Capybara Games; Xbox360/Xbox One (version tested); 12+; £12
A thousand sci-fi stories have cautioned that, while time-travelling, it is a good idea to avoid stepping on butterflies. The Super Time Force has no truck with such niceties. They’re the kinda crew who chant "USA, USA" as they approach an alien mothership or steal the Holy Grail just to sell it on eBay. Unfortunately for humanity, this is also the only squad that can save Earth from a series of apolcaylptic mishaps.
The gloriously irreverent tone of this side-scrolling shooter neatly supports its core mechanic: using time travel to create undulated chaos. The retro 80s-stylings might make levels look like standard run-and-gun affairs at first, but at any moment you can pause and rewind time, before spawning another character or a copy of your current one. The ethereal originals then continue about their business, so in the tradition of modern indie classic Braid, you work with your former selves to progress. There’s no escaping this: time is short and death frequent. You have 60 seconds to complete any mission and a single hit will kill you.
Part of the joy of this is unlearning years of schooled platforming, particularly during boss fights. You’ve waged a battle of attrition with giant robots a million times before and you think you know the formula: take a chunk off its shields until it moves to the next cycle where it’s vulnerable. Rinse and repeat. Not here. Here, if you wait for the cycles you’ll run out of time. Instead, you rewind and respawn until there are 16 copies of you capable of vanquishing the shields in four seconds. The resulting replays are exhilarating and hilarious in equal measure.
If there’s a criticism, it’s that this tactic makes it all-too-easy to bludgeon your way through with sheer force of numbers. Only a handful of levels offer the opportunity to fail outright, like escaping from rising lava, and while there’s plenty of visual invention on display in campaigns dating from 1,000,000BC to 3072AD, there’s sometimes so much occurring on screen that you’ll be hard pressed to notice. The multitude of enemies hurled at you also means avoiding oncoming projectiles can become almost impossible, particularly when niggly controls prevent you aiming properly at diagonals.
Persevere and impose some self-discipline, however, and you can begin to combine the charming cast of characters in inventive ways. Each of the dozen unlockable crew members brings different skills to the table. Amy McKillin’s bullets bounce off walls with regular attacks and go straight through them when charged, making her a crack sniper. Zackasaurus – a skateboarding, Ray-ban-wearing dinosaur – chomps enemies down in a single bite. Shieldy Blockerson... well you can guess what he does.
Best of the bunch is Force leader Colonel Repeatski, a mad scientist boasting two eye-patches and more medals than Leonid Brezhnev. Repeatski’s battles with Dr. Infinity, spewing insults like "super lame force" as he unleashes his robot army upon the earth, form the heart of the story. This is perhaps over-egged in its cutscenes, which is disappointing for something otherwise so delightfully silly, but you forgive it for the intense action just around the corner. The jubilation upon completing a mission with a fraction of a second to spare is enough to inspire first-pumping.
It’s ultimately a short game but replayability lays in beating the clock as fast and innovatively as possible. Producing videos more stylish than your friends could make this the new Spelunky, although the deaths here are rarely as hilarious. Completion also unlocks a "Super Hardcore Mode" that ensures characters stay dead, bringing new levels of complexity and greatly increasing the challenge.
Who cares about the butterfly effect? It’s time to use the Force. (Sorry).
