Is inverted fighting a good thing or the opposite?
Last week I played the latest build of Inversion, a game that has been in the works for quite a while and yet, not much has been seen of it other than the E3 build from last year until now. After playing the previous version, I was sceptical but hopeful that the game would have improved from what I saw and luckily I can say that it has definitely had a nice amount of polish added.
The story follows Davis Russel and Leo Delgado who work together against the Lutadore, a force that seizes control of the city and have powerful technology that allows items and enemies to be “inverted”, until the duo get their hands on the tech for themselves and use it against them. You’ll come across some other resisters along the way, but it’s definitely designed to be a 2 player co-op experience. I played co-op with a fellow journo for a few hours and I did enjoy the experience, although sometimes the action seemed disjointed with the story elements. The transition between the two isn’t exactly seamless.
Inversion plays like your standard third-person shooter, it has a decent cover system and an impressive arsenal to use against your foes, which can be very tough. You won’t get the full inversion powers till later in the game, after playing for a few hours we still didn’t have everything at our disposal, which made some of the boss battles tough…yet rewarding when we overcame them, and that we did.
Besides gun battles and using the inversion powers to make enemies and objects fly, there’s also the gravity factor where your entire perspective is well….inverted. It can be a bit disorientating to be walking along the roof, using cover and looking down to see your foes but it does become second nature after a while. This is especially true of some of the multiplayer maps, which are designed with this in mind.
The campaign felt good and I do look forward to see where they go with it, but the multiplayer is where the real fun is. It has your standard variants of modes like Deathmatch/Team Deathmatch, King of the Hill and Juggernaut, although their version of Juggernaut is very interesting because if you kill a player who is not the one with the Inversion powers, then you lose a point…so going around killing everyone isn’t going to help you. In terms of presentation, Inversion is a bit rough around the edges, but it’s also pretty to look at.
Overall, I was impressed with what I saw so far with Inversion. I hope the campaign continues to impress, while the multiplayer looks like it could have some real replay value. Be sure to check out for the full review in a few weeks.