Invisigun Reloaded
Nintendo Switch

Developed By : Sombr Studio
Published By : Sombr Studio
Category : Action, Stealth, Multiplayer, Party
Release Date : Aug 22, 2019

For me, party games have always been associated with Nintendo, going way back to the good ol Mario Party days on the N64. You know, the days where we totally didn’t trash the hell out of our joysticks, and we definitely didn’t get territorial over a couple of power stars. Nope…not at all. But the genre of party games has lived on and grown immensely since then, and the field has opened up to include many entries, but not all are solidified as deserving placeholders with the other party games. So can Invisigun Reloaded for the Nintendo Switch get in the gang? Or will it be left out in the rain?

The entire premise of the game, through both it’s single and multiplayer areas, is that you remain completely invisible through what you do. You are a new cadet at the Central Invisigun Academy, where you’ll be subjected to same rigorous, minutes-long training all the other cadets went through. Through your training, you’re given your own Invisigun and taught how you’ll navigate from now on. You’ll always remain invisible unless you fire your gun or use your special ability.

In single player mode, you’ll be given a campaign specific to each hero that is available to play as, of which there are a dozen. Each hero has nine levels of increasing difficulty, all culminating in a boss fight. The entire intent of these short campaigns is to hone and master the skills of each hero. These include Selene who can perform a jump or double-jump, creating her own shortcuts through levels, Iris who can do quick dashes to cover some ground, and Proteus can send out a drone to mark nearby enemies and, if it marks anyone, can shock them too.

But again, the single players is really just an elevated training grounds for you to learn all the best ways that each hero can be used. All because the main meat of this game is it’s multiplayer mode. You and up to three other opponents can face off in a list of modes meant to see who has mastered what hero better.The multiplayer modes are broken down into to playlists : Core Stealth, and Casual Party, and each offers it’s own unique flavor to the playing experience.

In the Core list, you’ll get to play modes such as Survival where you need to be the last man standing at the end of a round, Zone Control which plays a lot like King of the Hill, asking you to control a specific zone for victory. Hunter is a score-tally where you get a point for each other hero you kill, while Beast Tamer has you taming wild beasts by being close to them to collect rewards.

Things are just as hectic in the Party list of modes, but these can be even more crazy, or have a weird twist to them. If you’re looking for crazy, Deadline will have you on a killing frenzy trying to soak up the most amount of kills before the time runs out. If wacky is more your style though, Carrier will have you trying to ride around the stage on a ball, while being fully visible and unable to defend yourself, or Land Grab which has you painting the square zones around the level in hopes of claiming the most territory.

There’s plenty of options on tap in Invisigun Reloaded, and they all offer a lot of fun and excitement. And yet, in the end, it was ironically the core elements of the game that had me unhappy the most. The grid-based movement of your character, combined with the always being invisible didn’t come off as the greatest feeling thing for me. Sure, you could always use the D-Pad to count off the spaces you’re moving, but in the middle of the fast-paced feel of a multiplayer match, that’s just not the easiest thing to do.

So this puts me in probably one of the weirdest spots I’ve been in writing a review. The game was fun, I enjoyed it and had a lot of fun with it in both single and multiplayer modes…but the main element of the game was easily my least favorite detail about it. In the end, it just might be safe to chalking it up to not meeting my standards. The fact that I could enjoy the game as a whole despite not liking something so crucial has to say something though…because that’s like saying you loved the Call of Duty multiplayer modes except for the fact of shooting guns. If it seems like something you could get used to though just by reading this, then by all means don’t hesitate to pick this game up.