Inversion Review
What goes up, must come down
The player, on the other hand, is highly susceptible to damage. Playing on medium difficulty, there were more frequent instant-deaths than the developers were probably hoping for. Getting blown away by a single enemy with a shotgun from up close, or simply staying out of cover for longer than a few seconds when under fire, results in frequent checkpoint restarts. If you go down, it’s game over, but your AI partner can be revived if he is shot. Staying in cover is viable though, and the game’s environments feature plenty of things to hide behind – a lot of it being destructible. On the other hand, the game’s numerous boss battles are very easy up until the last few, which can become frustrating.
What has been described so far is probably not very enticing. So let’s get to the main selling point – gravity. Some may remember Saber Interactive’s previous title, TimeShift, where the main mechanic was about time manipulation. A similar case can be made here, except this time you’re allowed to control gravity. Using the secondary fire option, you’re able to shoot gravity beams, which create small pockets of gravity-altering areas depending on where they land. You start off with a simple ability to create these small anti-gravity areas – which causes your enemies to float up from behind cover and dangle in the air for a few moments while you take the shot (as in Mass Effect 3). It’s an interesting tactic that definitely throws a twist on the cover-based shooting. Enemies can do the same to you, which can cause some very tense mid-air shootouts, but alas they don’t utilize their powers as often as they probably should. For some odd reason, to use the gravity powers you must stand up from cover – making you vulnerable while you try to aim the ability, and thus presenting further difficulty.
Other uses are straightforward, like being able to grab and toss objects at enemies; small at first, and as large as cars towards the end of the game. You also get the ability to multiply gravity, pinning enemies to the ground and causing any suspended objects to crash down. It’s probably good to mention that the story upgrades your gravity powers at certain story points – there’s no unlock or character progression system to bother with. There are also so called anti-gravity zones, where you simply float around from object to object while also fighting enemies. These sections are cool, but leave you (understandably) overly exposed and unable to use gravity powers.
Arguably the best use of the gravity in the game isn’t even controlled by the player, but rather by the game’s own design. There are some levels where the perspective-shifting teleporters of sorts must be used to progress. Using these could have you facing down the side of a building, or even upside down – all while in active combat. Imagine if you are playing Prey again, but all the perspective-shifting is out of your control. Further, it was easy enough to reorient yourself in Prey because everything looked the same regardless of the view angle. In Inversion, fighting your way down the side of an apartment building is unmistakably thrilling and rather spectacular. It’s too bad that these moments are quite rare.
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