Super Time Force review: total recall

Though the game was teased in late 2011, it wasn't given a name until 2012. Since then, it's undergone transformation after transformation as Capy played with the thing that sets Super Time Force apart from the retro-crazed re-imaginings of a now departed console generation: time itself.

On the surface, Super Time Force is a familiar mix of old-fashioned aesthetics and elbow-jabbing nostalgia. But Capy has found more than a life raft with their clever implementation of time travel and cause and effect. They've mined a barely touched vein of originality.

Super Time Force follows a team of well-intentioned mercenaries led by Colonel Repeatski, an idiot with apocalyptically poor judgment, as they attempt to "fix" everything wrong with modern times by blowing things up in the past. The story here is a scaffolding for bad puns, hyper-referential '80s humor, and poop jokes — no, really, they take one poop joke as far as it could conceivably go — but that's not a problem. The puns and references and even the poop feature some pretty sharp writing, and when the jokes don't quite cut, they're heavy enough to bludgeon their way through to a chuckle or two.

But the time-travel conceit that Super Time Force is built on allows for the game's main mechanical point of differentiation — you can rewind time with the left trigger whenever you want to any point in the level that's already happened and spawn anew as any member of the squad. Alone, this would be a sort of ultimate spin on extra lives in a game, a chance to see where you screwed up and try again. But here's the wrinkle: when you roll back time, your previous lives play out in front of you, grabbing the same secrets, shooting the same enemies that they did when you played them.

The result seems like chaos at first glance, as squadmates shoot over one another, often dying in the same place because you died in the same place. But beneath the pandemonium there's calculated logic. I figured out that I could spend time on one life grabbing hidden collectibles and saving new characters. Then I could rewind all the way back and skip those sections, since my previous self would repeat my actions as pre-ordained for them. There are other inspired touches — if you can "save" a previous-playthrough teammate from death, often by killing their killer before they have a chance to do their killing, they become a time distorted power-up. Grabbing a character-as-power-up gives you additional hit points, but it also adds that character's charged shot to your own, making for one-person-armies if you play your cards right.