Time Recoil

Review

The world as we know it is now controlled by one man; a scientist who has invented a machine called the Time Heater. At first, most of the countries were brushing off his rhetoric and warnings, until Paris was totally destroyed by the Time Eater machine. At that point, most of the European countries succumbed to the mad scientist, Mr. Time. A small group of resistants operating in a base somewhere in the Paris rubble are about to launch a daring rescue. The target is one of Mr Time’s leading scientists who gained some sort of power after an experiment went south. The challenge is, they have to travel back in time to rescue her.  Is she the only one who can help to stop this mad scientist?

Time Recoil is an action / top-down shooter where you take control of Alexa, who was once part of the leading team of the mad scientist, Mr. Time, before the experiment went wrong giving, her super powers. She endured many years of rough treatment and was imprisoned until her rescue.

The game offer a a few modes of play. You can start the story mode on either normal or hardcore difficulty on your first play through. The murderous difficulty will be unlocked after you successfully beat all 56 levels and kill Mr. Time. The other mode of play is the time attack, where you have to eliminate all enemies from each map as soon as possible and you’ll be rewarded by three golden stars if you manage to do so. Bear in mind, we are talking seconds here, which can be very tricky.

To come back to the story and gameplay, Alexa will have to travel back to the past to figure how to eliminate Mr. Time and his evil Time Eater machine. Some of her missions will consist of rescuing and eliminating scientists, as well as gathering Intel. Most of the levels are pretty compact but extremely challenging. Alexa will appear on most of the levels from a wormhole, which is a gate where time travellers come from, armed with a gun with 8 bullets. Each time she successfully gets a kill, the time will slow down for two to three seconds. During this period, and each period after a new kill (must be within these seconds), the slow motion will continue for a further three seconds. If she manages to do a killstreak of 2 she will be able to dash/rush towards enemies and inflict great damage, but if she successfully gets 8 kills in a row on slow motion, she will be able to freeze the time for 10 seconds or so.

In terms of weapons, she will have access to guns which hold 8 bullets, machine guns with a magazine of 30 bullets, and a bazooka with one rocket. As you kill enemies throughout the levels, some might drop ammunition here and there.  There are several different types of enemies but the ones you need to look at is the grenade launchers – boy, they are a pain in the butt!

I finished my first play through in around 6 hours on the normal difficulty and it was pretty challenging from early on. I just started a new game in the murderous difficulty and it is very hard, let me tell you!

Graphically the game looks good and it runs really well. I really like the soundtrack and the controls are responsive. What I really appreciate about this game is that the levels are short but challenging and it will take you several goes to beat them, especially when you are half way through the game -you might feel frustrated once in a while. In my case, it was in the second last mission. . . I even invented some hybrid French/English words!