Anti-gravity can’t keep ‘Inversion’ afloat

Those are some tough criticisms to overcome, and “Inversion” only seems to take a halfhearted crack at it.

The game is a first-person, cover-based shooter that takes place in the near future. One day, while cops Davis Russel and his partner, Leo Delgado, are out on patrol, aliens appear and start attacking the city. While this is happening, large sections of the city are uprooted and ravaged by low-gravity fields. In the invasion, Russel’s wife is killed, his daughter taken, and the two cops are captured and sent to a work camp.

A few weeks later, Russel and Delgado break out and get their hands on some alien tech that gives them the power to manipulate gravity. From there, Russel sets out on a quest to save his daughter from the evil Lutadores, with Delgado tagging along. The number of times Delgado gets bossed around on this quest becomes comical: “Open that door for me.” “Give me a boost.” “Stay here and get shot while I go blow something up.”

The gameplay feels like a B-movie version of “Gears of War,” with one cool feature thrown in — the wearable gravity gun. It allows you to make enemies float up from behind cover, pick up cars, create shock waves and make small high-gravity fields. Crushing Lutadores to a mushy paste by throwing cars is the single greatest part of the game. As far as gunplay goes, other than the sniper rifle and rocket launcher, the guns don’t feel incredibly powerful or accurate.

Only the large areas of altered gravity set “Inversion” apart from a straight crib of “Gears of War.” It is amazing and a bit mind-boggling to fight on the side of a skyscraper as a massive battle rages on the ground below.

Like all shooters nowadays, there are a number of online multiplayer modes. King of Gravity is the only one that isn’t bland, but it can feel a bit unbalanced if you aren’t the one controlling gravity.

“Inversion” has a few good ideas, but it just comes across as a weak entry in the world of high-quality shooters.