Have you ever been playing a twin-stick shooter and thought, “Man, would this game seriously rock if it had tons of gear and progression systems?” If so, read on because Reality Break may be just what you need.
Rooty-tooty looty shooties are by no means rare, seeing as how the Borderlands series, Destiny, The Division, and several others are among the most popular titles out there. Reality Break combines all of the adrenaline of seeing something explode into piles of colorful loot with the top-down gameplay of a twin stick shooter, and it tasks you with a time looping story that gives you great control over your loot- and your destiny.
Plot Ahoy!
Reality Break, which is now available for the PC through Steam, follows the story of one of two pilots that players are able to name. I chose the female pilot, named her Bingus, and then set off into the stars. The tale of Bingus begins with a damaged space craft and a suspicious job from her oldest friend to bring back some old space artifact. After doing a few missions and even installing the artifact into the ship, Bingus is told to scan the Fate Core she found at some science lab out in the space boonies. Unfortunately, this does not go well. The Fate Core explodes, killing Bingus and everyone around her.
Bingus then wakes back up, right at the start of the tale all over again with a real once more, with feeling type of cold open to Reality Break. Players then follow the events of their chosen pilot’s story as some of the same details unfold again, but when a pivotal moment is reached, players can literally rewrite reality to make the events more favorable, like not exploding this time.
The story of Reality Break is told over the course of multiple cycles, with players getting further and further into the story each time before tragedy befalls them. Lots of interactions will have new dialogue and new moments for players to rewrite reality to allow them to progress for the next time, but there’s a handy skip button if the dialogue isn’t why you’re playing a game like this.
Review Notes
If you’ve ever played a twin-stick shooter, then you should have a solid handle on how Reality Break controls. You move with the left stick and aim your primary weapon with the right analog stick. The rest of the buttons can be used for either special pilot abilities you unlock after the first cycle, or for your spaceship’s dash which can help you avoid enemies and their projectiles. It can also be used for your powerful secondary weapons. You unlock new abilities over the course of the first few hours with Reality Break, which lets you gradually learn the controls while you bash your enemies into piles of sweet, sweet loot.
The loot is really a major draw to Reality Break as there’s so much you can equip to your ship, and many of the components you find will have different part types, abilities, and passives that can help you ascend to new heights. Equipping a different propulsion module, for example, can change your ship’s dodge to a teleport or to a speed booster that will let you get across maps quickly. You also have a decent variety in primary and secondary weapons, as you can use beam weapons, gatling guns, or a satellite laser from the Reality Break equivalent of a Death Star.
You can encounter weaponry and ship components that are way too large for your ship to use, but that’s where rewriting reality comes in. For a small cost of Fate Pulses that can be acquired from destroying powerful enemies, you can resize parts you get from destroying large, galactic weapon installations so they can be equipped on your ship. This feature doesn’t stop there, as you can also boost your gear by spending Fate Pulses, sometimes even allowing you to increase their rarity or select different bonuses too. You can even craft new gear and get your weaponry analyzed by the lab to add new, powerful passive bonuses to your various ship parts.
Each time you unceremoniously die in space due to story developments, you’re rewarded with Reality Points based on how much you accomplished during your run, and you can spend those points to unlock a metric ton of new abilities from three different skill trees. There’s a lot of customization in Reality Break, especially considering that every talent you can unlock in these skill trees has exclusive upgrades that requires you to pick one of two options.
You can freely grind and completely customize your experience with this title, which is phenomenal for both enjoyment and accessibility. The further you get into Reality Break, the more new features there are to unlock, and you’ll soon be unlocking new Aptitudes. The Aptitudes give a variety of passive bonuses for different play styles, unlocking powerful bonuses in the Codex, and cranking up the difficulty on side missions to really boost your loot stage to find rarer and more powerful items.
It should be noted, however, that Reality Break does have some performance issues as it currently stands. You wouldn’t know by looking at it, but when its action gets hot and heavy, the frame rate can fall into the 20s even on systems running an AMD 5800X3D and nVidia RTX 4080 Super. There is apparently a fix on the way for this, but at the time of this writing, it’s certainly worth a mention. It does look quite nice for a top-down shooter though, and you’ll have your eyes drawn to all the pretty neon colors while you cut your way through a variety of enemy spacecraft.
TLDR
Reality Break is a lovely mishmash of twin stick shooter gameplay with looter shooter elements, and its labyrinthine levels of customization can keep you busy for quite a number of hours. The story is pleasant and simple, and getting further after each death allows players to buy more upgraded talents for the next run, which makes the progression seem fun and interesting. If you enjoy twin-stick shooters that are more on the casual side and use RPG elements to just inundate you with new items, then Reality Break may be for you.