Shooters, in particular, are constantly struggling to break out of the mold. From various approaches to cover to health and weapon management to the creative freedom of increasingly fictitious sci-fi settings, putting bullets into things has been dyed at least half the colors of the visible spectrum. When 2012 rolled around, Namco Bandai's Inversion strolled up promising that it had the next big color: gravity manipulation. Aptly titled, Inversion flies in the face of Isaac Newton every chance it gets. In an almost Dead Space-like mannerthe first one, where you bounce around zero gravity zones like a moth in a jarthe game lets you turn ceilings into paths and buildings into stairs, which could easily have injected some much needed zeal into its cover-based shooting. Ironically, however, Inversion just couldn't get off the ground. It treats its much-touted gravity mechanic like something it got by sending in 25 marked cereal box tops. Needless to say, promises of perspective-swapping battles were not met, and gravitational warfare is in most cases supplanted by an obsession with cover so strong you'd need a crowbar to pry protagonist Davis Russell off his precious chest-high walls. Certainly not a Gravity Rush, if you will.
A freelance games writer, you say? Typically battling his current RPG addiction and ceaseless perfectionism? A fan of horror but too big a sissy to play for more than a couple of hours? Spends far too much time on JRPGs and gets way too angry with card games?
Well that doesn't sound anything like me.
