Gravity Rush review

The PlayStation Vita has seen its fair share of great games thus far, including Uncharted: Golden Abyss and the recently released Resistance: Burning Skies, but when was the last time you really saw something mind-bending for the system?  Fun, sure.  But innovative?  It’s been a little while.  Luckily, we have SCE Japan Studio working its magic for us with its new game, Gravity Rush.  If you think you’ve seen everything you can do with a platformer, think again.

In this adventure game, you play as Kat, a rascally young girl who finds herself in the city of Hekseville just when it needs her the most.  Turns out it’s infected with a group of gloppy-looking enemies (think Attack of the Killer Tomatoes mixed with Jell-O), and she needs to fight back.  Kicks are good, but simply not enough against this horde.  But then enters Dusty, a cat that grants Kat the power to manipulate her gravity for a limited amount of time.  By activating this ability, she’s able to change the scope of her gravity, like being able to walk on walls or ceilings, or even fly through the sky like a bird, then change mid-direction if needed.

This is just the start of Kat’s abilities.  Soon, she’s able to manipulate gravity enough to set up attacks on enemies and grab objects using an immediate statis field, whether it’s hurling objects at these creatures or taking things from one place to another (like furniture to your dream home… in the sewer).  The later attacks are quite cool, and she’ll need them in order to contend with the more dangerous enemies that lie ahead.

The gameplay in Gravity Rush can be a little disorienting at first, especially with the whole “float” effect once you first turn it on.  But it’ll take mere seconds before you get used to it and set up some remarkable moves, such as walking along the side of a cliff to get around obnoxious guards and executing a fun attack on a double decker creature using a park bench.  And it’s hilarious watching innocent civilians get caught in your temporal bubble, then get hurled off in the distance as you go flying.  Sorry, citizens!

We also like how the touch screen is used to point out objectives on a map or dodge incoming attacks, and how you can shift the Vita’s gyrosensors to detect where you’re going next on a map.  It’s nice to see these features get a fair shake here.

To go along with the innovative gameplay, SCE Japan has also crafted a worthwhile presentation for Rush.  The graphics pop to life like the best kind of anime, with startling animation that pops off the screen and a beautiful city that you’ll spend hours exploring, if only to find all the hidden gems and goodies throughout.  Likewise, the music plays a big part in the game — not going overboard with in-game events, but also avoiding becoming a nuisance.  It’s almost as if it’s just right.  There’s hardly any spoken dialogue in the game, but it’s not really necessary.

Overall, Gravity Rush just comes across as one of those games that looks gimmicky at first, but then completely takes you by surprise as you get caught up in it.  Unless you have a thing against motion sickness (and some of you do), this is a title you must add to your growing Vita library.