REVIEW: Super Time Force

I have been psyched to play this game for quite some time. In the absence of boundaries, the internet, and a sense of social inhibition, Gunstar Heroes on the Sega Mega Drive became the cornerstone of my childhood. Its bright colours, quirky music, copious enemies and abundance in ordinance never got old for me as a plucky young boy.

This cynical heart still yearns to beat to the shift and pop of a 16 bit chiptune whilst spraying explody things on a 2d plane into an army of badd’uns armed with super weapons, all whilst bathed in the potentially harmful glow of a CRT TV set.

It is in this nostalgia that Capybara Games frames their argument for you to hand over your cash and spend some TIME with your Xbox One or Xbox 360. Enter Super Time Force. Spoilers: it’s fucking fantastic.

Super Time Force is a fast paced side-scrolling shooter, rammed to the hilt with explosions, nostalgia and some seriously incredible art.

Setting & Graphics
Tasked with rescuing Earth from a mysterious army of Blounbots (don’t ask), Commander Repeatski and his Super Time Force mobilize and take the fight to the evil Dr. Infinity and his cybernetic army. Finding themselves successful very early on, the President, thoroughly impressed and simultaneously incompetent, then tasks Commander Repeatski with “making Earth more awesome” by travelling through time, free reign, to correct the mistakes of the past, and borrow the benefits from the future. What can possibly go wrong?

From the get-go, Super Time Force oozes authenticity. From side-splitting scrolling text dialogue to intricate pixel-by-pixel artwork, STF smacks of quality that can be easily overlooked by prevailing resolution-shader-polygon-conscious attitudes, but I will roar from the pixelated roof tops that the format belies an attention to detail that can only be described as a testament to the amount of love poured into this game. This game is unapologetically retro, wearing it like a badge (several dozen badges) of honour.

On the dialogue, it is quite literally LOL-worthy. The forced attempts by established companies to try to appeal to “cool” internet audiences, by way of dispassionate references to memes and other pop culture phenomena, almost always come across as nothing short of cringe worthy in execution. Capybara does it with a subtlety and panache that is refreshing, and dare I say, a relief, in an age where you can walk in to Walmart and pick up a troll-face t-shirt. The intelligence in their references to memes past and present are one of Super Time Forces central achievements, only adding to the authenticity I mentioned previously. I found myself laughing out-loud quite often at both the references but more so at the dialogue, which exudes a level of irony typically hard to find in video games that attempt to rouse the lulz. The playable characters are largely silent, Commander Repeatski boisterously taking charge of every single line of dialogue. The writing certainly takes influence from modern shows like Adventure Time and Futurama, married with the irony and allegory of Team America World Police.

Every level entices with subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) nods to various morsels of pop culture, complimented with an array of vibrantly authentic-retro chiptunes from 6955. Discovering these was a huge part of my enjoyment in STF, so I will be sure to leave out some of the more hilarious references for yourselves to find. A couple of my favourites though; there’s an entire level dedicated to Mad Max, featuring enemies I swear I’d seen in Borderlands. The stage culminates in a glorious tiered boss battle in the Funderdome, afterwards rewarding you with an extra character called Cleo, very clearly based on the boomerang wielding feral child from Mad Max 2 (who turns out to be the love child of time-abusing Commander Repeatski and a certain Pharaoh from ancient Egypt).

Another of the levels sees us traverse into the distance future to obtain “all the plug-ins” so Commander Repeatski can watch cute cat videos without being prompted every day to install the latest update. The level sees you sucked into a mock Windows 3.1 computer to do battle with hideous web 1.0 websites and ASCII sprites. The sheer imagination on display sent me giddy with excitement on more than one occasion, most memorably so in one quite subtle, but incredible reference to Dragon Ball Z, which I will task you readers with finding. If I was scoring this game purely on creativity, it would already be a bristling 10/10, but instead, let’s talk gameplay.

Gameplay
In Capybara’s own words, “Super Time Force isn’t what would happen if Braid and Contra had a baby: Super Time Force is what would happen if Braid and Contra had a party!!” I couldn’t put it better.

Super Time Force initially puts you in control of three characters. Jean Rambois, armed with a red bandanna and gattling gun, Aimy McKillin armed with a wall penetrating rifle and Shieldy Blockerson, who wields a bullet-blocking riot shield. Each of the core characters abilities complement each other, and this is explained as key to success in Super Time Force.

In old school fashion, when you get touched, you die, instantly. No health bars, no medi-packs, you’re as vulnerable as a small woodland creature with a sprained ankle and a negative attitude, and this is intentional. When you die, you can rewind time a-la Braid and spawn again, choosing one of your unlocked characters. You then fight along side the shadow of your past self and if you can rescue your past self from death, you can combine with their image and make use of your fallen comrade’s charge-up attacks alongside your own. You can do this multiple times, up to 30 times per level in-fact, resulting in an incredibly satisfying chaos of time-continuum molestation, the implications of which for the laws of space and time are too mind bending to contemplate.

In addition to this each level has a time limit, forcing you to rewind and then spawn further copies of yourself to take down mini bosses and large obstacles as fast as possible. You can extend this time limit by collecting time boosters as you travel from left to right, as well as obtain collectables and slow-mo power ups that reduce the action to a crawl, allowing you to bask in the glory of explosions and blocky bullet hell. Bottom line; the game is incredibly fun, combining tried and tested gameplay mechanics with a dash of innovation to create something genuinely fresh, albeit with a whiff of Teen Spirit.

My central critique of the gameplay stems from its ease. I feel as though the limit on the time-out mechanic is far too generous. I never actually had to play strategically with my respawn limit until the very last level, getting mission failed only one time, and I’m by no means a particularly skilled gamer. You can take this further to what could be perhaps considered exploitative, killing yourself over and over and then rescuing all your copies to take on 10+ power ups at once, with no downsides, save for existential conundrum of killing yourself, to go back to the past, to rescue your future self in the present, wat.

To its credit, Super Time Force unlocks “super hardcore mode” after your initial completion of the game, although perhaps this should be unlocked to begin with, as anyone who has enjoyed games similar to this in the past may find themselves yearning for more of a challenge.

Perhaps due to concerns over difficulty, the clever respawn mechanics aren’t put to consequential use in strategic sense until right near the end. Considering the website makes direct reference to Braid, I feel as though some potential for more time-based puzzle elements or strategizing had been lost. It’s not a stretch to think this may have been intentional, the pacing of the game is blistering and unapologetically deliberate; so perhaps they felt as though too many segments forcing the player to scrutinise the time bending mechanics would’ve been detrimental. Still, I felt it was an opportunity lost, as the very few times I did have to be considerate with my time-out limit, I found it very satisfying to overcome the challenge. Perhaps super hardcore mode will satisfy challenge seekers, but there is room for further exploration of the excellent mechanics put forward.

Upon getting around to trying out the Super Hardcore Mode, it does indeed deliver some of the challenge some players may seek, without being too overbearing. I erroneously assumed that all it would do is add more enemies on screen, reduce the amount of time-outs you get, or something simplistic like that, but in-fact, Super Hardcore Mode completely alters the way you have to approach the game.

You retain the same amount of time-outs, no restrictions or limitations on power ups and things of that nature, but instead when your characters die, they die. In order to have enough copies to complete a level, you have to ensure that you bring one of your chums to rescue a fallen comrade from the enemy that attacked him in the past, present… erm, future? Whatever. Point is, it adds an extra layer or two of complexity to strategizing each level. Utilising each characters unique strengths suddenly becomes paramount, as approaching a portion of a level a certain character might be disadvantaged at could cost you a time-out that you may find hard to recover.

The game avoids a genre-defining pitfall and never felt repetitive. It does a good job of mixing it up, from the beautifully constructed contrasting time periods, multitudes of different enemies and bosses, and ever changing level formats, Super Time Force is a game that commands your attention start to finish. There are a ton of unlockable characters all with unique powers, wrapped in their own unique pop culture trappings. It is a sizable amount of content for a game from a comparably small team.

Ultimately, Super Time Force exceeded my expectations, and sent my cynicism packing. It enraptures with its warm blanket of 80s, 90s, and Jurassic nostalgia, this is a game that does what it says on the tin. It breathes new life into an under-appreciated genre, staying faithful to its roots whilst adding some millennial flair.

It is about a Super Time Force, and you won’t have to force yourself to have a super time with this game.