Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today (Hands-On) (PC) Preview

Dead Synchronicity is a very beautiful looking title, exuding a minimalist art style that paints its characters as fully realised, though missing many of the frills that come with jaw lines and realistic hair. This is hardly a bad thing. It gives the game a very unique and profoundly absent feel. It's hard to feel any attachment to the people or the place that surrounds Michael as he ventures into this horrifying wasteland of human depravity.

The best apocalypses persevere not because the zombies chase down people, eating through them. Nor is it the idea that demons will ravage and tear humans apart, along with their loved ones. It's the idea that humans are, by and large, more evil than their creativity can ever show in film and books. To this effect, Dead Synchronicity paints a world that is littered with the worst dredges of human kind. It is sublimely well told, and a most interesting tale to boot, although navigating it makes it seem better fit for another medium, not video games.

Dialogue trees frequently litter the story, though they don't appear to lead anywhere. Instead, the game expects every piece of the narrative to be explored. This ensures a feeling of full exploration, but not one the player can claim as their own. It doesn't offer anything unique about the exploration that would lead to "Did you watch that one part?" types of conversation. If the goal is to allow each player a new and distinct experience, this goal is soulfully missed.

Even when the dialogue is kept to a steady flow of maybe an option or two, it runs the gambit from tepidly boring to dreadfully overacted. The audio quality would lead one to believe that it had been recorded on a smartphone in a bedroom. One character, Rose, defies this by being both intriguing and perplexing, but other than her, very few characters stand out as anything other than over dramatic and a hyperbole of what the vision for them had been.

Gameplay-wise, it is what it is. It follows the kind of pick-up-and-use mentality on items point-and-clicks have used for years. Innovation shouldn't always be a goal, and if being actively searched for, this falls short of presenting the player with a new experience. This game is clearly about the story, and the gameplay is just a vessel to deliver to that.

Puzzles tend to lead more to the obtuse, though moments of elation can arrive as a difficult puzzle is finally cracked. The feeling of overcoming a puzzle can also provide a well-earned "Gah!" as the answer was just too obscure to enjoy. This, as has become the basic flow with Dead Synchronicity, is an example of doing it right, or doing it wrong. There isn't much medium in the game, and it makes exploring the well-designed story very cumbersome.