Welcome to a new weekly series. My New Year’s Resolution stint was pretty exhausting so instead of sitting down and splurging 1-2,000 weekly words on games that may or may not deserve them I am going to try and challenge myself by limiting my F.A.P. (Feelings About Playing) to around 2-300 words an article.
This week: Inversion.
It is unfortunate that Inversion exists in a world where people stopped caring about cover shooters. It ticks all the right boxes and even features a few things that elevate it beyond middle of the road. It may even be a little pretty in places, even if it is just generic man-fighters killing locust-lookalikes.
It is also a shame as moment-to-moment it’s really fun. The twist on the Gears play is that you can raise and lower gravity and this lends itself to some very dynamic battles that see you hurling cars and debris at enemies while splattering others against walls in ways that remind me of two other telekinetic delights, Psi-Ops and Second Sight.
There are some delightful zero gravity moments too in which the protagonist – generic genericman – floats through space and makes heads explode.
I feel like I am treading on some thin hyperbolic ice by saying that there are even a few moments of genius within the final set pieces which require ingenuity on the player’s part and good use of all of the tricks at your disposal, the environment included.
The story even takes a fairly decent twist with the endeavours of all involved proving to be ultimately futile and everyone ending up dead in the gutter.
My feelings about Inversion are that it is kind of worth playing when it hits the mid-price range… which it inevitably already has.
Comments
16 responses to “Mid-week F.A.P: Inversion”
It really does look very nice in places. The skyboxes look really rather delightful.
Does it have co-op?
Yup. Interested? I found a copy for 5 quid.
Paging 2004! We want your psychic powers.
That was a good year for Psychic Powers wasn't it?
I remember arguing with you about Psi-Ops versus Second Sight. I look back now and realise that the reason I liked Psi-Ops was because it was more gamey.
That's probably fair. I never actually played Psi-Ops and only played Second Sight years later, but Second Sight was pretty caught up in its narrative and a good chunk of the game was spent mucking about with guns rather than powers to boot.
Yeah, but it is a little like arguing over apples and oranges really. Also I should really take out 'other' from the line 'two other telekinetic' as I am not really sure Inversion qualifies as having telekinetic powers.
So Inversion falls into the "secondhand telekinetic shooter" genre?
I would say that it sits at the top of that genre too. Almost.
Probably a better definition would be 'secondhand, unloved, gravity powered shooter'
Psi-Ops was great fun with its cool powers, daft airport novel plot and comic book villains. Damn shame there was no sequel.
Second Sight was more sombre, but I generally liked that one, too. Although I still think it really shot itself in the foot in the story department by utterly negating its dramatic highpoint.
Psi-Ops was pretty awesome. The story was ridiculous but I was really fond of the interplay between the main character and the telekinetic guy who threw trains at him.
The guys behind Psi-Ops also made Stranglehold and in the unlockables for Stranglehold there is an early demo that has Nick Scryer (or whatever his name was) doing all of the Chow Yun Fat stunts. It warmed my heart.
On top of that if you enjoyed Psi Ops you may get a fair bit of fun out of Inversion.
I think I agree with you about Second Sight but I have forgotten almost everything about the game.
Now I mostly remember this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYPtbVpDxYY
That link then suggested this as well, I have nightmares about this section:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GAIRrx46gQ
Ahahahaha
Resident Evil, you fucking idiot.
(Alternative response: Asura's Wrath let itself go eh)
Asura's Wrath and its DLC is on sale right now and I almost bought it so I could replay its stupidity.
I don't know why but it is so therapeutic
Deep down you love cutscenes.