Heroes Reborn: Gemini Review

With the Heroes Reborn TV show being filmed in and around my hometown, I had a special place in my heart for its namesake game, Heroes Reborn: Gemini, despite the series not being renewed for another season. I’m happy to be able to say that fondness was not ill-placed.

Heroes Reborn: Gemini has you playing as Cassandra, a young woman on a journey to solve a family mystery. That search takes her and a friend, Alex, to an abandoned facility called the Quarry where Cassandra hopes to find information about her parents, whom she recalls very little.

Shortly after entering the facility, Cassandra stumbles upon a syringe that very quickly reminded me of a plasmid from BioShock. So, what would any normal girl do in this situation? Inject herself with it, of course! In true plasmid fashion, Cassandra earns herself the power of telekinesis to go along with her other newly acquired power: the ability to manipulate time by shifting through the past and present and also by slowing time down altogether. These abilities are integral to completing the game and will get more powerful as you progress – which is incredibly handy considering the ability to time shift is essentially the basis of the entire game.

Although game designer Brad Santos has stated that BioShock inspired Gemini, I feel it has more of a Portal feel to it when it comes to trying to get around obstacles or getting out of the way of gunfire. Personally, I love any type of game where I need to use my head to get out of situations. Perhaps that’s why I love the Portal series so much, and why I found HR: Gemini to be so incredibly frustrating; I like to be challenged but at times I felt the game was too instructional and less narrative. For example: you often have to use your time shift abilities to bounce between two points in time: the past, where the facility is still in tact and the present, where the facility has been abandoned. On multiple occasions, an action would need to be completed on the opposite timeline in order to progress the story and instead of letting you figure that out yourself, the game would verbally prompt you to shift to the other timeline in a not-so-subtle way (e.g.: “Hmm, I wonder what would happen if I shifted time before doing…”). Although I understand these prompts are in place to prevent some from losing interest, for me, they occurred too soon and took away from the puzzle aspect of this otherwise pretty decent adventure game.

Heroes Reborn: Gemini isn’t a very long game so you won’t have to worry about ditching friends for weeks while you finish it – and that, to me, is one of its best selling points: it’s quick and to the point. Each of its 30+ levels is just long enough that you can bang out a level or two when you don’t have a full night to dedicate to gaming without having to worry about losing interest or forgetting what your goal was between sessions.

Heroes Reborn: Gemini has a lot of combat, so it’s surprising that your only two weapons are time shifting and telekinesis. That being said, there’s something incredibly satisfying about the first time you realize you can use your telekinetic abilities to hold an enemy in front of enemy gunfire to kill him.

Overall, there isn’t much to complain about when it comes down to it; the good definitely outweighs the bad in this adventure game. If you are looking for a shorter game that will challenge you without breaking the bank account, I’d suggest giving Heroes Reborn: Gemini a try! It’s a decent cross between BioShock and Portal, and for only $14.99, how can you go wrong?

Have you played Heroes Reborn: Gemini yet? If so, leave a comment and let me know what your favorite parts were!