Way back in the olden days and by that, I mean ten plus years because anything that is more than a decade old is a classic now, there existed a console known as the PSP. Otherwise known as the Playstation Vita. It was a successor to the Playstation Portable, and a console created by Sony to compete against Nintendo who for the longest time had been dominating the handheld market. They continued to do so with the Switch until Steam unveiled the Steam Deck which is basically the Switch but better, without stick drift, can run three decades worth of games, and run some of the latest titles. It can run God of War for lord’s sake. I’m not trying to make it look like one is better. I still very much play on my Switch, but the point being that there was a reason no one tried to compete with Nintendo in the handheld market. Playstation attempted to do so twice and while the consoles were well received, they were considered commercial failures. However, these two had a nice handful of unique games and one of which is considered an underrated gem. Gravity Rush, an action RPG developed by Japan Studio.
Yes, the Japan Studio who helped with the making Bloodborne and Ghost of Tsushima. What I’d personally consider two of the greatest Playstation games ever made. The Japan Studio who were shut down by Sony recently, so don’t expect to see any of the projects they were involved in getting ported to modern hardware. Which is a shame, because some of their games were truly unique. Gravity Rush was directed by Keiichiro Toyama who played a major part in the original Silent Hill and the Siren series. He was a man well praised for horror, so it was shocking to find out his next big game wouldn’t be survival horror focused but instead this anime adventure with stylized visuals and action. He wanted to shift away from horror and experiments. Gravity Rush was the most creative game he ever had in mind, but development for the game was troubling. The devs had to make a game where the protagonist could shift in any direction easily, and the game’s performance struggled due to the constant shifting around and speed of the character. The plan was to put Gravity Rush on the PS3, but they found porting it to the PS3 difficult and decided to wait for when console hardware was better.
Eventually the Vita rolled and the team realized Gravity Rush could benefit from being played in handheld form as pointing the tablet in any direction could allow for trajectory and movement to be much easier. They condensed the game down, figured out how to get it running, and surely enough Gravity Rush was finally released. How did Toyama’s departure from horror go? It went okay. The game was well received for the most part, but major complaints came down to how the game controlled and performance. There were some players who found Gravity Rush hard to get into, because of how different it was from other games at the time. Putting the game on the Vita didn't help out entirely, because sales for Gravity Rush weren’t all too great and nobody wanted to buy an expensive handheld console just to play one game. Support for the Vita was canceled pretty early and Gravity Rush became a distant memory. That wasn’t until Japan Studio teamed up with Bluepoint to develop a remaster for the Playstation 4. A console that ran the game much smoother and could process more detailed environments. The game was a little more successful then and was good enough for Sony to greenlit a sequel, which Japan Studio developed alongside the remaster and released in 2017. That is the full legacy of Gravity Rush until Japan Studio was shut down. The legend of a game that wanted to shine for a bit and got to.
I’ve seen a lot of people call Gravity Rush one of the most underrated games of all time. It does something unique compared to a lot of Triple A games, and I respect games that are experimental rather than play it safe every single time. A bunch of old games went on sale recently including Gravity Rush, and seeing how the video game industry is imploding on itself now I thought it’d be a great opportunity to talk about some classics and remind everyone why gaming is great. So almost a decade after its original release how well does Gravity Rush hold up? Great for the most part. Gravity Rush is truly one of the most unique Playstation titles I’ve ever played. There’s a lot to love about this game, but the core principles on what makes the game great may not click for everyone. You either fall in love with Gravity Rush or get dizzy by what it’s attempting to do, and I use the description dizzying specifically because you need high endurance for what the game is doing at times. This is a hard game to recommend, and that’s ok. Let's talk about Gravity Rush and why it deserves your attention.
Story
You follow Kat, a young woman who has no recollection of who she is and how she got to where she is now. She awakens in a city known as Hekseville, a floating city located next to a strange environmental structure called the World Pillar. This game takes place in an alternate universe where magic is real, and mankind studied it in order to advance technology quickly. They made floating aircraft to traverse the skies and eventually built floating cities. That’s how Hekseville came to be, but recently chaos has begun to run amuck. Strange creatures called the Nevi began to emerge from the World Pillar and attack the citizens of the town. An anomaly known as the Gravity Storm emerged too and as the storm grew more violent parts of Hekseville were sucked into the storm. Being brought to a plain no one could reach, bringing dismay to those who could not see their loved ones ever again. Kat discovers she has gravity shifting powers while helping a man who nearly loses his son during a storm, but is ridiculed when it turns out a good chunk of the public blame “Gravity Shifters” for the ongoing storm.
Kat doesn’t know what to say during all of this. So much is going on through her mind, but she learns to stay calm and figure out what to do next. She begins by helping the locals out. Gaining their trust and respect as a town citizen. She makes a home for herself in the sewers and begins to look into the chaos going on. She befriends an officer named Syd, helps him with local crimes, encounters another Gravity Shifter, and eventually a man who calls himself a Creator. A godlike who has control of otherworldly powers and wants Kat’s help to bring lost parts of the city back. By opening up gateways to where the drifting parts of the city lie. With the help of her friends and a cosmic kitty providing Kat her powers, Kat will quickly rises up to become a hero.
Gameplay
Gravity Rush is a condensed open world action RPG where you shift around the world using the gravity shifting powers at your disposal, help the locals, collect items, fight enemies, and level up said items.The world is split up into four districts and each district is distinct from each other. With later environments containing more structures and sights to behold. You can traverse the world normally like you would in any open world game, or you can use your gravity powers as the game motivates you to. With the press of a button Kat will float in the air, and you point the cursor towards where you want to launch her to. You fly towards that surface, latch onto it, and can easily walk around it like if you were on the ground. You can shift towards another surface on the surface you are on, shift midway through flying, or just land on the ground. There’s a lot of freedom when it comes to momentum and even though it can take some time to get used to the world, it is fun and easy to traverse. It’s more efficient to fly anyways and rooftops often have the crystals you need to level up core stats.
Now Gravity Rush puts a pretty heavy emphasis on combat more so than you expect. There are two ways of dealing with enemies and you’ll have to switch between both often. You can attack them on the ground with basic attacks, or you can use your gravity kick. This is where you float in the air, target them, fly towards their direction, and kick them hard in the face. You can chain gravity kicks and you want to do this for foes who can fly or encounters where enemies are all over the place. You may even get the edge on them compared to just using normal attacks. I do have to mention that using gravity defying powers takes up energy. An energy meter drains the more you use these powers, and once the meter is empty you begin to fall. It only refills when you are standing on a surface, or in some cases midway through a fall. Use your powers wisely and know when to retreat and recover. As you collect crystals throughout your journey you can spend them on stats and upgrades. Core stats like health and energy, boosts to your attack power, or special skills which you unlock as you venture deeper into the game. As long as you take the time to collect every encounter in Gravity Rush should be manageable. Besides that, there’s not much else for me to say. The game has a simple core gameplay and does it well, and that’s all I can ask for. Hopefully you can stop the Nevi, return the lost parts of the city, and save the day.
Thoughts
Gravity Rush may have a few rough edges and certain aspects have begun to show their age, but overall, I’d say it’s still a great experience and I can’t think of any game like it. This is an exciting adventure from beginning to end, and there’s enough redeeming factors to help ignore the critical issues. The traversal and gravity shifting mechanics are great even though they take time to get used to. I played the Playstation 4 version and early on in the console’s lifespan they attempted to experiment with gyro controls. It’s like motion controls, but you tilt the controller to point in the direction you want. You have to do that a lot whenever you shift gravity, and even though you can use the right joystick to aim the camera there is no way to turn off the gyro controllers. This leads to a somewhat janky camera and trust me this isn’t the only way the camera betrays you. Sometimes it gets stuck in a wall, presses you against the back of an enemy, doesn’t let you turn around in time, and much more. There are moments where you latch onto a surface you had no intention to latch onto to begin with. Like there’s certain parts to buildings that stick out and instead of sticking to the surface of a wall I latch onto the tip of a balcony, fall off, and rocket to a direction I didn’t want to. I also didn’t like combat all that much, which is a shame for a game that puts a heavy emphasis on combat. Regular attacks feel finicky, lack impact, and dodging feels really weird too. The most viable option is to use the gravity kick, and even that has its own quirks. The targeting system doesn’t always work, and you end up flying past enemies. Only to then stop, aim at them again, and miss for some reason. The game isn’t frustrating or hard. Infact,t I’d say the game is really fair, but this constant shifting because targeting doesn’t work leads to dizziness. I had to take long breaks because my eyes were burning from the shifting.
Gameplay isn’t all too great, but I would still say Gravity Rush is fun. I like the ideas on display, and this is a game that is more than the sum of its parts. Targeting system is whack when needing to target smaller flying enemies or specific weak points, but when it works it’s very satisfying. It is fun to chain gravity kicks together and annihilate foes in rows. It’s fun to zip around the world with ease instead of having to walk everyone. It’s fun to walk along the bottom parts of every district and look at the abyss below. Making you wonder how the universe came to be or how any of this is possible. Collecting resources is easy and upgrading your stats is simple. There’s a category for each stat and they give a clear idea of what they do. You feel stronger by the end of the game, and the game encapsulates this perfectly with how you start off in the lowest district of the journey. Working your way up, building your reputation, and becoming a hero in the eyes of the populace. I like how Gravity Rush separates its world into four small districts. This was when open world games were more compact, and it’s refreshing to play a game where every district is unique and distinct thanks to good art direction. Speaking of which, I love the art direction for this game. It has this stylized look that blends 3D animation with anime visuals, and it allows every character and set piece to stand. I like how it uses color and despite how bleak the world is there is a sense of hope. That’s what this game is about. Hope for a better future. Hope to better myself as a person. Hope to see another day when the world is falling apart around you.
I like the story quite a bit, but I will say it may not be very well structured. There’s a mystery at the start of the game about who Kat is. What was her past and what’s her purpose in the world? You encounter all these peculiar characters and anomalies in the game. Uncovering their mysteries and what they can do. The world changes and you see it transform from a city wanting to reclaim what is lost to a dictator trying to twist the trust of the public. As I said, the game is exciting due to where it takes you next. You start in what I call the slums, then get taken to neon lit streets, a district with spiraling modern day towers, and at some point, are taken deep into the world to find what rut lies beneath. All of this is very interesting and I love it. However, the game forgets the central mystery at some point. I don’t think they ever explain where Kat came from or who she was before the events of the main game. I don’t think they ever explain what came before, and where the Nevi came from. They never try to resolve the big picture, and the ending sets itself up for a follow up which they did make. Maybe my opinions will change if I ever play the second game, but it’s loss in direction that may turn people off. However, I still like the story. The characters are great, and they pulled me along for the ride. The game is fairly cheap these days if you decide to buy it digitally and doesn’t take all too long to beat. My playthrough took six to seven hours, and that’s a perfect runtime. Any time more than that would have led to repetition, which this game tries to avoid. Gravity Rush is great. I very much enjoyed it, but it did leave a ton of room for improvement which the sequel took. It feels like the basis for what could’ve been something greater, and that’s ok. Series like Yakuza and Uncharted had rough beginnings, but with time they became well respected franchises. I wish Gravity Rush got that treatment. I give Gravity Rush an 8.5/10 for being pretty good.
This critique was written by the single man at Review on. Stay tuned for more content and feel free to check more reviews out over at my site!
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