Inversion wasn’t intended to be your everyday shooter, but at the end of the day it comes off as just that, and this is its biggest weakness. What looks like an impressive gameplay model on paper, doesn’t have an equally impressive implementation to build on and go forward. A lot of fun ideas are flung at you from time to time, but you are left as a mere spectator awaiting their proper execution. And thus you reach the end of the game, part happy and part sad; happy with the fact that you’re finally over with it, and sad due to the regret of having played it in the first place. Publisher Namco Bandai Games brings the third person shooter title to PS3, Xbox 360 and PC with Havok physics. But just what is it that makes this game such a humdrum experience? Let’s find out through this review.
From the very beginning we got the feeling that something was wrong with the Saber Interactive video game. Its graphics were clunky, its cutscenes exuded a kind of lifelessness, and some serious issues with its sounds just couldn’t miss our attention. The story starts off with friends Davis Russel, an ill-tempered cop, and his partner Leo Delgado trying to come to terms with what’s happening around them. Their city is being torn apart by the invasion of unknown beings called Lutadores. Now if they’re unknown, how do the folks in the game know what to call them? Many such questions pop up all throughout Inversion, but the game doesn’t bother to answer any. Hence ignorance is the only viable answer. As the narrative moves forward, the characters continue their quest for Russel’s daughter, only to discover shocking and ludicrous secrets about the alien race as well as a hilarious plot twist that drops out of nowhere.
The game’s shooting mechanics are obviously borrowed from Gears of War, and they perform rather well. Considering that most good shooters these days struggle to get the cover system right, this title does exhibit some expertise in that department. And then there’s the Gravilink – the game’s heart and soul, or so it seems. You see, this gravity-bending device which lets you perform such acts as lifting enemies out of cover, splitting them open by hurling floating objects at them, plucking them out of the air to perform melee kills on them and more of the kind, can really be done without. An ample part of the title can be played without even bothering to use these powers, but it is as if the developers realized midway that they should create scenarios forcing you to use them, that they start cropping up suddenly. And it’s not like they’re all cleverly designed either.
There’s some joy involved in watching heavily-destructible environments float all over the place. Cars, debris and guns float in the air to create a sense of peculiarity which the game tries to exhibit. Blobs of gasoline floating in the air can be shot at to set off explosions when they get near your foes, while detonating containers, again by shooting at them, to trigger chain reactions bring down huge structures. These environmental factors do well to entice you into making use of them all from time to time. In Inversion, short-lived battles in zero gravity as well as in gravity-shifting environments appear in between also. Again, these scenarios need some real buffing up for them to be called pleasing. However, some juicy visual pleasures are to be found in these scenarios. One such picture that is stuck in our minds is the firefight which had us looking straight ahead to realize that we were actually staring at the streets from twenty stories above while standing on the outer walls of a building.
The gameplay in this title is annoyingly interrupted by cutscenes. There are some situations that require you to move from one point to another, without firing a single bullet, just to trigger another cutscene. And to add to that, these sequences are unneeded, insipid and poorly directed. The entire experience of Inversion could have been a lot better had its sounds been up to the mark. Its shabby and almost absent sound effects sometimes take away the thrill from potentially exciting scenarios. Footstep noises are all awry, voice-acting is inconsistent and at times muffled, whereas the enemies die without making a single sound. Melee attacks are shown to rip through the flesh of these foes, but the only sound you hear while executing them is that of a ‘click.’ The Lutadors speak a strange language which is explained by the fact that they’re alien. But why they have broken pieces of English in it and subtitles that are anything but interpretive still remains a burning question.
Talking about its looks, this game does have some impressive art going into it. With the gravity mechanics in place, the environments have been designed neatly to emphasize a post-apocalyptic feel. Its graphics however, are not noteworthy to the say the least. Texture-less surfaces are a routine occurrence, while inconsistencies can be found in other areas too. Apart from the entire campaign being playable in two-player co-op, online multiplayer also forms part of the title. The transition of elements from the campaign helps this component in a rather nice way. Usual modes like deathmatch and team deathmatch are available, whereas a wave-based survival mode can also be jumped into. But overall, the multiplayer doesn’t have the conviction needed to keep you hooked onto it for hours on the trot.
The Final Word: Inversion is the kind of game that tries hard to be interesting, but in a way fails at the task. It is marred by a forgettable story, awkward and superfluous cutscenes, clichéd dialogues, miserable sounds and even some intentional difficulty spikes. The gameplay is however satisfactory and that’s what turns out to be its savior at the end of the day. Here’s our score for this dreary shooter.
Graphics: 6/10
Sounds: 3/10
Environments: 7/10
Gameplay: 6.5/10
Replay Value: 5.5/10
Overall (not an average): 6/10