A superhero, turn-based tactical game with flair, excitement and style coming in hot – but does Capes stick the superhero landing?
Talk about coming out of the gate strong – Australian team Spitfire Interactive’s debut title Capes is a hoot and I had an absolute blast with this one.
Let’s get the premise out the way. You control a team of superheroes as they work to save a city that has long considered them terrorists and enemies of this new state.
The villains won twenty years ago and have since gone about turning the city into a dystopian police-state with The Company as the force that turns the wheels.
Superheroes still crop up but are mercilessly hunted by The Company, which is where you and your band of vigilantes come in. Saving them before they get captured and working to take apart The Company.
Rather than dealing with the growing threat of dangers in the shadows, you play as the danger rising up from the underground base to overthrow the villains.
The enemy variety is excellent, new threats require a drastic change to dealing with them. Credit: Spitfire Interactive.
It isn’t all good news in Capes
So, let’s get the not so great out of the way.
The cutscenes with animations are clunky and lacking which is a shame because I was absolutely fine with their other cutscenes where pictures of the characters stand on either side of the screen doing little movements and talking to one another. The problem cutscenes honestly just ended up bugging me more than anything.
These sorts of cutscenes didn’t do much for me, often being janky.
Another issue is that whilst I liked the characters from a design and power/gameplay perspective, their own respective stories didn’t really resonate with me much. I absolutely appreciated the campy nature of them and the corny dialogue – It felt satisfying in context, and I appreciate when a game knows what it is. A very good opportunity to also praise the cast who took this attitude and ran with it.
On to the other elements I particularly liked:
The art style in Capes, particularly in mission and in some of the story telling is excellent. That cartoony and detailed mix that really stuck out. The character models and general graphics are good, and the overall aesthetics of the superhero characters is fun and pays wonderful homage to the comic-book superhero of the older X-Men comics.
This is equally matched by superhero abilities, everything from the flash of a teleport, blade dancing ultimate to the simple crystalline armour – might be simple, but its effective.
The artistic style is something I really enjoy in the game. Credit: Spitfire Interactive
Superheroes in Capes dominate the field
Which leads us to the superheroes themselves.
They are fantastic in Capes. Distinctive, powerful, excellent synergy and the upgrade path feels worthwhile.
The particular highlight of multiple superheroes is the synergy between them. Rebound – a teleporting superhero with blades who lines up backstabs for the highest damage – can teleport the crystalline defender Facet around as he limits his own movement when he armours himself up. In return, Facet can empower striker Rebound’s blades with crystal, increasing her attack power.
Hero powers are striking, powerful and varied. Credit: Spitfire Interactive
It sounds simple, but in a pinch such combinations can easily swing a battle if you manage to take out a particular threat that you might not otherwise have been able to.
The ultimate abilities are the highlight and they’re great and highly impacting. The sense of relief when Rebound clears out several enemies at once or Mindfire weakens and then barrages a single high-threat target off the field is palpable and they really do have the capacity to flip the mission on a dime.
Situations like these will require excellent use of the powers and ultimates to get out of. Credit: Spitfire Interactive.
Trying to save a key-witness from some pipe-wielding goons was possible because Facet’s lockdown ultimate came in clutch. Hero ultimates are great and feel really satisfying to build up and deploy.
The characters feel really strong in their own respective fields and yet the combinations between nicely link them together, but they all have a lot of powerful uses, and none feel weak at what they do.
Capes has a serviceable story and mission-structure
The missions in Capes are fairly standard, the kind of things you’d expect, but very passable. The secondary objectives, plus a bonus for getting them all in one go, are key to gain enough points to keep levelling up your characters. Some missions require you to put your heroes in more risk to try and take the strain off other objectives, which is where the defender heroes particularly shine.
Aside from the main missions are patrols, a side-mission to gain more XP. Further, you can also replay previous missions as “simulations” if you failed to get the secondary objectives the first time around.
As above, it won’t be breaking any story records, but it works, and it fits, and I was entertained enough by the gameplay and the enjoyable few story beats to keep going.
Mission structure is fairly standard, but its not boring.
Echoes of influence
You may at a glance consider this a game like XCOM or Midnight Suns, and it does share some similarities, but its also its own beast.
For a start, you just hit. No longer will a 98% chance to hit roll the 2% and leave you staring at an enemy in shocked disbelief as the shotgun blast missed it. Instead, a power will always connect.
Interactivity with the environment and other characters will also help you shave more health off enemies. Kicking people off of ledges or into other enemies outright kills or deals more damage respectively and environmental hazards are here, too. Especially the ever-present red barrel.
New powers and upgrades feel very worthwhile and strong.
Where this shines in particular is when you push an enemy into another superhero. This will cause them to double their attacks on them and highly encourages a variation of tight-knit and spread apart movement between your heroes. Yes you want to be near each other to line up attacks, but that makes you much more of a target to potential hazards and area of effect attacks some of the other enemy types use.
There’s no cover system, don’t think about traditional cover that you may have experienced in other tactical games – That’s what your defenders are for. There’s also a disarm mechanic to rid enemies of their handheld weapons, which means they must then go to pick them up again, costing them their action. This is a really neat mechanic and it makes a huge impact on incoming damage, especially later in the game, so its well worth doing.
A winning formula
Capes is a huge amount of fun and I’m so impressed with this being a debut title. Yeah, a lot of the team have a LOT of background experience, but this is a blast to play and Spitfire Interactive will be a team I’ll look at with a lot of attention going forward.
If turn-based tactical games are your jam, if superhero games give you that boost of enjoyment, this one’s well worth a shot.
Read our Senua’s Saga review here.
