The Digest: Zeit² may not be the single greatest revolution in side-scrolling shooters, it does bring some truly unique gameplay elements into the mix that are very much worth checking out. With the asking price of 800 Microsoft Points, it’s actually worth the price, as well!

THE FACT SHEET

RELEASE DATE: January 12, 2011
PUBLISHER: Ubisoft
DEVELOPER: Brightside Games
ESRB RATING: “E” for Everyone
GENRE: Arcade Shooter

PRODUCT OVERVIEW: Zeit² is a mostly traditional side-scrolling space shooter with an interesting twist: The ability to reverse time and literally be in two places at once. With a unique and innovative gameplay style and multiple game modes, Zeit² will have you hooked and coming back for more!

PRODUCT FEATURES:

• Six Exciting Game Modes
• Reverse and Fast Forward time to give yourself the advantage!
• Xbox LIVE Leaderboards

Traveling back and forward through time is a concept that everyone has always thought about. Why not tag team with the past version of yourself and double team the opposition?

This is one of the ideas driving the gameplay of Zeit², an Xbox LIVE Arcade game released by Brightside Games. A simple space shooter at heart, Zeit² isn’t as fast paced as you would expect. What defines the gameplay is the unique ability to reverse time and have a shadow version of yourself quickly fight by your side. You have part of the gameplay, and… well, that’s really the only thing keeping this from being just your average side scrolling space shooter.

That’s not to say Zeit² isn’t fun, it definitely is. The only problem is, once you get past the initial excitement and rush of the time travel mechanics, there isn’t much to see after.

Being able to travel back and forward in time isn’t the only thing Zeit² lets you use to take down foes. Your spaceship is also equipped with two alternate fire weapons, a giant laser cannon on the front, and an electrical shock which destroys any enemies within a specified, and thankfully lenient range. These weapons both use the same charge, meaning you won’t be able to use both. Carefully planning your usage of these weapons will be required to take full advantage of each weapon’s potential.

At any time, you can travel back in time up to 4.2 seconds. Once you exit, a shadowy figure will replicate your movement and firing of your main gun. While your shadow pal may not seem like he can do much else, he can be much more useful if you use him correctly.

If you fire any shots into your doppelganger, he’ll fire about eight shots straight out from inside him in a sunburst style formation, letting you take down a lot more than a single enemy. Eight for the price of one! Shoot enough into him, and he’ll emit a huge shockwave, eliminating any opposition caught in the blast. It takes a lot of shots to perform, remembering the path you previously took is key. You can also shoot your giant laser cannon into the shadow to split the laser shot into two parts, one going up and one going down, allowing you to take down any ships that happen to pass by, which is actually pretty cool, but hard to pull off.

What exactly will you be facing? Well… not much. There are only small differences between enemy types. There’s a big ship, a medium sized ship, and then small, faster ships. You’ll be able to determine how much health they have by the size of their segmented tails. There are also ships that are invulnerable until you travel back in time. Your one to four second timeframe after traveling back in time will give you a shot at taking down these enemy types.

There’s one major annoyance in the gameplay of Zeit².  It’s core to Zeit²’s gameplay, but after realizing how it works, you’ll wonder why it functions the way it does.

You see, your ammunition is reliant on your health. Every two or so shots will drain your health away by about 1%. While it isn’t too bad after learning that each enemy you take down replenishes said health, you’ll start to realize something else: There’s enemies that quickly drain your health as you pass by.

See, enemies with a blue aura around them will drain your health as well. With the majority of these enemies having this blue aura, it becomes uncontrollably chaotic when you’re trying to effectively take out the enemies while your health is being drained. Better yet, some of these enemies with the blue auras are the ones that you’ll need to reverse time to take out. It’s sometimes easier to let the enemy pass by, allowing him to drain your health than actually take him out. If you’re out of rewind juice, it’s literally impossible to stop a small enemy hiding in the alternate dimension from just strolling on by and taking a good chunk of health. All you can do is sit there and watch as he goes by.

When low on health, you’ll start to worry if something is even worth shooting anymore. Why take the risk of killing an enemy if you’ll die in the process? While you’re pondering this,

This nuisance only truly rears it’s ugly head in Arcade mode. So what about the other game modes?

They’re where the true fun in this game lies. While Arcade mode is fun, it’s more of a training for the other game modes. Score Attack mode lets the player replay levels within Arcade mode to see what’s the highest score you can set. Basic, but it works for leaderboards.

Time Limit mode sets you in a preset wave formation, and gives you two minutes to take down as many ships as you can. Survival is similar to any Horde/Onslaught style game mode you’ve seen. Enemies gets stronger as you progress, and the game ends when you die once. There’s no time limit in Survival.

Wave mode is unique to Zeit², and is one of the best gametypes in the game. The entire play area is divided up into a grid, with multipliers splitting up the space based on how far they were to the right side of the screen. Your goal is to rack up as many points as possible without letting a single enemy pass by you. Once an enemy reaches the left side of the screen, the game is over. Wave mode requires all your past experience in Zeit² and puts it to the ultimate test. Should you use your electrical shot to take out the enemies or will it be easier to simply run into a single enemy to blow it up, sacrificing your health but lining up your shots for the upcoming waves on enemies?  The health system actually makes Wave mode much more intense, relying on quick brainstorming of solutions to take down enemies.

Tactics is the other mode unique to Zeit². Unlike the rest of the game modes, games of Tactics only last about 30 seconds. When an enemy passes by you, he reappears on the right side as a tougher enemy, meaning more points. It’s up to you to decide if you want to take all the enemies out as soon as possible, or to let them pass by, risk them sapping your heath, and reappear on the right to give you more points. It’s a fantastic game mode, and definitely takes the most strategy of the bunch.

Challenge mode is a metagame style mode where you’re given a certain goal to achieve within a different game mode, and your score is then compared with any other friends that have completed the challenge as well. It’s a bit pointless when you could just compare the leaderboard scores of every other game mode instead, and reach the same goal.

Conclusion: While Zeit² may not be the best game you’ll play in recent memory, it’s definitely worth checking out. The game’s excellent time travel mechanics, while hindered by it’s health system, are still pretty nifty. The price point is perfect for the game, I might add. If it was 1200 Microsoft Points instead of 800, it might not even be worth your time. Thankfully, this isn’t the case with Zeit²!

Single Player: 3/5 | Multi-Player: N/A

Special thanks to Ubisoft for providing us with a copy of the game for review.