Refined tactics, neat presentation and a cheap price. Dust off your thinking caps.
This game did seem to get some pretty decent reviews upon release and I can totally understand why. I can equally understand why it was slightly less well received by the player base. It's a punishing game with a lot of variables and tactical factors to take in to consideration, with many new players likely requiring a sizable chunk of time to tackle the steep learning curve. There is however a very intuitive feature that both alleviates some of the games difficulty and adds a neat touch to the overall gameplay experience which comes in the form of a preview of your planned tactics so as to get a general idea of the results of your actions and clean up any slight mistakes in your actions or maneuvers. There is a catch to this mind you, being that you can only see the playing out of the exact orders you planned your units to carry out with the enemy static in the positions there were in at the previous turn, meaning that the actual result of your actions when you commit to plan may vary somewhat considerably.
The bulk of the gameplay boils down to organizing units in a relatively small environment using clever timing, intuition to guess your enemies next move and cramming as much strategic ideas into five seconds that will play out when you have confirmed your turn. The list of units you will encounter for use is as follows: a machine gunner, shotgun unit, sniper, grenadier and rocket unit. Each of these provides the kind of tactical consideration you would expect and they are more than enough to make the gameplay complex and interesting when combined with a number of other variables such as stance, different cover heights and the five second turn limit. This gameplay is spread out over a couple of single player game modes in the form of skirmish; a game mode that generates random scenarios for you to indulge in a quick tactics fix and a campaign mode which provides an ever increasingly difficult set of 55 levels for you to flex your strategic mind muscles within these levels you will eventually use 5 different units each with different weaponry.
The multiplayer is particularly rewarding as the tension can reach ludicrous heights against an equally skilled opponent. That said, the matchmaking isn't sophisticated enough for you to avoid some of the real life military tacticians who appear to play this in their spare time (an important consideration since most of the current player base has had two years of frost between their neurons).
Not forgetting the subject of presentation, the game isn't going to (and didn't) win any awards for its graphical prowess, but it is aesthetically pleasing with very simple, clean and stylish, VR-esque vibe to it and is complemented by a great electronica soundtrack that really adds to the atmosphere. The rest of the sound is serviceable and there are no real complaints minus the lack of any voice acting in the cut scenes. Story wise there isn't much to speak of. You come for the tactics, the gameplay and the challenge on this one.
On a whole Frozen Synapse provides some great brain flexing strategic fun, a somewhat unique presentation style and some tense multiplayer tactics to boot. I recommend Frozen Synapse to anyone who likes to think before they shoot.