First comes the alien invasion. Then comes loss and imprisonment. And then it’s…zero G? Namco bends gravity — and expectations — with Inversion, a brand-new shooter that turns the genre on its head.

Everything in Inversion begins with one big bang. An alien force violently seizes control of your city, forcibly moving citizens to internment camps. In all the ruckus, your wife is murdered and your daughter is stolen from you. Then you wake up and realize you’re now just another cog in the prison-camp wheel. But you’re about to break out — and you’re not alone. You have support. But the minute you step outside camp walls, you discover that your world is…different. And it’s this “difference” that gives Inversion its name.

When Aliens Attack

At the heart of the game lies a mystery that kept tugging at us: Who are these “aliens” and what are they doing to Earth? They look human — if all of us were tattooed linebackers, that is — but there’s something off about them. They use what looks like standard weaponry, but these guns do things that terrestrial firearms can’t. And ever since they invaded your city, the world has reacted in very strange ways.

And this is your starting point. When Inversion begins, you know as much as your character, 28-year-old cop Davis Russell, does — i.e., not much. Lucky for you, he’s got the firearm skills to pay back some wife-murdering bills with the Lutadores, as the invaders are known. You also have back-up in the form of Leo Delgado, Davis’ former neighbor who also lost loved ones in the initial attack and was instrumental in helping you break out of the internment camp.

Then There Were Two

From the moment you claim freedom outside of the prison, Leo is your right-hand man in that he can also be your co-op partner over Live, where you and a friend can play through the entire game as a team. You’ll have to rely on each other for cover from enemy attacks. In one example we saw, you both have to cross a rickety beam to reach an open door on the other side of a platform. Problem is, only one of you can cross at a time, and once you get to the “safe” zone, Leo’s caught under fire trying to join you, so you’ll need to take out the assaulting enemies so he can proceed safely.

In other scenarios, working with a friend can be as simple as giving them a leg up to peek over a high wall or even taking separate routes through areas to meet a specific objective. One of the more harrowing examples we saw involved a sprawling courtyard full of hollowed-out cars, trash…and Lutadore forces. Pinned down with a few resistance fighters (only a handful of the population has managed to avoid imprisonment since the invasion), you have to find a way to reach the stronghold on the far end and eliminate the big bad Lutadore manning the turret there.

So what’s a helpless little human to do? Use your surroundings to your advantage. Well, that and your bitchin’ newfound powers, which leads us to what may be the game’s biggest mystery: gravity.

Light as a Feather

The turret scenario takes place a good ways into Inversion — far enough that you’ve defeated your first big boss and scavenged a backpack-like contraption called a Grappler. This device manipulates the gravity around certain objects; testing it on a pile of trash, you’re able to suspend everything from discarded wads of paper to globular puddles of water in mid-air. Why should you care if you can levitate litter? Well, it’s not what you levitate, but how you use it.

In that tense courtyard battle, your powers will let you levitate cars and other objects to serve as temporary shields. In our demo, Davis was able to hustle behind a car for cover, then use his Grappler to suspend it in front of him as he made his way toward the adversary on the turret. Meanwhile, Leo provided him with cover fire, downing foes distracted by Davis’ slow shuffle forward. Of course, since every object you use as cover is destructible — from cars to cement blockades — you’ll need to swap shields whenever possible to stay protected from the constant hail of gunfire.

But using heavy shields with your Grappler is only one way of exploiting your gravitational “pull.” Remember those puddles of water? If you shoot them, they disperse — a perfect solution to fire blockades. Getting creative with your abilities is probably the only way to truly best the physics-based conundrums of Inversion's upside-down world.

Zero Tolerance

With the Lutadores pounding the pavement around town, something’s gone all wacky with the planet — in other words, you’re not the only one messing with gravity. In fact, Davis and Leo will stumble into areas that Namco dubs Vector Change and Zero-Gravity Anomalies.

Vector Change refers to events that happen spontaneously in the gameworld. One minute, you and Leo are cruising through an open parking lot next to a skyscraper; the next, you’re walking on the side of the building with the sky on one side and the asphalt on the other. And these changes can keep on happening, signaled only by a rumbling and a strange sort of dust storm…and next thing you know, you’re gunning down enemies on the ceiling.

In Zero-Gravity Anomalies…well, the name says it all, really. You’ll enter pockets of the city where gravity is non-existent and you have to float your way from floating object to floating object, swapping up and down to maintain cover from foes trapped in the same zone. You’ll be able to slowly propel yourself to reach different areas, but situations get particularly sticky when you’re faced with 360 degrees of attacks and cover.

When you manage to reach an area of normal gravity, you can use your Grappler to push objects into the anomalies — shoving, say, a gas-filled barrel at pursuers or simply tossing bad guys around.

Playing with the physics of weightlessness should be one of Inversion's strongest suits…and one of its big mysteries. Figuring out why the world has gone nuts — on top of who the Lutadore are and where they’ve taken your daughter — is ample bait to hook us for further reveals of Inversion.