Gravity Rush Review—Falling into the right places

JapanStudio’s ‘Gravity Rush’ is a unique title. It combines the seamless free-roam environment of games like ‘Grand Theft Auto,’ and the manga-style story telling of titles like ‘The World Ends With You.’ Although Gravity Rush sticks out as one of the premiere users of the PlayStation Vita’s sixaxis, the game often has a tendency of making the player dizzy and confused in the heat of battle due to the “gravity shift” feature during gameplay. Despite some of it’s more concerning downfalls, the game gets its main premise entirely right.

Gravity Rush
Developer: JapanStudio (SCE)
Price: $39.99
Platforms: PlayStation Vita (reviewed)

JAPANSTUDIO: The gravity shift mechanic is a real charmer and oddly addicting, even if it can dizzy you out.

The story is simple: defeat the evil enemy known as the “Nevi,” protect the people from the coming gravity storms, and restore some semblance of balance to what appears to be a post-apocalyptic city. Players will take control over protagonist Kat, a girl who has awoken in the floating town of Hekseville with no memory of why she is there; she runs into a black cat which allows her the ability to shift gravity.

The majority of the game is spent traversing through multiple districts of this floating city, collecting “precious gems” to help increase Kat’s various abilities and power levels in a very role-playing-game-type fashion. The player completes simple tasks here and there, indicated by a green way-point, to increase Kat’s maximum stat limit; typically they are challenge missions, such as time attacks. Traveling to the red way-points will activate a plot mission. Between missions, you have the option to warp through the city’s sewer system, back to your home, allowing you to save, change costumes, or warp to various sewer openings you’ve discovered in your time in the city.

Being upside down has its upsides.

If there’s one thing that can be said about this game, it’s that it immerses the player incredibly well based on gameplay alone. The gravity shift function is very accurate with realistic physics that allows the combat system to truly flourish. Kat possesses numerous attacks at her disposal, but not too many, to keep things fresh for the player. Some attacks and powers are more preferred in most situations over others, but they are all beneficial to be used, making the combat system consistent and never boring. Even though the gravity shift function is great fun, it’s not uncommon for it to confuse players or make them slightly dizzy from the fast paced action; those with vertigo might want to steer clear. To make matters a little more complicated, sometimes the in-gravity combat gets a little messy and hard to control. The game tries to make up for this by almost having an auto lock-on, but it doesn’t completely do its job most of the time with how unpredictable the enemies can be at times.

Extra costumes are available through downloadable content packs. There are numerous planned out over the next month, including June 26, July 10 and July 24.

PlayStation Vita has no problems running this title. Load screens between cutscenes can be a bit of a pain at times, but they happen quite far and few between given how often the player will be free-roaming. As a result, the art style is also top notch; it’s cell shaded and easily recognizable. Cutscenes feature a manga-style which is easy to follow, even offering you to backtrack during the scenes if you missed some text bubbles by accident.

The music in the title doesn’t make much of a presence, which is too bad, as that would have been even more fantastic to add to this games repertoire of gameplay and storytelling.

The Final Word: ‘Gravity Rush’ will not be a game forgotten in the PlayStation Vita’s to-be library of games. The combat and storytelling is solid and involves the player immensely, despite some of the more troubling mechanics of the gravity shift feature. The physics involved are top notch. What the game has, it gets right, and makes up for a missing soundtrack that could have completed the puzzle. Players should love this game from start to finish, and with downloadable content already slated through the coming months, it should last you a decent amount of time. Not that it matters, because you’ll spend months alone trying to familiarize yourself with the truly colossal overworld.

–  MonsterVine Rating: 4 – Good