There are games that pay homages to familiar and all time favourites and then there are some that attempt to copy and look and feel of their bigger and superior counterparts. Inversion happens to be one of those games where it has the feel and looks of it's superior and in it's case the Gears of War franchise by Epic Games. It's a third person shooter where it tries to set itself apart by implementing the use of gravity and destructible environments, for the most part it does do things rather decently. It does have plenty of rough edges around it's gameplay in parts but offers plenty of decent gameplay for those that enjoy the Gears of War games especially for PlayStation owners like myself who want some Gears inspired games on the PlayStation hardware. The game is also on XBox 360 and PC as well.
Inversion's story focuses on two police officers Davis and Leo who are caught in a massive city wide invasion against a race of barbaric invaders called the Lutadores. The invaders easily destroy the City of Vanguard and take what remains of the city's population prisoner including the two police officers. They break out of their prison cells and attempt to take the fight against the Lutadores while also search for Davis' missing daughter Leila. The story is okay, I mean it's about a guy who's wife has been killed and believes that his daughter is missing and in some cases it's somewhat relatable. Davis and Leo are not as engaging as Marcus or Dominic from the Gears of War games although there are a few moments with the duo where they stick out for each other aren't bad. One thing to say about the story is that the game has many frequent cinematic cutscenes that at times you feel somewhat disconnected from the game. These usually appear when you complete a battle sequence or go into a new area. For the amount of cutscenes you'll be watching you'd think the story would be relevantly interesting but sadly there is little interesting about it. Davis' constant talk about his daughter being missing or possibly dead drags on to the point of tedium while other scenes play out like filler. The voice acting isn't too bad which is the main thing the story has going for it and some of the lines can be a bit cheesy at times. The best part of the story is where Fitzgerald unleashes his fantastic level of swearing on the guard and it's hilarious. Thankfully you are given the option to skip every cutscene as you wish with a press of a button.
Inversion's Single Player campaign is split up between 14 chapters which a percentage of the game involves shooting a group enemies till the fight ends and you go to the next destination. The campaign can either be played alone or online cooperatively with a friend. The locations are varied between prisons, torn streets, heat inducing areas, camps and a train station. There are parts of the game where you do objectives that do break up the monotony. There is a section where you take control of a gun turret and tear apart a damaged building, there is one where you have to defend your vehicle from incoming enemies and also do a brief puzzle which I'll get back to alongside a boss battle which you do get on occasion. One of the main weapons you start with is the Lutadore Rifle which has a blade on the front of it used for melee similar to the Retro Lancer in the third Gears game.
The game uses the same gameplay elements from the Gears of War games from the cover system, health regeneration, some of the weapons even down to the weight of your character. The button layout is different however as the reload button by default is assigned to triangle on the PS3 version instead of the right bumper button plus there is no temporally damage boost like in the Gears games as well. This is one of them PlayStation 3 games where the controls for firing is swapped around, it's L1 for aiming and R1 bumper buttons for firing which will be a little confusing for those familiar to the Gears games controls. The cover system allows to you to take cover behind walls, pillars, cars and so on like you would in the Gears games but however the controls aren't as perfect as those games. While it's easy to find places to take cover in it's the way the character takes cover and stick out to shoot back are not the same. You can move about in cover to save yourself from damage but when you stick out to shoot your character does not lean out from the left or right sides of cover which tends to make aiming in cover a little tricky.
Still the combat for the most part is really engaging, weapons have plenty of recoil and impact. Enemies can fall apart after being shot at close range by a double barrel shotgun, you can blast off certain body parts of enemies from heads, arms and legs which shows off a cool dismemberment system which makes this game more violent and gory then the Gears games. The game also uses destructible environments where pieces of cover can be destroyed which is also really impressive cause if you remain in cover for too long it will be destroyed from constant gunfire and your head will be exposed which leaves you vulnerable. Weapons range from Assault Rifles, Shotguns, Sniper Rifles, Rocket Launchers as well as a Lava Gun and Energy Weapons. Some of them are a bit worthless like the Energy Shotgun but any of the other weapons from Sniper Rifles and the Energy Rifles when you do get your hands on them work well in combat. There are no sidearms in the game to make use of and heavy weapons like the Minigun and Lava Guns are temporally and cannot be reloaded, once they are out of ammo they are dropped from your hands.
One of Inversion's mechanics that you do get is the Gravlink which allows you to use High and Low Gravity powers to use in certain situations. You can shoot out Low Gravity to make objects and enemies float in the air or use High Gravity to make them heavier. You can pull said floating enemy or object toward you in which you can launch them into walls which will kill other nearby enemies instantly in one hit or perform a one hit execution. You can also do a one hit execution when you use High or Low Gravity to leave them floating or pinned down helplessly. Later on you get the High Gravity shield which can protect you from damage as long as you have enough power for it. Using any of the modes drains your gravity power meter and if that is out in the Single Player campaign it does recharge only one point so that you can use it as many times as long as you have at least one point of it left. You can find batteries to keep the Gravlink powered up and as you progress through the meter does increase making them more useful in combat. The Gravlink is also used in some quick puzzles where you can throw allowable objects at targeted points. You can even use the Gravlink to bring floating weapons dropped by dead enemies to you or to use them as objects to throw at enemies as well. Throwing the objects with low gravity takes some time to get used to due to the transparency making it a little difficult to see where you are aiming the object at but you can get used to it. The Gravlink actually becomes useful in many of the later fights especially on higher difficulties because do you honestly think you could fight against every single enemy in the game with just your guns? Yes I understand that you don't get some of the Gravlink abilities till a certain point in the game but once you do get your hands on the Gravlink's best abilities it becomes very useful against harder challenges especially boss fights.
At some points in the game you do get into a state of zero gravity where you can float to different cover points on the map or to use your Gravlink to dodge grenades or other explosives. You can move about in the cover points like you would outside of zero gravity. You can't use any of your other Gravlink abilities aside from bringing in objects to you. Plus there are parts of the game where the gravity flips you to different side like you can be fighting on the sides of the building or one moment on the ceiling but these are few but also break up the tedium.
The campaign's weakest moments are the boss battles, it's not because of their difficulty aside from one boss in the game which gets a real difficulty spike later on. The bosses range from a Security bot that floats in the air, the Butcher, Slave Driver and the Final Boss Kiltehr. They have their pattern that they utilize before you can shoot them or use your Gravity powers on them but they are not too hard once you learn what it is and what to do. The main issue with the bosses is that they are recycled multiple times throughout the campaign and it kind of feels a little lazy when they don't came up with any new ones and instead reuse the same ones you face 3 times throughout the game.
Other parts of the campaign can be cheap at times especially on harder difficulties, you could be taking on groups of enemies in some levels and the damage you take on those moments are annoying. The worst enemies in the game are the berserker guys with clubs which take a ton of gunfire just to put one down and can knock off plenty of health. Another of the game's worst enemies are the slaves, now with the slaves they mostly appear during the boss fight against the slave driver. They simply just charge in at you and hit you for a melee attack but however the worst of them are the bomb slaves which can run right at you and blow himself instantly killing you which happens at the worst of times and these can be really annoying. Now in all fairness the enemies are all varied from guys that sometimes wear helmets, sniper guys, captains which shot gravity at you, robots and also the ones that use two short lightsaber like weapons which can zoom close to you and stab you and throw you out of cover. If they try to finish you off you can get out of it with a press of a button in a Quick Time Event otherwise they kill you and it's back to the last checkpoint. You'll also have some moments where you have to deal with your AI controlled partner, now he can use cover quite well and provide plenty of supporting fire but however in some fights he tends to end up taking the majority of damage which gets him killed. If he gets killed you have to press the prompted button to revive him or else it's Game Over and back to last checkpoint. The checkpoint system is at least reasonable for the game's overall length, you might end up replaying a few sections but otherwise I don't have anything really to complain against the checkpoint system.
I did read up a few complaints from critics saying that the weapons aren't really that impactful and the overall gameplay is heavy stolen from Gears of War but honestly I think the devs have patched the game somewhat and the gameplay in the Single Player is more fixed up. Weapons feel more impactful and there is a sense of recoil on them as well which does encourage burst fire. I did notice a random glitch in one of the chapters but otherwise the Single Player is enjoyable yet not as refined as in the Gears games.
My biggest complaint lies in the Multiplayer Mode. From day one that I played it when it came out years ago there was hardly anyone actually playing the game online and years later I have still not been able to find anybody online playing. That's a shame cause some of the multiplayer modes look interesting. It ranges from simple Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, Assault and Survival variants and also there are Gravity modes like King of Gravity where players have to take down the player who has the Gravlink while that player gets points by killing other players while holding the Gravlink, Gravity Slaughter where players have to use Gravity powers to get more points and Grav Control where you kill other players so that you can switch the Gravity Vector and earn more points. These modes are aright but however King of Gravity tends to be annoying when the player can instantly get all the Gravity power back after a few seconds of use. This also becomes annoying when players with the Gravlink spam the High Gravity Shield to easily get plenty of kills. Because of the lack of players playing the game it's easier to join boosting groups and convince them to be your targets as you work on getting all of the multiplayer challenges without any degree of skill. On the positive side I didn't really notice much lag when playing but the servers have rare moments where they crash up which forces you to reset your console. Also for some reason the servers do not allow other players to join in a game server once it has started which kind of makes game lobby management a little tedious. An option to have AI bots in the Multiplayer mode should have been welcome in this game as the matchmaking lobbies in this game are dead and it isn't refined nor patched up in anyway.
Inversion also steals the looks of Gears of War in which how the environments and enemies look. This is a game made for consoles and it shows, the graphical textures in the environment are decent and also the destructible elements are rather solid and worth looking. The framerate is playable for a console shooting game but drops down when tons are happening on the screen and this is one of those games where the frame rate is locked to 30 fps (25 fps on PAL version consoles). The character models have rather reasonable blood and dirt on them from what they have been from although some of the other effects on them just don't look very pleasing. At least some environment like all the torn streets and lava places are very atmospheric and do suit the game setting very well.
Inversion is for the most part a Gears of War clone just with a Gravity setting but that doesn't make Inversion a bad game in any shape or form. The gravity mechanics are decent, most of the shooting mechanics are okay but not refined, the story is aright but nothing too remarkable and lastly the multiplayer component is a mess. If the multiplayer were fixed and patched up and if more people joined in then it could have been a solid Gears clone worth playing for fans who have played those games. At least the game is super cheap to pick up and you can breeze through the single player in about a few hours. At least compared to some of the other awful shooting games on the market this one isn't as bad as many critics make this one out to be.
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Game Score: 7.3/10
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Game Title: Inversion
Platform: PlayStation 3/XBox 360/PC
Developer: Saber Interactive
Genre: Third Person Shooter
Age Rating: BBFC: 18+
Release Date: 8th June 2012/13th July 2012
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The Good Points:
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1. Impressive gore
2. Plenty of use of the Gravlink
3.Plays well for the most part like a Gears of War game
The Bad Points:
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1. Cover System controls are not as reliable as the Gear of War games
2. Multiplayer Matchmaking is awful and has plenty of problems
3. Boss Battles are repetitive and get reused often
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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