A lone survivor awakens in a strange world with nothing to aid her but an unknown voice and a powerful tool she doesn’t fully understand. In Twin Sector , you are that lone female, and you wield energy gloves that push and pull objects as you progress through underground tunnels to save humanity (or a portion of humanity) that still slumbers. Backstory as to who you are within the game is delivered via a long-winded speech by an unknown military operative prior to waking up after what I presume is called, or is similar to, cryo-sleep.

Despite the backstory, there’s something about saving children from a rock slide, and if I recall correctly, the voice of the computer that wakes you up refers to you as Number Nine. Since Number Nine is the only person who woke up from the AI’s distress call that something was wrong, she was awarded the task of aiding and fixing problems that crop up. These range from electric generators malfunctioning, to water levels needing to be lowered, to defense systems activating when they shouldn’t, etc.

You get a bit of help with this endeavor from your object-manipulating gloves. I’m not sure how they’re received, but they’re pretty cool. You then proceed through different areas via elevator to reach generators to turn them on and avert large-scale crises. The path to these places isn’t simply a flight of stairs, but broken doorways and long jumps you have to get past by mastering the energy gloves.

One of the gloves pushes objects away from you or pushes you away from the ground after a long fall, and the other pulls objects toward you or pulls you toward a wall. These objects can be anything from explosive canisters to large crates — or even enemies you pull yourself toward. This is the core mechanic puzzles are built around, and I felt like it worked well.

I’d be throwing explosive canisters at walls then timing jumps to avoid getting sliced up and killed by lasers blocking my path to the next tunnel or doorway. Although, during my jumping, running and dodging escapades, the one thing that annoyed me was loading times. I ran into a loading screen before a level, of course, but also after every time I died, things needed a bit to load. Add to that the need to start the level from the very beginning, and at times, I didn’t feel much like going through the same puzzle multiple times then die on the tougher area.

Granted, I did eventually get the hang of moving through rooms, but sometimes a misplaced jump or using too much glove energy would send me plummeting to my doom. Usually, though, that just made me be more careful with my aim and movements. So, if you were thinking you’d speed through Twin Sector after getting the controls down, at least keep a tab on your energy meter.

I didn’t exactly speed through the game, but I didn’t feel like I was a sloth in my pace. I found the puzzles were challenging but not impossible, and I enjoyed that. But, I felt pretty disconnected from the actual potential victims of my failure. The first cutscene shows the heroine, Nine, talking amongst a few army guys then get taken to cryo-sleep. Perhaps it’s an area I didn’t reach or a cutscene I didn’t access, but the immediate peril of a large mass of people I couldn’t see didn’t reach me as much as I thought it should. I hope the gloves didn’t suck away my emotions.

Probably not, since I was compassionate for my dying character as I fell down an elevator shaft and smoosh, dead, then reloaded. But, I felt like maybe the story should’ve been intertwined with the puzzles a bit more, that maybe I should see the large group of survivors I was trying to save now and then. I liked the voice of the AI, but a computer wasn’t the reason I was trying to keep the water levels down (though I doubt the computer would very much appreciate a bath).

One of the things I really enjoyed about Twin Sector was its emphasis on thinking, not twitching fingers. With the first-person view and the powers of the gloves, I’m sure more baddies could’ve been thrown in for a battle royale of robots, lasers, guns, ninjas, monkeys or any manner of formidable foe. But, the gameplay was centered around using the gloves to discover, explore, help and, in the end, make you think.

I might’ve grumbled about the load times or the death and return to start moments, but I did enjoy Twin Sector as a puzzler that had a decent pace. And, I have to say who wouldn’t love to fly off of walls with super gloves, really? I would’ve loved to have seen multiplayer and throwing exploding boxes at other players, but I suppose that sort of thing will have to wait for another day. For now, enjoy leaping through tunnels and saving your fellow humans from a grim fate, aided by powerful gloves of awesome. Just watch that first step off the edge when you do it.