[Drem]

I was just going to post this in the Games You've Played thread but it ended up being a bit longer than I expected and I didn't want to chug up the page with all that text. I popped in some pictures I've taken to break it up and just put it in a new thread.


Gravity Rush’s movement is absolutely fantastic. The game’s main feature is the ability to shift the direction of gravitation force at will, making you fall into whichever direction you desire. Climbing walls has been a big thing these past few years in open world games but being able to “fall” onto the top of a skyscraper from the other side of the city is so liberating and exhilarating. The game has an animation style similar to that used by Team Ico and there’s a lot of emphasis on conveying the feeling on motion in the game’s protagonist, Kat. The swaying of her clothes, the way she tumbles, twirls and flails as she falls in different directions and the excellent visual indicators help sell it as falling as opposed to flying. Every costume has something loose or flowing that is used to denote the direction of regular gravity but also flutters wildly when you fall. To shift gravity you first have to go into a floating state followed by another press of the same button to start moving in the direction of the camera but you quickly beginning learning to use double-taps to great effect to quickly change directions, and watching the forces of momentum work on Kat’s body is always an entertaining sight. When first entering a float while on the ground, everything around you within a certain radius is affected as well, either being pushed around or joining you in the air, both objects and people. After zooming somewhere these often go with you! (Although any civilian caught won’t be fortunate enough to join you if you shift directions or stick to walls.)





There’s a lot of room for nuance in there as well if you use the game’s mechanics in creative ways, letting you shift direction more quickly and accurately, stopping your character on a dime, or landing into a slide. One of the mechanics that you as a player (should) improve at as you play is camera control. The right stick rotates the camera as you’d expect but when floating moving the Vita itself also rotates the camera. Vita rotation doesn’t move the camera quite as much as the stick however so you learn to use them in conjunction to make more accurate aiming. It works surprisingly well, although despite there being some leeway before the Vita movement kicks in this means if you like moving your system a lot while you play it can disrupt the camera.

Slides are another movement technique the game has which is pretty much what it sounds like. If you place a finger on both bottom corners of the screen (you’ll probably be using your thumbs realistically) you can start sliding on the ground at high speed. You steer using the motion controls like a steering a wheel and give a small shake to jump (you can also drift in a direction by lifting that side’s finger). It takes some work to get used to the handling, no doubt, but it’s immensely fun to get better at it and slide your way through the city streets. Sliding also automatically shifts your gravity in small directions, letting you travel across curved surfaces like pillars but rocket off the sides of rectangular buildings. It’s not the same free vertical movement emphasized by most of the game’s mechanics but it still gives you a satisfying feeling of defying the normal rules of ground movement in a 3D game.

The game’s biggest fault, and this is a big one, is that it’s still not sure how to go about making a satisfyingly challenging game designed around such free-form movement. Clearly typical level design isn’t going to cut it when you can just fly over everything but Gravity Rush still hasn’t completely figured out what to do. For missions that take place in the city travel isn’t an issue since you can, well, fall over everything. Often times you’ll be transporting objects between locations or just travelling here and there but it’s honestly no different from doing what you do outside of missions when you’re just wandering around. There is one mission in the game where the game limits your powers and forces you to platform across mushrooms in space and it ended up being the most interesting part of the game from a platforming perspective. You have to make do with a very short amount of floating time to make it across areas, aiming for items along your path to refill your meter so you can make it to your destination. If you end up falling off the sides of the path you then have to struggle with your meter and your orientation to make it back to the platforms otherwise you’ll fall to your death. It and another segment that limits your powers were the only instances in the game where I actually had challenge in navigating the game’s environments.

Much like movement the combat has several different options for attacking (from each kind of movement) but isn’t too difficult. You’ve got a ground combo, you’ve got this gravity kick from the air that causes more damage the farther you travel, you’ve got a slide kick, and a kick you can do out of evasion. You can also use your stasis field power to pick up objects and shoot them as projectiles. You’re free to use whatever you want because generally they’ll all work and you’ll have no trouble using any of them to win. There were only a few battles where I felt the game made me explore the mechanics to succeed in battle. Against one of the hidden rare enemies that flies around and shoots bullets at you rapidly, I ended up using the stasis field to hold debris around me as a shield while I flew around trying to aim a gravity kick, but that’s the only instance I could think of where I actually struggled in combat. The base combat mechanics are fine but, again, the game hasn’t fleshed out the enemy design enough to make any of it challenging.

There are several segments of the game that actually take place in separate, distinct levels that feature more abstract designs. There’s some sort of weird inferno lava place, the aforementioned floating mushrooms in space, and a couple of others. While these allow Gravity Rush to create areas that don’t need to follow a believable design like you would need in the city it still runs in the problem of you being able to just fall over everything. It does make you navigate through tunnels mid-air occasionally but most of the time these parts will feature a recognizable platform to fall straight towards and land on before heading to the next.





Instead of challenging you to complete the levels, the game instead kind of gives you “mini-challenges” in collecting the gems (basically money). These purple gems can be found all throughout the game floating in the air or on a surface and are often positioned in such a way that you can collect many in a row if you move in the right the way. As you’re falling around you might find this row of gems that connect with another row at a right angle, so you’ll need to be able to make a quick turn to get all of the gems in one go. Maybe there will be a long curving platform with gems in a curving path and you’ll need to slide along the path and collect all the gems that way. There’s a certain satisfaction in collecting all these gems in one continuous motion but there’s no need to get all the gems in one go; it’s perfectly possible to just fall normally back and forth and collect them, or take your time stopping and going. Gravity Rush avoided making levels where they require this kind of technique from you but it don’t present a satisfying alternative.

But travelling around the city is a lot fun simply because the movement is great, and if you like collecting gems there are a lot of gems you can find floating around in the city. Keiichiro Toyama, the game’s director (who also created Silent Hill and Siren), has said that one of Gravity Rush’s two main influences was Crackdown for the Xbox 360. He said he enjoyed Crackdown’s movement and its progression of abilities, and I think the influence is clear. I didn’t really like Crackdown overall myself but my favorite part was just jumping around the city collecting the upgrade icons. The icons were all placed in such a way that from any one icon you usually could see another one off in the distance somewhere, giving you another one to get. I spent most of my time just following this trail of icons throughout the city, slowly increasing my jumping abilities along the way by collecting them. The more icons I collected, the more I could jump to collect more icons. Gems in Gravity Rush are placed through the city in a similar manner in that from any place you collect a bunch of gems you’ll often be able to see another group somewhere else. You can get caught up traveling from bundle of gems to another and travel over, under, and through the city. (These gems can then be used to upgrade you various abilities, including the length of time you can float the speed at which you move, making it easier to collect more gems quickly). There have been a lot of times where I’m exploring for gems and I find some sort of amazing landmark underneath the city itself (it’s floating in the sky). I get so excited wondering why there are buildings and street lamps and fences underneath the city but when I go to land there I realize I just lost my orientation and that’s actually just the ground. I at some point got myself turned upside down and thought I was under the city when I was just floating above it. It never stops being funny when it happens.

The game’ faults really unfortunate because the game has so much personality and potential. The story is somewhat incomprehensible due to vagaries of plot events and just not getting around to explaining things, but the world is fairly interesting and many plot elements that appear are intriguing. There are many mysterious characters who talk in cryptic language and drop hints as to the characters’ the world’s backstories but that’s pretty much all you get. Lots of hints and teasing of something very cool about the game’s city of Hekseville that floats around an endless pillar inside an empty abyss of sky and the origin of the amnesiac protagonist Kat. There’s even an optional side quest of finding this couple throughout the game who are trapped between times and dimensions and talking to them hints at so much about the nature of the game but then ends on a cliffhanger. I want to find out what happens! It’s a world I most definitely want to see developed and expanded upon in the sequel. I’m not quite sure why they never got around to it in this first game because I don’t see how they wouldn’t have realized it themselves. Perhaps it has to do with them switching development from PS3 to PSV and not having time to develop the game more?

The cel-shaded art style of the game is very nice though. There is a rustic quality to everything. There are airships but they look like flying busses rather than awe-inspiring aircrafts with fancy flourishes. The buildings too are somewhat homely and utilitarian, featuring strong shades of brown with bright neon signs written in the game’s fictitious language (character speak in the fake language too, which feels inspired by French). There are also large TVs set up in some areas that looks like they are from the 1960s, broadcasting monochrome videos and Captain Crunch commercials (I’m not joking). Every district of the city features a different color for its sky and backdrop. One of the really cool things about the visuals is how far distances are visualized as traces and broad swatches of gradient color that slowly gain detail as you get closer to them. The backdrop of every area looks like live pencil sketches that slowly get more detailed and painted in. It’s a very neat effect. The special effects also have a nice quality about them that I’m not sure how to explain, but they share the same sort of animation and cel-shaded qualities as the characters. Toyama has stated that his other main inspiration for Gravity Rush aside from Crackdown was French artist Moebius, whose works I must admit I am not familiar with but I recall him being treated with much respect around the forum. (He said the game’s core concept has been gestating in his mind for a decade ever since he saw a particular piece of art by Moebius when Toyama was in highschool.) Another neat part is the comic book style cutscenes where the panels feel like windows into the world. If you move the Vita you can actually peer into the panels at different angles, seeing more of the environment. It’s a great effect.





The monsters you fight do a good job of seeming bizarre and not-of-this-world. The hints of familiar animals in their design really accentuate just how foreign everything else about them is. One of the creatures is looks like a four-legged animal with extremely exaggerated limbs; the legs are really thin but also very tall yet manage to support a small body with a gigantic head. There is a flying creature that looks like a serpent with six spindly wings and a bony head. There’s another that’s like a torso with a tentacle shooting out of it? And this one that’s bipedal but is also like a shark and its head is just a big mouth with sharp teeth. They do a good job of being bizarre.





There is also some really great music by Kohei Tanaka. Some of the tunes are atmosphere pieces but many of them have nice orchestral melodies. They have strong identities of their own and do a good job of establishing the atmosphere but don’t fade into the background as ignorable fluff. I especially like Discovery of Gravitation from the opening cutscene. The main theme does shows off the game’s adventurous but playful personality despite you never hearing it outside the main menu. Sound effects have a nice quality to them, from the way enemy cores crack like grass to the sound of you whooshing through the air. The game make a really loud impact sound if you crash into the ground from high enough, making the screen shake and the main character to lie on the ground for a bit. It doesn’t actually hurt you but it conveys pain so well that I hate having it happen to me.

I’m really glad I played Gravity Rush because there is so much to like about it. It was one of the main reason I wanted a Vita. But as wonderful as movement and aesthetic and anything else may bay, the core design is really faulty. It provides no challenge, no stimulation. Even the optional challenge missions that require you to race through checkpoints throughout the city aren’t difficult. Team Siren are on to something really great here but they need to flesh out their concept some more. One of the problems they may have run into is with how their progression system works. You can freely level up your abilities, ranging from attack power to amount of time you can float and how fast you can fall, as long as you have the gems for it. They cap your max ability level until you complete enough missions, story or otherwise, before raising the cap a few levels. But there’s no guarantee how much you’ll have leveled it up at any point in the game so they won’t have a good idea of what your character’s platforming capabilities may be. The levels where your abilities were purposely diminished showed a stronger willingness to put in challenging platforming but that’s because they knew exactly what your capabilities would be then. But outside of those it could be anywhere. Should they force you to reach a certain level of ability before you’re physically able to complete a level? But then the collection of gems could feel like a grind to the player. If they raised your power automatically through the story, that would eliminate the progression system. Maybe they could limit your floating abilities more but then that would go against spirit of free movement that’s at the core of the game.

I’m actually not sure how they should go about changing the game but I really hope their taking their time and fleshing out the concept in a sequel. It’s filled with so much potential to be something incredibly unique. I mean it kind of already is but it could be so much more, and it really needs to. As it is I’ve say Gravity Rush is an interesting game but I’m not sure I’m confident enough to say it’s a good game. If you’re okay with playing an extremely flawed game to enjoy the parts that are excellent I’d recommend it. It’s free on Playstation Plus right now. It’s just that Arkanoid was right when he told me on the SB IRC channel: “It’s not as good as it should have been.”


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Here's one of those funky looking airships. It's like a flying submarine.





And I always really liked this concept art.

[Drem]

You don't actually need to ever use the gyroscope aiming system. Stick aiming should be your go-to-choice for camera control in all situations, and the gyroscope aiming only helps for fine-tuning your aim by small increments during the race challenges. I found it pretty well implemented if you use it like that. For air-kicking the game gives you a very generous auto-aim which gets enhanced with each level you upgrade that attack, so you aren't supposed to really worry about aiming it that much. Just get your target anywhere in the aiming circle and let 'er rip. You also don't need to rely on that either for all combat; her regular melee combos work just as well. In fact her slide kick seemed a much more potent attack, though both it and the air-kick require a little bit of distance to get you going first.

As for Kat's personality that scene didn't stand out to me as anything different from what they had already established her as. That scene occurs sometime after she meets the fortune-teller, right? The fortune-teller scene sets up the fact that while she wants to overcome her amnesia she's very easily distracted by more worldly desires. She's an incredibly carefree person who takes everything in stride to anime degrees, and while it's pretty silly (and sometimes amusing) I had grown accustomed to it by then.

[Drem]

Actually if there’s one thing about Kat that bothered it’s how the game takes several moments to sexualize her (mainly the two bath towel scenes and the thief DLC costume). I know the developers wanted to make her cute but these aspects felt extremely out of place compared to everything else in the game. It was superfluous and a little distasteful

You know, Gravity Rush’s vagueness in its storytelling isn’t all bad. There are moments where it really works to the narrative’s favor; it makes certain moments quite mysterious and allows you to make some conjectures without anything being explicitly stated. The standout moment for me is the chapter entitled “Look Out Below”. There is a little bit of dialogue spoken by Kat during the gameplay but the design of this chapter hints a lot at the nature of the Gravity Rush’s world just by letting you observe the environment and the trends in it as you progress through the area. It probably wasn’t on purpose but the storytelling through gameplay here was really good. It’s definitely one of the highlights of the game for me, especially the final, exhilarating segment.

I saw this on Youtube recently and thought it was kind of neat. It’s the original concept trailer for the game. It reminded me that one of the things I’d really like to be able to do in Gravity Rush is the ability to shift gravity to not only the front but also directly to the right, left, or back. Considering the game’s current struggles with creating challenge with your current freedom of movement I don’t know if it would actually be a good idea for them but it would have let me do some absolutely cool maneuvers.


Do you guys think there’s enough game concept videos floating out there to start a Galaxy Oddity thread for that kind of stuff? And if anyone is ever able to find scans of "Gravity Daze - The Complete Guide", please let me know!