So Saber Interactive made a physics engine and really wanted to show it off. Problem is that the physics engine they made wasn't very good and the game they tried to sell it as is an absolute mess. Not only does Inversion take on the far too overused super grey third person cover shooter and somehow ruin a formula that every developer and his pet parakeet has gotten right but it also somehow manages to screw up the most basic of gimmicks it has.
The game's plot revolves around two idiotic police officers whose names do not matter. While out enforcing the law in an oddly idyllic city ( That I don't believe is ever named ) , these two meatheads , who I will henceforth be calling A and B for convenience and because their characters are literally interchangeable , have their city torn apart by a remarkably quick earthquake and subsequent alien invasion.
What follows is a drawn out trek through samey locations to track down and rescue A's missing daughter who *SPOILER FOR A GAME YOU WILL PROBABLY AND HOPEFULLY NEVER PLAY!* has actually been dead the whole time! In fact she wasn't just dead but in the very next room to where A was sitting grieving. If he'd searched a bit more thoroughly rather than spending his time stroking a photo and staring into the middle distance he might have worked that out a bit earlier. This revelation also raises the question of why B tags along for the ride at all , other than the forced co-op mechanic I didn't try because honestly , you aren't going to convince anybody to buy this too. Really though ,why does B insist on tagging along? He adds nothing to the story and serves only to either state the obvious ,such as 'That's a big ship!' , or to get in your way while you fight through endless hordes of the same enemies copy pasted endlessly in a relentless succession of corridors.
Speaking of copy pasting it seem that Inversion has a penchant for repetition. You will fight the same bosses at least 3 times each and environments are reused constantly. Similarly the gameplay , already made trite by a market saturation of cover shooters at this point , becomes boring very quickly. Floating an enemy about with low gravity or pinning them to the ground with high gravity may be amusing the first few times but it becomes routine extremely fast and the lack of variety in enemy types ( 5 if you don't count bosses ) never makes for a good experience.
Weapons too are low on originality , there's your standard assault rifles and snipers but unlike other such games there is nothing to set it apart from the crowd. No pancake batter launchers or vinyl record gun to differentiate it from the slew of cover shooters we see all the time. In fact the game mechanics aren't just overused , at times they're downright broken.
Clearly the game was not particularly well though through. The gravity changing mechanic relies on firing the fields as projectiles which would normally be a perfectly serviceable way of delivering floaty justice but here the collision detection is so bad that you will almost always hit the cover in front of you and that's not a good thing when you've just unintentionally floated an explosive barrel into your line of fire. Its also an issue when another feature of the gravity changer is the ability to turn your surrounding into projectiles and these projectiles launch straight into your face since apparently your cover stretches infinitely upwards and is made of rubber. Expect to have your face liquefied by floating debris a few times before the game is over.
It's certainly not over quickly either. The game drags on for a 12 chapter slog that loses all steam after about chapter 4. Prepare to spend those 12 chapters wanting to claw your eyes out too because the graphics are also an eyesore. Grey and brown enemies on grey and brown backgrounds with textures that take an age to load and are bland when they do. Particle effects cause an onscreen scuffle for attention which totally masks what's going on and enemies and environments merge all the time as glitches present a union stronger than any superglue could provide.
In the end there are factors to be found in Inversion. The worst parts of the genre it tries to nestle itself into all make themselves obvious and clash violently , ruining what could have otherwise been a perfectly serviceable , if bland , experience. Instead what is left is an amalgamation of all that is wrong with modern cover shooters mashed up into one boring , uninteresting and broken ball. Unless , like me , you have a sense of morbid curiosity with these things then I cant suggest picking it up unless it somehow finds a way to drop its price to the point where you're being paid to play it.
3/10
Read more of my reviews and other gaming related writings at http://max543.blogspot.co.uk/
The game's plot revolves around two idiotic police officers whose names do not matter. While out enforcing the law in an oddly idyllic city ( That I don't believe is ever named ) , these two meatheads , who I will henceforth be calling A and B for convenience and because their characters are literally interchangeable , have their city torn apart by a remarkably quick earthquake and subsequent alien invasion.
What follows is a drawn out trek through samey locations to track down and rescue A's missing daughter who *SPOILER FOR A GAME YOU WILL PROBABLY AND HOPEFULLY NEVER PLAY!* has actually been dead the whole time! In fact she wasn't just dead but in the very next room to where A was sitting grieving. If he'd searched a bit more thoroughly rather than spending his time stroking a photo and staring into the middle distance he might have worked that out a bit earlier. This revelation also raises the question of why B tags along for the ride at all , other than the forced co-op mechanic I didn't try because honestly , you aren't going to convince anybody to buy this too. Really though ,why does B insist on tagging along? He adds nothing to the story and serves only to either state the obvious ,such as 'That's a big ship!' , or to get in your way while you fight through endless hordes of the same enemies copy pasted endlessly in a relentless succession of corridors.
Speaking of copy pasting it seem that Inversion has a penchant for repetition. You will fight the same bosses at least 3 times each and environments are reused constantly. Similarly the gameplay , already made trite by a market saturation of cover shooters at this point , becomes boring very quickly. Floating an enemy about with low gravity or pinning them to the ground with high gravity may be amusing the first few times but it becomes routine extremely fast and the lack of variety in enemy types ( 5 if you don't count bosses ) never makes for a good experience.
Weapons too are low on originality , there's your standard assault rifles and snipers but unlike other such games there is nothing to set it apart from the crowd. No pancake batter launchers or vinyl record gun to differentiate it from the slew of cover shooters we see all the time. In fact the game mechanics aren't just overused , at times they're downright broken.
Clearly the game was not particularly well though through. The gravity changing mechanic relies on firing the fields as projectiles which would normally be a perfectly serviceable way of delivering floaty justice but here the collision detection is so bad that you will almost always hit the cover in front of you and that's not a good thing when you've just unintentionally floated an explosive barrel into your line of fire. Its also an issue when another feature of the gravity changer is the ability to turn your surrounding into projectiles and these projectiles launch straight into your face since apparently your cover stretches infinitely upwards and is made of rubber. Expect to have your face liquefied by floating debris a few times before the game is over.
It's certainly not over quickly either. The game drags on for a 12 chapter slog that loses all steam after about chapter 4. Prepare to spend those 12 chapters wanting to claw your eyes out too because the graphics are also an eyesore. Grey and brown enemies on grey and brown backgrounds with textures that take an age to load and are bland when they do. Particle effects cause an onscreen scuffle for attention which totally masks what's going on and enemies and environments merge all the time as glitches present a union stronger than any superglue could provide.
In the end there are factors to be found in Inversion. The worst parts of the genre it tries to nestle itself into all make themselves obvious and clash violently , ruining what could have otherwise been a perfectly serviceable , if bland , experience. Instead what is left is an amalgamation of all that is wrong with modern cover shooters mashed up into one boring , uninteresting and broken ball. Unless , like me , you have a sense of morbid curiosity with these things then I cant suggest picking it up unless it somehow finds a way to drop its price to the point where you're being paid to play it.
3/10
Read more of my reviews and other gaming related writings at http://max543.blogspot.co.uk/