Super Time Force Ultra Game Review (PC)

Single Player Co-op Chaos

Super Time Force Ultra by Capybara Games is a love letter to retro gaming injected with a modern twist — you control time to play alongside past versions of yourself. You spawn ever more copies of yourself to retry tricky jumps, reach timed switches, and defeat bullet-sponge enemies until the screen is littered with dozens of characters and effects. It’s messy and sometimes overwhelming, but rarely frustrating as you have ample opportunities to pause time and rethink your approach. The game does an excellent job balancing difficulty and player skill, encouraging you to master it on your own terms time.

The 1 Hour Review

Super Time Force Ultra charms you from the get go with a crisp pixel art style, bouncy chiptunes soundtrack, and hilariously cheeky writing. It’s a very self-aware game, parodying 80s action movies, internet culture, and classic gaming tropes. The commander of the Super Time Force (STF) has two – yes, two – eyepatches because he’s just too manly. There are references to cat videos and people say “LOL” in conversation. The intro tutorial is a jab at how games expect you to just barely figure out the buttons before being “completely prepared for real life threats”. Within the first few minutes you know you’re in for a fun time.

After getting primed on the basics of jumping, shooting, and controlling time with time outs you get thrown into your first few missions. It can feel a little stressful as you have typically 60 seconds to clear a mission and getting killed while trying to rush through isn’t uncommon. Thankfully it’s easy to progress through the early game with some great level design providing direction on what to do. Lots of bullets flying in without cover? Use the shield. Enemies out of reach across a wall? Use the sniper. Mini-boss is taking way too long to kill? Rewind a few times and summon a whole squad to gun him down. You start to see hints of how the game will eventually layer more and more complex scenarios to squeeze out every bit of your characters’ abilities. You also begin to break habits drilled into you from countless other side-scrollers. Purposely dying, rewinding time, then saving your doomed character to absorb his abilities feels counter intuitive at first. But it’s a fresh take on item pickups where you control the drop location when you need them. By the time you fight the game’s first real boss, you start to naturally see opportunities where time outs should happen.

The 3 Hour Review

Something dawns on you. You realize time outs aren’t just for redoing mistakes and getting fire support. Your control of time allows you to simultaneously explore multiple paths in a mission. Classic side scrolling games would have you go through each branching path in a level then backtracking to take the other paths. Super Time Force Ultra turns this notion on its head. Instead, you should play through a branching path completely to its dead end, rewind all the way back to the fork in the road, then explore a different path while being confident that your previously recorded selves would get everything in the other branch. This technique helps save lots of time to complete missions while collecting all bonuses. The “aha” moment comes relatively early after the beginning stages and it opens up strategies significantly.

You’ll likely often think to yourself: “this will look awesome in the replay.”

You’ve also seen several after-mission replays by now, which play out the entire mission run in real time without all the time out menu pauses. It gets especially cool when you see multiple characters all coordinating their skills in bigger battles like bosses or enemy waves. It’s a satisfying reward for overcoming each mission’s challenges, like a director watching his final scene edits. However the feature is a few steps away from being really great. You can’t rewind or fast forward during the replay which is a bit odd considering you have that ability while playing. It’s also a little unfortunate that you can’t pan around the stage if you have your characters spread out in separate areas all performing different objectives. Regardless, you’ll likely often think to yourself: “this will look awesome in the replay.”

After collecting a handful of new characters the STF becomes a legitimate, but oddball, fighting force. There’s a skateboarding dinosaur that spits poison goo and a living poop that has explosive farts. But with the exception of a couple most of them feel like filler content. They’re certainly fun to play as and experiment with, each bringing their own personality and attacking style. Just don’t expect any new strategic depth to clearing missions. It would have been interesting to see characters that could amplify or support others’ abilities, possibly making way for new platforming areas with hidden secrets or hitting previously out of reach enemies for bonuses. In games like Mega Man X, obtaining new powers would encourage exploration of previous levels which in turn granted even more powers. Having at least a few characters be used for this kind of replay incentive would have made Super Time Force Ultra‘s missions feel less linear. Instead of simply getting from A to B as fast as possible, you could discover how to get from A to C and D and E with multiple character skills before rushing to finish at B.

The 5 Hour Review

The final area is unlocked after clearing all of the available missions at the stage select screen. You’ve dived into Atlantis, protected dinosaurs from falling meteors, and jumped into the far Fifth Element-esque future. Your skills are sharp, ready to take on anything. Which is good, because the showdown with the main baddie Dr. Infinity is a true test of your time manipulation, platforming, and twitch shooting skills. You’ll rewind time so much that the full cast of 30+ characters are all running and gunning everywhere. This can be a challenge in and of itself, making it difficult to locate the position of the character you’re currently controlling as it gets lost in the smattering of pixel sprites. It never gets so bad that you can’t eventually sort out what you’re doing, but it can be frustrating. After the entire STF focus-fires the last boss into oblivion you’re treated to a ridiculously cheesy ending (in a good way) that caps off the main adventure. You may have the urge to replay stages to gather all the collectibles and get better clear times. Before you can jump back in though, the game throws you one more bonus. And it’s a good one.

It’s a gleeful, visceral experience

The credits finish rolling and you see a blazing message across the screen: Ultra Force! You’re granted super powerful versions of all your characters that deal massive damage for a limited time. One Ultra Force member has the power of several characters combined, even being able to solo some bosses easily. It’s a gleeful, visceral experience that reaches its climax with an all-too-appropriate self-destruct explosion that wipes out any enemies foolish enough to be nearby.

The 7 Hour Review

After getting your fill of the main game you can start to tackle Super Hardcore Mode. This is undoubtedly the most challenging way to play Super Time Force Ultra. When a character dies you are prevented from selecting it again unless you perform a time rewind and rescue it. This completely eliminates the normal mode play style of treating your characters as sacrificial lambs. Brute force zerging strategies don’t work. It’s unforgiving, with pinpoint precise platforming and dead eye accurate shooting required to finish missions. Sometimes a bad mistake can destroy an entire mission’s progress. Getting your shield guy killed in an unreachable location can prove disastrous before large firefights. What’s more, using the awesomely powerful Ultra Force is a much riskier choice as it is impossible to save these characters from death (due to the self-destruct). You’re basically trading unmatched firepower with the permanent loss of a character for that mission. With extreme skill it’s still possible to complete missions with the loss of a few characters, but this mode demands the best execution you can muster. Super Hardcore is right.

If you want to take a break from Super Hardcore Mode, you can check out the Helladeck. Inside is an assortment of challenge levels with a restricted number of time outs and character choices. It’s a good way to change up the gameplay as the Helladeck levels feel more like puzzles. Instead of simply blasting your way through missions you actually have to bend time to reach several checkpoints. These are usually hidden across deadly obstacles, behind switch-controlled doors, and guarded by moving enemies. It’s a fun alternative to replaying the main missions over and over, but the Helladeck levels themselves have no replay value once you complete them.

Super Time Force Ultra is a real treat from start to finish. The gameplay never evolves beyond what’s presented to you in the early game, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s a well-designed, thoroughly enjoyable romp that epitomizes what being a video game is all about. If a sequel was made that expanded even further on its concepts it just might be one of the best side scrolling shooters ever.

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