Gravity Rush is a really unique game. Well, in some ways. It’s an open world game and the progression structure is the usual for those types of games, you go to an objective point and start a mission, whether that’s a story mission, a side mission, or a time trial. You level up your character with the currency you pick up in the world and get as rewards, you fight some monsters, navigate large open areas, fight some bosses, then the game ends, and after that it lets you play around in the world. Pretty standard stuff. What makes this game stand out from the rest is the art, music, the interesting world setting, and above all, an incredibly unique movement system.

The character you play as, Kat, wakes up in a town with amnesia and quickly learns she has powers to manipulate gravity. Pressing R1 makes her levitate in place, and pressing R1 again while levitating make you fall forward into whatever direction you have the camera pointed at. You don’t actually have the ability to fly, you actually just change the direction you fall in. This fact alone makes movement in environments more complicated. If you want to get on a platform above your head, you don’t get to just turn on a fly mode and steer around above you or something, you have to fall forward, stop, aim the camera up, fall up, stop, aim the camera back toward the platform, and fall again. Now for some people they might feel that this kind of movement is a hassle and not really necessary, but it’s that level of complication that makes it so interesting to me. Simple maneuvers become an exercise in efficiency, spatial understanding, and in understanding the subtleties of her powers, such as the momentum of her falling speed. You have to learn how to even do basic movements, just as the character herself has to learn how to use her powers. So while I, like most, don’t particularly like the amnesiac hero trope, it’s actually put to decent use here as you really feel like you and the character are both learning together.

So, that’s basic movement, but in addition to stopping and starting gravity with R1, you have a bunch of other abilities that allow you to tweak your movement in different ways. If you hold X while you have gravity active(your gravity powers, not the game’s natural gravity) you will fall faster. If you hold any direction on the stick you can adjust where you fall without changing the actual gravity. If you tap R2 with any direction held while gravity is active, you can do an evade that both dodges attacks and can function as a course correction since you can dodge laterally in any direction. That is actually the main ability I use to reach ledges that are above me, but too high to jump, and too low to waste time using the method with R1 I described earlier. Finally, by pressing R2 and L2 together on the ground, there’s an ability called Gravity Slide that aims gravity at a 45 degree angle down so any flat surface becomes down hill. Which basically just means it acts as a sort of run or dash ability. The physics of it aren’t that simple though, when you turn you drift pretty wide so it really is like sliding around. If you let go of just one shoulder button, you slow down, allowing you to make tight turns, then just press the button you released back down to re-accelerate.

You have a plethora of movement options and they are all really fun to use, learn, and master. Playing the time trial challenge missions especially help show you the potential the game has in movement. That aspect of the game is incredibly engrossing.

However, the game definitely has it’s problems. Combat in this game is very simple. Square while grounded allows you to do a kick combo attack, and R2 plus any direction lets you dodge, just like when you have gravity activated. Pressing square while gravity is activated lets you do a Gravity Kick, which falls toward wherever the camera is pointed, just like starting gravity with R1. It’s quite powerful, has a bit of lock-on tracking, and has a pretty sizable range so it is your go-to attack for most enemies and situations. Gravity sliding also has an attack ability, by simply sliding near an enemy, Kat will automatically initiate a powerful kick attack. It’s about as strong as the Gravity Kick so it’s good for groups of grounded enemies and takes them out pretty quickly. Pressing and holding Circle generates a gravity field that picks up items within range. Pressing Circle again will throw an item you’ve picked up. This ability is not super necessary, but there are both armored and flying enemies in this game and generally using your Gravity Kick on them is not very effective, but throwing items at them is. Thrown items break armor in one shot, and they generally are large enough to hit flying enemies quite easily. Lastly you have 3 different types of special moves, all activated with the Triangle button. One is like a super Gravity Kick that drills through single enemies and has really powerful homing, the next generates rocks that continually barrage enemies form a distance, and the last is a wide range area attack centered on Kat.

Sounds good right? Well, in some cases and especially early on, it is actually. The Gravity Kick and Slide attacks look awesome, have great feedback, feel powerful and are really useful. But the problem in most cases is they’re just too useful. There’s only a few enemy types you would use the normal ground combo on as it has very little vertical range and it doesn’t do as much damage as quickly as Gravity Kick can in most cases. Throwing items is not very convenient both in the time it takes to execute, and the time it takes to find some items to throw. It’s a good idea but I feel like you should be able to throw items while picking them up or allow her to generate things to throw from anything laying around instead of just specific types of items. Maybe even letting you pick up enemy shots to throw them back or something. The super attacks are extremely powerful and useful, but too much so. They recharge based on a timer so if for some reason you were having trouble with something, you could just retreat a bit, let it recharge and then do it again, making any challenge in the game laughable. I don’t think they should be removed, but I do think it could have been done much more fairly.

On the enemy’s side of things, they generally have some sort of physical attack and/or a homing shot attack. When attacking them, the only way you can damage them is by hitting a glowing weak spot, so the placement of those weak spots is what keeps the combat at least somewhat interesting. Some enemies have armor hiding those weak spots, some of them actually phase through the ground so you have to attack them after they’ve exposed themselves for their own attack, some are located on their back so you want to get behind them to attack, etc. But the problem is they’re not really that threatening and you don’t really have many ways to take them down. Most enemies boil down to just positioning yourself above or behind them, and hitting them with Gravity Kick a few times.

So combat, while it has moments where you can feel how cool it could be, how much potential is there, it never meets that and more often than not is just passable at best.

The aesthetic design of the locations in the game is another big plus. The towns you can explore have some interesting shapes and corridors to navigate, have varied aesthetics, and quite a bit of character on their own. The other areas of the game continue this trend while exploring different visual styles, and they all help build an intriguing world, pretty similarly to how Dark Souls does actually. Again, just like her powers, the more you and Kat see outside of the town, the more questions and discoveries you make about their world. However this too fails to meet it’s potential because of what I can only assume was a result of either not having enough time or money to develop the game further. There’s tons of interesting settings, questions, and details we learn of but we don’t get many answers or or shown how things fit together almost at all. What’s there is incredibly interesting, but what’s not there is frustrating.

From a game play point of view it fares a bit better as the unique setting makes for some really cool levels and restrictions that are fun to work with. There’s some sections that are like a platformer, where you can’t use gravity or have limited gravity powers, there are some were you have to use your power to stay out of sight, there are some where you’re racing to a location while fighting, etc. In this way the game play is able to keep you interested despite the fairly simplistic combat. And while I applaud that, it’s just not enough honestly.

The music is amazing and feels so adventurous. It covers a pretty wide variety of styles too which is a bit unusual but something I like about it. The story is potentially interesting but ends before you can learn any real answers. The graphics are very obviously from a handheld game but actually hold up quite well because of how strong the art direction is. There’s this really cool effect where, when you see buildings from a far distance, all their detail fades out but you can still see their outlines. It’s an effect I haven’t seen elsewhere as far as I can remember and besides looking cool and interesting it’s actually useful for having spatial awareness as well.

See that’s the thing, this game has some real issues. Certainly it’s not perfect, but it has sooo damn many interesting ideas that it actually pulls off pretty well that I can’t help but love it. It’s so beautiful, it sounds so good, it’s so fun to just move, time trials are a blast, the world just IGNITES my imagination, the character designs are memorable, and every time I boot up the game I just get so freaking hyped up cause of that badass title screen song.

And more than anything, now that they’re making a sequel and you can already see they are majorly addressing the combat issue, and the fact that it’s going to be a console only game which could mean more time and money being put into it, and the fact that such a strange game got a sequel approved at all, all give me a ton of hope for another amazing experience that might fix literally every problem I have with the first game.

But back to the first game. I still love it, I recommend anyone that wants a unique game play experience to at least check it out, because nothing else out there plays like it. At $30, it’s priced pretty damn fairly I think and the quality of the port itself is outstanding. The game runs at a smooth 60fps with no dips that I personally noticed, greatly outperforming the original version of the game. If you have even the slightest bit of interest in what I’ve talked about here, do yourself a favor and play it!

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