First Person Sadism
Impulsion is undoubtedly a game that will appeal to certain gamers, but even those it appeals to will find certain mechanics of this game to be hard pills to swallow.
Impulsion is a first person speed running game. Your goal is always to get from one end of a level to the other as quickly as possible, but there is no penalty for going slowly other than a low grade, which makes the skill floor relatively low and the ceiling awfuly high. The gimmick that sets this game apart from similar titles is it's dual guns. Left click will fire a blue shot which will form a bubble that speeds up whatever enters it, as well as allow you to jump much further. Right click and you will fire a red projectile that slows down whatever enters it and gives you a single extra jump upon entering it.
These two guns, along with level obstacles is everything you'll be interacting with in this game, and the difficulty ramps up incredibly fast. For those people looking to show off their skills, getting the achievements of completing later levels is sure to peak their interest. However, this game has a few things that make slamming your head against it over and over again more of a slog than an enjoyable endeavor.
First, there is a narrator who speaks in every level, and has something to say every time you die. You'll be restarting so quickly that you'll never hear what he has to say, but it's a little grating to here a voice line call you an idiot over and over again. Once or twice, or doing it in a game where death doesn't occur much can be fun, but a game that asks you to try sections dozens of times to overcome them makes this mechanic pretty annoying.
On top of that, there are two core issues I have with the actual mechanics. First, because this is done in first person, it's difficult to gauge your characters hit box, so you'll be running into obstacles you though you had avoided a LOT until the invisible hit radius finally clicks for you, which may never happen for some people. Second, the game utilizes gun like objects that fire projectiles at you. Often these projectiles are fired too quickly for it to be possible to avoid, so you have to hit them with the red shot to slow them down and allow you to bypass them. The issue is two-fold. On the one hand, the intended method of handling them is to aim, fire, and hit them at just the right time for you to be able to slip through their shots. They don't fire at consistent rates, so this will be a trial by fire each time you enter a new level/section. Alternatively, when you hit them with a red orb, their fire rate is instantly reset, which means they can no longer fire for a short period. This means that instead of trying to avoid them with perfect timing and setups, you can simply mash them with red projectiles to completely halt their firing.
My issue is that neither of these options is fun. Yes, it is an interesting obstacle in theory, but I think simply turning them off when hit would test the skills the game wants to test without adding a layer of luck/mashing.
On top of the mecahnical issues I have with the game, I find the setting to be very bland and boring. The music isn't interesting, after the first 3 levels, you've seen everything the game has to show you visually, now you just have more and more difficult obstacles to overcome.
Again, I'm sure that this game will appeal to certain demographics, but unless you're someone who LOVES hitting your head against a wall over and over again, or you want to prove something to people, I don't think you're going to like this game.
