Gravity Rush PS Vita

Released on 15-Jun-2012

• Gravity Rush - Review

  
  

  

  What a cat-astrophy!

  Games like Gravity Rush don't come along very often. Sony Japan's latest masterpiece blends action gaming with RPG elements, throws in a brilliant campaign, gorgeous cel-shaded art, an incredible world filled with amazing characters, and then marries it all to the PlayStation Vita so harmoniously that you simply won't be able to imagine playing it on anything else. If you've got a PS Vita and want something new to keep you hooked, this is absolutely the game you've been waiting for. If you've been looking for a reason to pick Sony's latest handheld up, you've now got no excuse. Get on it.

  The story's completely bonkers, mind. In Gravity Rush, you're cast as Kat, an amnesiac newcomer to the floating city of Hekseville. Your best friend is a magical feline called Dusty, and you've been granted a weird power: with a press of a trigger, you can float the air and attach yourself to distant surfaces, altering gravity as you go. That means you can fly around the game's huge open-world environments at will, and you can walk up walls, stroll underneath buildings, and even zip from lamppost to lamppost without your feet touching the ground.

  

  Topsy Turvy

  It's a brilliant way to get around some truly massive levels, but it also ties into the game's combat. Hekseville's in the process of being torn apart by a vicious gravity storm, and the streets are filled with gooey alien menaces known as the Nevi. The city's after a hero, in other words, and Kat's the woman for the job. Using your gravity-warping powers, you can blast across gigantic combat arenas, taking on a vast array of enemies and bosses using gravity kicks, standard kung-fu moves, and even a bunch of elaborate power-ups. The mission structure blends exploration and combat together brilliantly, and it feels amazing to smash the Nevi to pieces, targeting weak spots, taking on vast groups of foes at once, and saving the citizens of this bizarre metropolis as you go.

  On top of all that, you're often sent into Rift Plains - weird fantastical wastelands where parts of Hekseville have been broken off and stolen away. As you steadily piece the city back together, you'll see some genuinely crazy environments, from mathematical playgrounds where you hop from one gleaming cube to another, to fungal models of the solar system, with planetoids made out of living mushroom. The more you travel, the more you'll bring the game's oddball narrative into focus, and all the while you'll be earning new powers and attack moves, while levelling up your character stats. Gravity Rush offers around ten hours of fast-paced missions, and with plenty of side quests to get stuck into, you'll be captivated for days on end.

  

  Dancing on the ceiling

  It's incredibly pretty, too, with brilliant manga-infused comic book panels telling the story, and gorgeous, intricate environments for you to traverse as you make your way through the campaign. The PS Vita gets a real workout, since you swipe the screen to dodge during combat, use the gyroscopes to tilt the unit around to aim your movements when you're floating, and even use the back touchscreen to page through cut-scenes. On top of that, every five minutes you're given a new element of the game to mess around with, whether it's a mini-challenge that sees you unlocking new costumes, gems to collect to level yourself up, or pedestrians to hunt down and chat to in order to get a little more insight into the weird city where you've suddenly found yourself.

  Sure, we'd have loved a little multiplayer to round things out, but Gravity Rush is so stylish, so crazy, and such fun to simply get around in that we can't really begrudge its absence too much. If you love Japanese games like Ico or the Jet Set Radio series, or if you're a fan of Western open-world sandboxes like Crackdown or Prototype, this is pretty much the perfect combination. It's a beautiful, insane adventure from start to finish, in other words, and a game that every single PlayStation Vita owner must get hold of as soon as they can.

  Our Verdict: 9.5/10

  What's Good?

  • Brilliant art
  • An incredible traversal system
  • Amazing combat

  What's Bad?

  • No multiplayer
  • The storyline doesn't make that much sense
  • We have to wait for a sequel?!
• Editor's Choice - Gravity Rush

  
  

  

  
  
  

  

  It's not often a game actively encourages you to make like a lemming - but then again nothing about the third-person action game Gravity Rush is run-of-the-mill...

  Falling equals failing in the grand scheme of videogaming; where putting a foot wrong on that precarious ledge usually means you're turned into instant kerb pizza as you hit the walkway 100 foot below moments later. But in Gravity Rush, you can throw yourself off the nearest building and then, before Isaac Newton can give you an "I told you so" frown, you'll find yourself floating in space at the push of a button.

  Then target where you want to leap to and hey presto, you'll land there on your feet whether it be on the floor, the side of a wall or even the underside of a floating city. It's the kind of mind-bending gymnastics that makes the world's greatest parkour runners look about as accomplished as a certain female pop starlet giving a live-vocal performance.

  

  The setting for this clever, gravity-defying system focuses on a girl called Kat, who literally falls into Hekesville, a colourful, cel-shaded art nouveau world which is being overrun by the gloopy Nevi and consumed by a gravity storm. Told via blissfully well-rendered (and sweetly navigated) cut-scene comic panels, Kat's 'the one' who must fight, jump, fall and power-up her way to save the day.

  But never mind all that, PlayStation Vita owners will be muttering impatiently, is this the kind of game that could have be done just as easily on, say, an Xbox 360? Thankfully, no - Gravity Rush is a unique title designed to exploit the powerhouse handheld's unique range of abilities. From placing both thumbs on the screen to trigger a gravity slide across the ground (steering by tilting the device), to slashing your finger across the screen to dodge attacks, the PS Vita's hardware feels at one with the onscreen action.

  Gravity Rush shows then that with the right ideas and implementation, Sony's latest handheld has the potential to be an innovator and a world-beater. So it's time to celebrate - because the PS Vita just got its first killer app.

  Published: 11/06/2012

• Gravity Rush Review

  
  

  

  What a cat-astrophy!

  Games like Gravity Rush don't come along very often. Sony Japan's latest masterpiece blends action gaming with RPG elements, throws in a brilliant campaign, gorgeous cel-shaded art, an incredible world filled with amazing characters, and then marries it all to the PlayStation Vita so harmoniously that you simply won't be able to imagine playing it on anything else. If you've got a PS Vita and want something new to keep you hooked, this is absolutely the game you've been waiting for. If you've been looking for a reason to pick Sony's latest handheld up, you've now got no excuse. Get on it.

  The story's completely bonkers, mind. In Gravity Rush, you're cast as Kat, an amnesiac newcomer to the floating city of Hekseville. Your best friend is a magical feline called Dusty, and you've been granted a weird power: with a press of a trigger, you can float the air and attach yourself to distant surfaces, altering gravity as you go. That means you can fly around the game's huge open-world environments at will, and you can walk up walls, stroll underneath buildings, and even zip from lamppost to lamppost without your feet touching the ground.

  

  Topsy Turvy

  It's a brilliant way to get around some truly massive levels, but it also ties into the game's combat. Hekseville's in the process of being torn apart by a vicious gravity storm, and the streets are filled with gooey alien menaces known as the Nevi. The city's after a hero, in other words, and Kat's the woman for the job. Using your gravity-warping powers, you can blast across gigantic combat arenas, taking on a vast array of enemies and bosses using gravity kicks, standard kung-fu moves, and even a bunch of elaborate power-ups. The mission structure blends exploration and combat together brilliantly, and it feels amazing to smash the Nevi to pieces, targeting weak spots, taking on vast groups of foes at once, and saving the citizens of this bizarre metropolis as you go.

  On top of all that, you're often sent into Rift Plains - weird fantastical wastelands where parts of Hekseville have been broken off and stolen away. As you steadily piece the city back together, you'll see some genuinely crazy environments, from mathematical playgrounds where you hop from one gleaming cube to another, to fungal models of the solar system, with planetoids made out of living mushroom. The more you travel, the more you'll bring the game's oddball narrative into focus, and all the while you'll be earning new powers and attack moves, while levelling up your character stats. Gravity Rush offers around ten hours of fast-paced missions, and with plenty of side quests to get stuck into, you'll be captivated for days on end.

  

  Dancing on the ceiling

  It's incredibly pretty, too, with brilliant manga-infused comic book panels telling the story, and gorgeous, intricate environments for you to traverse as you make your way through the campaign. The PS Vita gets a real workout, since you swipe the screen to dodge during combat, use the gyroscopes to tilt the unit around to aim your movements when you're floating, and even use the back touchscreen to page through cut-scenes. On top of that, every five minutes you're given a new element of the game to mess around with, whether it's a mini-challenge that sees you unlocking new costumes, gems to collect to level yourself up, or pedestrians to hunt down and chat to in order to get a little more insight into the weird city where you've suddenly found yourself.

  Sure, we'd have loved a little multiplayer to round things out, but Gravity Rush is so stylish, so crazy, and such fun to simply get around in that we can't really begrudge its absence too much. If you love Japanese games like Ico or the Jet Set Radio series, or if you're a fan of Western open-world sandboxes like Crackdown 2 or Prototype 2, this is pretty much the perfect combination. It's a beautiful, insane adventure from start to finish, in other words, and a game that every single PlayStation Vita owner must get hold of as soon as they can.

  GAME's Verdict

  The Good

  • Brilliant art
  • An incredible traversal system
  • Amazing combat

  The Bad

  • No multiplayer
  • The storyline doesn't make that much sense
  • We have to wait for a sequel?!

  Published: 31/05/2012

• Editor's Choice - Best of 2012: Handhelds

  
  

  

  
  
  

  We're spoilt for choice when it comes to gaming that fits comfortably in the palms of our hands; not only has the Nintendo 3DS found its feet in 2012, but we also welcomed in the powerhouse that is the SONY PlayStation Vita in the same year. So if you've picked up either from GAME (or even both!), then here's our list of 2012's best games for each handheld...

  

  Gravity Rush (PS Vita)
  Poke the laws of gravity in both eyes with this fab third-person action game that puts you in control of Kat, a girl whose ability to defy gravity would have given Isaac Newton an aneurysm to go with his apple. Couple our heroine's awesome aerial acrobatic skills with an open-world and an intriguing sci-fi plot and you've got yourself a pint-sized classic. Sequel please!

  

  Professor Layton & The Miracle Mask (3DS)
  The charm of Professor Layton series touches down on to Nintendo's finest with wonderful cel-shaded 3D graphics and effects. Battle the 'Masked Gentleman', an utter rotter who's turning citizens of Monte d'Or into rock and unravel his dastardly plan by solving 150 puzzles that cover the whole gamut of gaming from mindbenders to minigames. And then pile through 365 more puzzles, one for every day of the year! Generous doesn't even begin to cover it...

  

  Resident Evil: Revelations (3DS)
  Fancy a rest from screenfuls of rainbow colours and Nintendo mascots? Then get back to the bleakness with this RE title that packs in all the tension and scares of the survival horror series with some fantastic multiplayer action too. The best in the series since Resident Evil 4.

  

  LittleBigPlanet (PS Vita) - packed with pucker platforming, this handheld version of the SONY juggernaut is a perfect conversion plus the ability to create and play user-generated levels means endless replay value too.

  Honourable Mention

  New Super Mario Bros. 2 (3DS) - it's Mario ergo it's essential. Do we need to say more?
  

  Published: 20/12/2012

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