FAINT ECHO

SYNDUALITY ECHO OF ADA aims to be many games all at once

- Dominic Tarason

Synduality Echo of Ada at first looked custom-made for me. A third-person mech action game that takes the extraction shooter formula and twists it into something more social and accessible, with an unusual structure hiding a wealth of optional story tied into a recent anime series. It aims high, but an interesting concept can only take you so far, and the result feels like three half-finished games stapled together. I thought it was all building to something.

Synduality is (at least initially) an extraction shooter, inspired by the likes of Escape From Tarkov, but in lightweight mechs that remind me a bit of Hawken's twitchy yet streamlined rumbling robots. You explore a hostile wasteland full of monsters and NPC bandits, collect loot, then try to bring it home to sell or craft into useful upgrades for your base. Normally it's a cutthroat genre that players treat as a high-stakes deathmatch where everyone's risking their best gear for a slight advantage over the competition. But Synduality aims to ease newcomers into the action by making co-op the default way to play.