Synced Preview – Adding nanomachines to your looter shooter rotation

thesixthaxis.com:

Given all the cautionary tales that we have in science fiction books, movies and video games, you’d think that we’d stop all research into any kind of technology that could be described as “revolutionary”. As sure as tick follows tock, you just know it’s going to go very bad, very quickly, and that’s exactly what happened when nanite tech went rogue in free-to-play co-op looter shooter Synced.

Years on from the Collapse and nanomachines now roam the land, taking on the form of their creators to create hostile, loosely humanoid Nanos as they do so. There’s peaks and troughs to the Nano’s activity though, with Locus Nanos creating a focal point around a larger, deadlier kind of Nano, surrounding themselves with a Surge of other activity.

You’d probably just want to try and hide away in relative safety, but not the Runners, who venture into the Meridian (the name for the exclusion zone in the Pacific North West and the tech facilities that ended up being the source of this future tech scourge). All this in the name of Nerva, a nanotech energy source that’s pretty vital to mankind’s continued existence.

Thankfully, Runners don’t have to go it alone. Firstly, this is primarily a co-op experience for squads of three – with solo missions and PvP matches also an option – but then there’s Synced’s distinctive hook of being able to turn a Nano back to fight alongside you.

Any of the Prime Nanos that you run into can be turned into a Companion Nano by downing them in battle and then getting right up close to stab them with a hacking tool of some sort. Once they’ve been assimilated, they have a distinctive dual purpose, either living on your arm and augmenting you with a passive ability, or then being summoned into the world to fight