Hands on Preview: Inversion

Just when you thought Gears of War was the peak of 3^rd person shooters, NamcoBandai unleash Inversion! Moderately unheard of until recently but it’s time to get aware as this new 3^rd person shooter is set to give the player one hell of an experience!

Set in a not so distant future in the fictional city of Vanguard, USA. On a normal day riots break out all over the city, this turns out to be just the start of an invasion of an unknown enemy who come to be called the  Lutadore. With the attacks, parts of the city have entered some kind of zero gravity flux caused by the Lutadores’ futurist gravity manipulating weaponry.

Where do I come in you may ask, you take on the role of David Russell, a hot headed police officer caught up in the middle of the attacks searching for his wife and daughter. Players will venture into the gravity twisted world to try and find his loved ones and stop the Lutadore attack!

Now the game’s main future if you hadn’t guessed already is the gravity element, the grappler gun gives the player the ability to manipulate gravity and use it to find paths or kill enemies. But this isn’t where it stops, you can use it destroy or lift up an enemy’s cover if they are camping, solve puzzles and use it to shield yourself with objects. This is also working alongside the HAVOK destruction engine which goes hand in hand with the gravity aspect of the game. This gives the player so many options in the game and many hours of fun with the single player and online.

The Campaign

I was lucky enough to play the co-op campaign with the guys from Namco, but don’t worry it is great anyway played even if it’s you and the computer AI. The start of the campaign launches you straight into this huge beautiful city as you respond to a call about a riot in the area. From that call you are in control of David, the controls in the game a very similar to those seen in other cover based shooters, especially Gears of War, so those who have played that series will easily fit into this game.

It is a cover based shooter and the enemies take effort to kill, unlike most shooters these days. The destructible environment is definitely a huge part of the campaign, helping with routes and definitely to kill enemies. The storyline, some would say, is generic but it definitely has a nice twist to it, which makes you want to keep playing to find out what happens next by really immersing you into David’s story.

Only getting to play the first hour or so of the campaign made me want more and I won’t give you spoilers as the first part of the game really sets the tone for the rest of the game. After some events take place leading you to be the Lutadore base you then get to the really fun part the use of the Grappler Gun. This then really makes the game your own with the sheer freedom of how you use the gun, whether it be blasting rock faces to make a path or throwing a lump of rock at an on coming enemy!

Multiplayer

As always with the gravity element the multiplayer is insanely fun, with custom game modes designed to work with the gravity concept making it hours of fun to be had. The death match element has a kind of Quake feel to it, but is designed very well, five second respawns, starting the game with a basic gun and having to pick up better games on the map. Much fun to be had here, but the gravity element combined with a sniper is definitely the best combination, but I will let you figure that out for yourselves!

Another game mode I was able to play on was ‘King of Gravity’; in this mode whoever controls the Grappler Gun is the only one who gets points from killing, if you kill anyone without the Grappler then you then go into minus points, which I thought was a nice little twist and again loads of fun to be had on that!

Esports

Now for those of you who are into your competitive gaming, this game definitely has the basis to be an esports game and maybe even a successful one. Gears of War got a lot of fame from its competitive aspect and as Inversion is the next level in this genre I really think it could be seen in the major leagues and tournaments!

So to sum up, this game is definitely something to watch out for. Landing on the shelves mid-June make sure you grab your copy of the game and prepare for it to turn shooters literally upside down. Could this be the next step for all shooters? Who knows but stay tuned to Rival Tide for more news and our official review of the game!