SYREN Reviews

Bought this today 2/22/17 - So based on the early reviews, I was worried about wasting my money. However, I decided to take a leap because they just patched the game this week. So here is my review... Game Settings - I picked ultra graphics (looks amazing if you can run it!) Then I chose the left touchpad locomotion because im sick of teleporting around in other games. This set speed is calibrated just right so i didnt get any motion sickness. Great job there! Tutorial - Very helpful! Got through that in just a couple minutes and everytihng is easy to understand. The only complaint I have was with how the character holds the guns as I have to tilt my wrist forward to aim. A more natural pistol grip angle would be prefered. Level 1 - (No Spoilers Here) Looks amazing, once again remind you that I selected left touchpad locomotion. It works great as you only need to gently touch it (it is sensitive so takes some getting used to) Getting through level 1 takes a bit of problem solving, so dont give up. I would compare this to Alien Isolation style of gameplay. Level 2 - Evasion tactics work. After I died twice and got the crap scared outa me, I had to write a review because this is a high quality VR game. Problems - My game did crash twice after I broke some items with my axe. Other than that, I look forward to playing the rest of it. Enjoy!

Love this game, i just have one major issue with the contols. Holding down the triggers to hold an items, really need to utilize grip buttons The issue with this is you cant aim properly and really have to bend your wrist in a silly position to aim and after a minute you start to loose your grip.

I really wanted to like Syren. This could have been the modern Alien Isolation VR. Its great that the Dev included touch pad locomotion and has included an Ultra graphics setting after feeback from the community. The control system is a mess (using HTC Vive). Gripping and holding with the trigger and pressing the top of the thumb pad just isn't natural. Holding and using a gun in the gun range is like holding a torch in reality and is uncomfortable and immersion breaking. Anything held collides with the scenery although there are some nice touches such as text can be scrolled on monitors or you can hide in the lockers. Graphics even at Ultra settings still look 'smudged' and are no where near the quality of the trailers. The Syren's themsleves are poorly detailed and animated as its like being attacked by a shop dummy. I really really wanted this game to be the 'hide em up' I was craving. Please Devs, make it as good as the trailers and throw in some decent controls.

This game is dead now, but I saw that I had left a positive review and... well, I felt I needed to change it. I was wowed by the detailed and well modelled enviroments and the gameplay which is remenicent of Alien: Isolation which is one of my most favorite survival horror games of all time. However, the game has too many issues to overlook. The first is its length, it is VERY short. It took me only 2 hours to complete the main game, and that was with taking it slow, exploring around ect. I could easily imagine someone speed runnning this in 10 minutes. The second is its AI, it is very basic and rough, which shows and leaves a lot to be desired. Following pre-programmed paths that are easily avoided once figured out. The third is its pacing and mechanics, due to its very short length, this is a given. It literally springs a boss battle on you out of nowhere, which ends as quickly as it begins. Not only that but the first syren you meet, you need to hit it in the face with the hatchet. This is highly unintuative, with many players never figuring out you need to do this, and you never do it again for the whole game. The ending of the main game and the update are poor, either just killing you off in a cutscene or leaving you on an cliffhanger. In both cases, you will be pissed at how unsatisfactory these colnclusions are. The 'update' is a bad joke, and just made us all wander through the same, four small cramped levels again but with guns this time, completely ditching the survival horror (because I know I buy survival horror games for the rambo style action!). What makes this all the more painful is that the concept for this game is original gold dust, the setting is fairly unique (besides bioshock and soma, who else has done underwater facilties well?) and the enemies interesting. I would like to see the devs return to this and make an actual game, but after all this time I seriously doubt they will.

If I could choose 'maybe later' as a recommendation I would. I bought the game but haven't played much of it, because the controls completely ruin it for me, I just can't stand them and it actually turns me off to the whole game. Trigger to pick up an object like a gun, and up on the touchpad to shoot, and when I played the gun was in an incredibly awkward position. Bad: Controls are so bad I can't get over them long enough to play 30 minutes of this game Good: The developers appear to be fixing bugs incredibly fast, these issues will likely not hold them back for long.

Okay so Syren is really a mess of a game. It has some positives, it is a functional VR game and has the odd neat idea. But the execution is awful. In fact, it's a mess of good bits and HORRIBLE DESIGN CHOICES that really just leaves me confused about how it exists. It's weird to see how the same dev team could produce the highs, and the lows at the same time. I'm going to release a series of videos playing through (in short form, hopping from greivance to greivance). The first part is available here which gives some context to the state of the game on release (note: not Early Access, full release!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HvYmDKokWI&feature=youtu.be However, for anyone who is looking for proper criticism right now, here you go: The mermaids are not scary, their AI is bad, the way they interact with you is awful (if you are being chased and they get within a certain range the game freezes you, regardless of whether or not you die, or if they are running into a wall for eternity). I literally fed my face to mermaids a few times because the game had decided they had me, even when they didn't. I had to restart at least once because the mermaid who caught me was led on the ground dead, unable to get me. On top of this, the level design is atrocious. There are a few things you can do to feel like McGuyver but they aren't the simplest answer and most of the time bee-lining through a level is the best thing to do. The game is short, about 2 hours maybe? It will vary wildly depending on how much luck you have with bugs and how much credit you give the AI (read: don't, figure it out and the game will become boring and trivial), and doing things the way the developers wanted you to. On a re-run yes it could be beaten in maybe 30-40 minutes but you'd still need a pinch of luck. All in all this is a horrible game. It's overpriced. It has some redeeming qualities and I'd forgive it if it came out a year ago and cost half as much. That would have been a positive experience. Instead it was only enjoyable to uncover the bullshit design choices and laziness and talk about it for entertainment purposes. I don't know if they just got lazy part way in or what, but I don't see how they could in good conscience call this game done and ask as much £££ as they have for the privilege of playing their buggy, unpolished game.

I am really disappointed to say I cannot recommend this game. Everything about it looked great in the videos! Graphics looked good, environment was underwater which reminded me of Bioshock, it looked like a horror game which I love. So everything looked like it was good to go so what happened? Well first thing is the graphics. While the graphics itself is not the deal breaker, on the highest graphic settings everything was just a blur making it hard to read text and, overall, the blur just made it difficult to feel immersed. Graphics aside there is a fair amount of bugs. From things glitching, being able to see through certain textures and walls, locomotion controls not working like it should, and some others. For the price I was expecting something polished and so far that wasn't what I was getting. So what was the final deal breaker for me, and keep in mind it might just be that I'm an idiot, but I could not figure out what to friggin do. The tutorial gave you a rundown of the controls, but nothing on how to encounter enemies, weapons, what you're objective is, etc. *Possible Spoilers Ahead* So I'm in the first area you start in, alarms are going off, "Evacuate", so "okay let's get the hell out of here". Open a door, put out a fire, end up in a hallway. One end is blocked, no way to get through, the other end has a door I can open, "okay lets open the door". Open the door, mermaid is standing right there, freaks me out, kills me. Start all over thinking maybe I run away from it and try to hide and eventually sneak by? Lets try it. Open the door, there's the mermaid, but it turns out the game prevents you from running away and I die. Okay, so I find something that kinda looks like a weapon thinking maybe I can kill it, I open the door, mermaid kills me again, doesn't work. So I walk around in circles trying to find SOMETHING to help me out and after awhile I find a locked axe. PERFECT! If I find the code I can kill the mermaid with this axe. Find the code, grab the axe, go to the door, open annnnnddd mermaid kills me again... axe did nothing. F*CK!! So what the hell is this axe for?! So I spend another 5 minutes walking around the small area trying to axe things and nothing works. At this point I'm almost 30 minutes in and I'm done. I spent $20 on this game I had high hopes for and I'm not having the slighest bit of fun, and it was so disappointing. So here's the tl;dr: The game is not finished. Graphics need improvement. Bugs need to be fixed. And most importantly I need some kind of idea as to what in the hell I am suppose to do. I can appreciate not holding the players hand, but sometimes there's comes a point where pointing me in the right direction can go a long way.

EDIT: The Dev has seemed to make the graphics at least bearable but still not perfect, the anti aliasing is still dreadful. The game mechanics are a complete joke, there is none. It's complete trial and error to get through a room, no skill or quick thinking involved. The animations are hilariously bad and makes you lose all sense of immersion. The game mechanics need serious work before I would recommend this.

**Updated review as of 25/02/2017 (I've left my original reviews below so you can see how well this has evolved in just a week or so worth of updates. EVERY issue i personally raised with the Dev at the bottom of this review has been fixed) - Pretty much every issue with the game from launch has now been resolved. The buttons are consistently in the lift between levels - the locomotion system works great, the new grabbing system with the grip buttons to snap objects to your hands works fantastically (though maybe needs a little tightening up to succesfully throw items any distance), the snap turn buttons can now be disabled entirely so you can very accurately move and use the roomscale. Honestly I hope everyone gets a chance to re-review the game either from now or after further bugfix updates (the sound still needs work - enemy footsteps can sound like theyre next to you when they are actually in a different room down a long corridor away) - but compared to some of the hobbled-together tripe i've seen released over the last year for the Vive, this is a genuinely terrifying, beatufully graphiced, and now well-controlled first person survival horror title and it needs FAR more praise than i've seen on the steam reviews here. I still hold my breath when a Syren walks by and I still put up my hands and squeal when they nomm on my face! If you're expecting the AAA level of polish of Alien Isolation then sure you might be disappointed still, but that doesnt stop this being a killer title as far as the Vives current releases go.** **Update as of 17/02/2017 - the graphics issue has been resolved - no more smudge on the lens - can really appreciate the finer details in the environment now. Huge improvement good work Dev!** Hohoho! Ok my opinion switched fast on this one :D Initial reaction was disappointment - as others have said on max graphics settings the games really blurry - classic UE4 issue that i've seen in a few other titles. Manually supersampling will help but obvs if your graphics card is going to struggle with it like mine (980TI) then you just have to make do. But the graphics are actually supersharp for the most part - its just not evident until you get your face right up next to an item. Bizarre but hopefully fixable in an update patch. Controls are really a mess at the moment with too many controls on the thumpads. I found it a lot more playable in teleport movement than in Locomotion movement as it meant i didnt need to worry about trying to use a fire extinguisher in my left hand on the same button as would walk me forward ^_^ Again - update patch required. DESPITE ALL THE ABOVE - this game got me good :D The first "level" (handful of rooms and corridors) took a lot of getting used to due to scripted events requiring specific actions/movements. Also the bug when an enemy scuttles into a vent is hilarious due to her going over the top of the vent and vanishing - Slightly killing the atmosphere :) But as soon as you get to the next level/area (only takes a couple of minutes once you've retried it a few times) you realise theres a lot more mechanics to play around with and the game opens up more. Playing Hide & Seek with creepy chick and using items to distract her was actually the most intensely scared i've been since Alien Isolation! My only advice to fellow purchasers at this point is push on through the first area and see what the game is ACTUALLY like before hastily negatively reviewing it. I haven't got much further into it but what i've seen so far really gave me goosebumps ^^ **Notes below are for the Developer - please fix the graphics blur and controls! Make the trigger button Shoot or Activate the held item. Use the grip button on the side of the controller to pick up items - and make it just a one push to lock the item to your hand and push again to drop the item - nobody likes to hold a button constantly on a required item. You only need to use One of the Top Menu buttons to pick up distant items - the other Menu button could be used to pause the game and bring up ingame options such as graphics settings...and a quit button for if i'm cr*pping my pants :P If Teleport movement has been selected - use the entire thumpad on the controller as a teleport button. Dont put other controls on the thumpad, keep it simple. Especially with the Vive I dont imagine many people will require the left/right buttons to snap the screen left/right - the majority of users will just turn in the physical room. By all means have the option to enable the snap screen movement for less abled gamers - but allow us to disable it in the options.

Man I really wanted to like this game. I really wanted to recommend it to my friends, let people try it out, but I just cant. Im not going to write a book here, but Ill say a few things briefly. The graphics everyone are complaining about? Meh. They arent terrible. Thats the least of the games problems tbh. The problem lies in a few things, one of which is pretty much a core mechanic and will probably never be fixed. The AI is basically scripted and cheats. So if you are expecting an Alien Isolation experience, this isnt it. The AI will always be in the same place, every time, take the same path, and its basically up to you to figure out the "Trick" to get past it on that particular area or stage. This pretty much killed it for me. The second biggest problem is the controls on the HTC Vive. They are just awful. Im not talking about locamotion, Im talking how the game has you interact with things is just illogical give the controls you are using. Trigger to grab things? UP on the Touchpad to shoot? What? Did no one with a Vive playtest this and tell the Devs how awful that is? FInally, the game is short. Like an hour-ish. And given it has very little replay value, its just not worth $20 for that length. I didnt beat it personally because I couldnt stand the awful glitchy AI and bad controls, but there are plenty of youtube videos that will show you the game length.