Synapse review: monochrome-ish and Inception-like

Want a simple way to increase the impact of colour? Make it scarce. Environments in the surreal first-person shooter Synapse are presented in monochrome, with flashes of colour giving particular objects and actions some aesthetic pop. Fire your gun and it’ll flash red as the bullets discharge. Select a box or barrel to telekinetically pick up (which you do with your left hand—making you feel like a badass Jedi) and they turn pinkish-yellow. 

This technique of injecting colour at opportune moments makes the game broadly comparable to films that create visual oomph by dramatically contrasting black and white with colour—such as Sin City, Rumble Fish, Pleasantville and (in one famous scene) Schindler’s List. In these productions the gimmick remains high impact whenever it’s used. The curious thing about Synapse’s aesthetic is that the novelty loses much of its spark early on, soon feeling totally normal and germane to this universe.

This is because, in VR, we accept the nature of the reality we’re given, quickly acclimatizing to the patterns and principles of the elements around us. The first time I thought about this was while playing Wilson’s Heart, a 2017 horror game set in an old creaky hospital. It’s entirely in monochrome, homaging the style of a James Whale or William Castle film. As I wrote in my review: “I thought entirely black and white visuals might take some getting used to, but it didn’t.” In fact they felt entirely normal and stylistically befitting: a synergistic way of combining aesthetics and narrative, form and content. Soon, like in Synapse, I didn’t pay it any mind.

Any review of Synapse that draws comparisons to the cinema needs to also cite Christopher Nolan’s dreamy blockbuster Inception, given the game’s (rather thin) heist narrative is clearly cribbed from it. We play an operative entering the mind of a rogue Colonel who’s planted a bomb somewhere; our job is to infiltrate his subconsciousness and pinpoint its location. During a preliminary sequence, presented in full colour, we enter a modern abode where we’re uploaded into Conrad’s psyche. 

Inside the game proper, the objective is dead simple: get rid of all the guards, who run around shooting at you, defending the Colonel’s consciousness. Once you annihilate a certain number of them you advance to the next stage. They blurt out lines that make it clear we’re not welcome, like “anomaly detected!” and “destroy the non-believer!”. We hear these lines a zillion times and boy oh boy, they get repetitive. But I understand the developers’ logic; having these nitwits running around silently would’ve been worse. It’s a shame their dialogue isn’t more varied. 

I like the way you transition between stages—by walking through tall rectangular portals that look like mirrors. Except they’re not reflecting anything: they’re showing us the next environment. It’s a shame we can’t step through these portals in one fluid motion; instead the game pauses to load the new setting. Like any form of art, creating VR productions entrails all sorts of limitations and compromises, this clearly being one of them. At least Synapse didn’t compromise on its monochrome aesthetic, which imbues a decent, thoroughly enjoyable experience with visual oomph.