you are actually no harder to hit, and have no additional aim bonus either. Therefore, ducking is just for hiding.

When you are specifying your instructions, you can click the enemies and set instructions for them. This allows you to click the Play button to simulate what would happen. Then you can readjust your instructions and calculate the most advantageous plan.

If you move whilst aiming, you walk slower. Choosing to "Cancel Aim" before moving makes you move at full speed, but you will be slower to engage which makes you more likely to lose a gunfight.

There's apparently no random elements to the gunfights, it is determined by the gun's firing rate, if you are currently aiming, if you are standing and if you or the opponent are behind cover. In general you need to stand still, look in the correct direction, be standing and preferably behind cover.

Full walls obscures lines of sight but provides no defence. So if you hug the wall and turn the corner, you can be shot just as easy as if you were out in the open. It doesn't matter if a soldier enters line of sight centrally, or to the far edges of their vision. Soldiers can turn and shoot just as quick as aiming forward. This can result in some really stupid looking gun-fights, and some scenarios just seem impossible to deal with.

If a soldier is in a building with one entry point and facing that entry point, there is no way you can defeat him. Hugging the corner and making sure he is in the centre of your soldiers vision, whilst you are in his periphery - is irrelevant. He is just gonna turn and shoot you. You are moving and he isn't; so he has the advantage. There is no option of shooting without aiming/shoot whilst moving.

I often felt you could only gain an advantage by flanking but that means you need to ensure you are outnumbering an opponent. Losing a soldier is a massive disadvantage, and I often wondered what the point in moving is. So like in the previous example, if a soldier is standing still inside a room, you can't just peek around the corner and fire he will just shoot you dead. If you are lucky there may be a half-height wall that makes up the room where you can gain the advantage of cover. Many rooms may just have 1 entrance, or by the time you make it around to the second entrance, the soldier has either moved, or another soldier has attacked you.

The campaign has different scenarios so sometimes it is about defeating all enemies, others are escort missions, and others require you to defend an area. Although the general idea is set, the map is random, so retrying the same scenario gives you a different map. This means that the difficulty keeps changing as sometimes you are in favourable or unfavourable conditions.

Originally, I did play a few Campaign missions and got stuck. I played some one-off skirmish matches and a few online matches. I then put the game down and decided I'd return one day. Years went by, and I play through the Campaign again; this time getting a bit further, but quickly got frustrated once more. The fluctuating difficulty due to the random maps was frustrating, as well as how disadvantaged you are when outnumbered.

I really liked the style of the game, and really wanted to like it; but I just found this frustrating.