Gemini: Heroes Reborn Review

Gemini: Heroes Reborn is an indie first person action game where you have telekinetic powers and the ability to jump back and forth between 2 different time lines 2008 and 2014. It is based on the Heroes TV series and was originally planned as a prequel to the reboot of the series Heroes Reborn hence the game's subtitle. Some of the developers used to work at Midway and some of them worked on PS2 era game Psi Ops which had a lot of similar abilities and you can see the influences here. You also have excellent climbing and parkour abilities which all work very well and you can see influences from many other similar games with superhuman abilities such as Bioshock, Dishonored and in terms of the free running parkour and platforming Mirror's Edge and Dying Light.

The game is made using Unreal Engine 4 and looks very impressive for a £11.99 indie game. Mechanically everything works very well though movement is a little ropey in places and at times can feel a little dated. It's clear that it has been made on a very tight budget probably due to the fact the show was cancelled and it's been stuck in development limbo for the past few years. If the show had aired and been successful this would probably have been published by some big company like Activision. It feels like an awful lot of work and passion has gone into the game due to the fact and can be felt whilst playing it that the developers have worked extremely hard to get it finished on a modest budget and there clearly is an awful lot of talent behind the game.

It has such interesting gameplay where say you are in 2008 and are about to face a group of enemies. You can grab one and jump to 2014 ad simply leave him there. Just about every object in the environment can be picked up and hurled at them or you can even catch their bullets in mid air and launch them back at them. In many instances you can simply sneak past undetected if you wish though some areas require you to kill one of the guards as he has a key needed to open a door. If you're surrounded by enemies you can jump to the alternate time period and peek into the other to plan your next move. Enemies are your standard military types with some later in the game being able to block some of your abilities but don't really get any different than that. The platforming and parkour is excellent and a lot of fun as well as providing a bit of strategy being able to assault enemies from on high. The story is good enough to keep everything ticking along but is nothing extraordinary. There are some interesting puzzles that use your unique abilities that are a lot of fun to play through as well.

The game lasts roughly 6 hours so not a bad length for the price and although it at times still feels like a half baked cake for the £11.99 it's still well worth your while and one of the most technically impressive indies I've seen. Perhaps if they had dropped the Heroes license altogether and gave it a few more years in the pot to really flesh it out we would probably be looking at an amazing AAA game. As it is though it's a moderately priced game that has a lot of great ideas, made by a bunch of talented passionate people and was a pleasure to play and I was most pleasantly surprised at the quality of the game for £11.99 it's an absolute bargain!
7/10

It is available now for Xbox One download, PC on Steam and a PS4 version is coming soon.