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Review

Super Time Force Ultra, Capybara Games (PS4)

Abstract: Super Time Force Ultra is innovative, action-packed, and fun. The game lets you shoot your way through history's greatest hits, fighting alongside an army of your past selves. Super Time Force Ultra is an incredible accomplishment in game design. Exceedingly complex ideas and mechanics are made simple, creating moment-to-moment gameplay that's light, fast and frantic. The sometimes eye-rolling humor and weak boss fights were a bummer, but didn't detract too badly from the final experience. A wonderful aesthetic, great character design and high skill ceiling hooked me from the start. Super Time Force Ultra is a game I didn't put down until I beat. Give it a go.

Time travel can be complicated. Have a conversation with your future self, informing you that you’re going to become an intergalactic commander? Sure. Go back to the time of the dinosaurs to prevent their annihilation? Why not. See yourself get killed only to stop time, reverse it, come back and kill the thing that killed you? Yep. Super Time Force Ultra is here to tackle these big questions. And have a really fun time while doing so.

Super Time Force Ultra is a 2D shooter originally developed for Xbox One and PC by Capybara Games, the studio behind the incredible Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery on iOS. The game was met with critical praise and, just on aesthetic alone, it quickly made its way onto my must-play list. Super Time Force Ultra finally made its way to PlayStation this month, included as part of the PlayStation Plus lineup of complimentary games. I knew it was finally time to time travel.

You play as a group of heroes, known as the Super Time Force, tasked with defeating the nemesis of fun: Dr. Infinity. The nefarious doctor stands in opposition to the central goal of the Super Time Force—to make history more interesting. That’s right. Under the leadership of Commander Repeatski, you’re tasked with going back to pivotal moments in Earth’s history to undo lame outcomes of the past and future. This includes a gamut of “nerd” favorite time periods. The Super Time Force is sent to the past to stop the destruction of Atlantis, to Earth’s future (that looks stunningly like a 1980’s imagining of the year 20XX) to stop oppressive robotic regimes, and to 199X to fight against an oppressive Mad Max styled wasteland. Along the way you grow your squad with new powerful heroes like Lou Don Jim, a rotund lightsaber wielding warrior, or Dolphin Lundgren, a gun toting fin-pedal dolphin. In each era you must fight the armies of Dr. Infinity who do their best to stop time from becoming more rad.

 

Where it all starts: Philly! (I went to college there, whoo!)

As I’m sure you can tell already, Super Time Force Ultra is a game with a heavy comedic slant. Everything that happens, from conversations to scenarios to character appearances, is kept light and fun. The playfulness Super Time Force Ultra’s world maintains the game’s cheerful tone throughout. I, however, was not particularly captured by the game’s style of humor. Filled to the brim with puns and tongue-in-cheek references to “nerd” favorite topics (like Star Wars or 80’s action films), Super Time Force Ultra tries really hard to be funny. No joke or pun is too terrible, but it came across as an attempt to appeal to a demographic I am not a part of. Although I didn’t find myself laughing at “insert time pun here,” the fun the developers had creating this world and characters is demonstrably clear. Super Time Force Ultra oozes charm. I’m not ashamed to admit I smirked at unlocking the Squirty Harry character, or nodded in pleasant acknowledgement of Jef Leppard. Where this fan-directed attention was most effective for me was the game’s inclusion of characters from the PlayStation wheelhouse. It was great blasting away enemies with President of Sony Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida, the character from Journey, and The Order 1886’s crazy powerful Sir Galahad. Nothing feels better than blasting your enemies out of existence with a giant @yosp tweet.

 

A lot of jokes miss their mark.

The plot and characters are an important part of Super Time Force Ultra, but the game is really all about is blowing stuff up in spectacular fashion. Super Time Force Ultra plays like a mash-up of Contra with Braid. As a 2D shooter, the game feels very similar to your classic Contra titles. Moving and shooting is simple. You move left to right, occasionally navigating some obstacles with basic platforming, Your character can shoot in four directions: straight in front of you, up, down, and diagonally. You can do one of two attacks: quickly pressing the fire button will (usually) give a rapid firing but weak projectile, and holding down and releasing the fire button will give you a powerful super attack. For example, holding down the fire button on your starting operatives will give a rapid fire Gatling gun attack or a sniper shot the pierces through objects. The object of every level is simple: get to the end. The act of actually doing so, however, brings in the complexity.

 

Why is Shuhei blowing stuff up with tweets? Because, STFU.

Time travel mechanics are central to Super Time Force Ultra. You only have 60 seconds to complete a level, a task that would be fairly impossible if you played the game exactly like a classic 2D shooter. That’s where pausing and rewinding time comes in. At any moment the game allows you to freeze time, rewind it, and start over. For anyone who has played Braid, you’ll know the feeling I’m describing. But in Super Time Force Ultra, time travel has powerful advantages. When you restart time you choose a new hero. Those new heroes, or copy of the same hero, will spawn into the level and play alongside your past self. Each and every time you retry, you fight alongside your previous attempts. Your ghosts are still able to deal damage to enemies, destroy obstacles, and collect items. The longer you play a level, the more times you rewind time and drop a new hero into the fold, you’re growing an army of selves that all act in real time. The mechanic allows for thoughtful action, as each new life and each new section of the level is an optimization puzzle. I felt compelled to discover the best solution to advance through difficult sections quickly—like setting up a sniper at the back whose sole purpose is killing enemies, a shield-bearing character to block bullets, the nimble Shuhei to collect an item, and Sir Galahad to sprint quickly through the carnage. Each Super Time Force member adds new abilities to the fold. Finding the right combination of those skills to get you to the end of the level is brilliant and consistently engaging.

 

It's so much fun to strategize, optimize, and destroy
absolutely every single living thing in sight.

It’s not easy being a time hero, though. In fact, it can be quite difficult. The game encourages (reads: necessitates) use of its time rewind mechanic. The game is extremely punishing. Not only is 60 seconds not enough to beat the level without the assistance of your other selves, but also every single thing kills you in one hit. Touching enemies, running into their projectiles, traps, you name it. Moving through levels involves navigating dense bullet-hell sections that repeatedly kill the player. Frustration comes in large quantities but, for the most part, it only sweetens the reward when you clear a particularly challenging section. Time travel allows you to prevent your own past deaths, too. You’re able take out an enemy before they killed you on your previous run. Saving your past self coverts them into a collectible that powers up all your attacks and gives you an extra point of health. The tension this system creates is great. It pushed me to always be aware of all my past selves even if there were roughly a dozen of them going at once. Time crystals aid your journey. Three are scattered throughout each level. Collecting or shooting these crystals further slow down time, allowing the player to more efficiently clear out enemies or rush towards the level’s end. Regardless, going through each level is a sea of deaths and retries. The quick pace of the game and the generous number of attempts the game affords you, however, helps to balance out the challenge and maintain a consistent level of fun.

 

You're going to die. A lot. That's what time travel is for.

The only frustration that is largely unaddressed by these player-friendly systems are the boss fights. They just don’t feel right within the game’s systems. Some of the later bosses require a much more skillful optimization of your past selves, to the point where on one or two bosses I nearly ran out of time. I hadn’t done damage quickly enough at the start of the fight. There is a pure joy that comes out of watching all of your past selves eviscerate a boss in a matter of seconds, but the moment to moment gameplay of some late game bosses was not incredibly fun.

 

Some boss fights were great, others not so much. Pictured above: not so much.

I want to take a moment to acknowledge that Super Time Force Ultra is a remarkable accomplishment in game design. Super Time Force Ultra takes an incredibly complex idea, rewinding time and fighting alongside your past attempts, and makes it so simple to understand and use. At any given moment a dozen different things are happening, but all of it is rendered smoothly and seamlessly. The player is made to feel present at all times. Moment to moment gameplay is simple. It’s the combination of all this simplicity, the time travel and power-ups and character-specific talents, that creates an experience with an astoundingly high skill ceiling. “Easy to learn, difficult to master” is one of the most powerful tools in game design, and it’s handled in Super Time Force Ultra expertly.

A Capy game wouldn’t be a Capy game without phenomenal presentation, and Super Time Force Ultra is no exception. The oversized pixel art is endearing and, at this point, might as well be trademarked by Capy. No one does it better. Accompanying the great visuals is a cheerful chiptune soundtrack, dense and visually interesting backgrounds, and great character design. The aesthetic is striking and wonderful.

 

Beautiful.

Super Time Force Ultra is fun, fast and compelling. It’s a game I couldn’t put down until I beat it. A few hiccups aside, I had a blast rewinding time and fighting alongside myself to face the biggest and baddest in Earth’s history. From a game design perspective alone, you don’t get much more innovative and interesting than Super Time Force Ultra. So make sure for find the time to play it.

Super Time Force Ultra

4/5