Gravity Rush was a game released by SIE Japan Studio on Februry 9th, 2012 exclusively for the Playstation Vita. Today, we will be taking a look at the version released on the PS4 on December 10th, 2015, Gravity Rush: Remastered.

Story

Gravity Rush features a girl named Kat. The game starts with Kat waking up in a park with a cat. She has lost all of her memories, and she runs into a man, whose son is trapped in a house that is about to fall into a black hole. This is when she discovers that her cat gives her the ability to manipulate gravity.

After saving the young boy, Kat finds that the entire city is floating in the sky. She makes herself a house in a sewer, and sets out on a mission: to find her lost memories.

Throughout the remainder of the game, Kat goes on what boils down to glorified fetch quests for random people around town in a forced attempt to build character. Most of the missions consist of 3 steps:

1: Person has a menial request of you, like finding their friend or picking up their letter that they dropped off the side of the city.

2: You complete said menial task, and the person says “thank you so much Kat!”

3: The game turns that into a bond between you and that character, despite only knowing them for half an hour.

This type of gameplay is perfect for the Vita. Pick it up, play a 30 minute mission, ut it down. But with the game now being played for hours on end on the PS4, the story does not hold snuff to most other first-party Sony titles released for the platform.

The character depth in this game is ridiculously bad. Some characters like Alias only appear for 2 short cut scenes before the endgame, and yet you’re supposed to feel a deep hatred for him. And then there are characters like Yunica, who only first appear 2 main missions before the endgame. The only character that seems to have real depth in this game is Raven. A large part of the game is devoted to fleshing out a real story for her.

If you were considering picking up Gravity Rush: Remastered, look elsewhere. The story is bland and monotonous, with no character development. The game was desperately calling out for a sequel with more character development, and it got one with Gravity Rush 2, released on the PS4 this year.

Gameplay

Gameplay is where Gravity Rush: Remastered shines its brightest. The gameplay mostly consists of navigating throughout the world and fights against the Nevi, both of which perfectly blend in the game’s core element: shifting gravity.

The cities themselves are very small horizontally, but they have many, many layers. This encourages the player to travel AROUND the city, not through it. I found myself floating down to different layers of the city instead of trying to find a staircase nearby. This really helped with becoming familiar with the controls, especially since they are so much different than any other game.

Some missions have forced stealth sections. As per most games that aren’t stealth games, the stealth is really bad. There are no extra elements to use during the stealth sections, so you end up just running around, not seeing a guard, and getting caught. These were so atrocious that I often times just cheated and used gravity to fly around everyone.

Most missions include fights against the monsters of this world, Nevi. They are solid black creatures with large eyes, which are their weak spots. The main way to kill these creatures is to kick them with the square button. This feels really fluent because of the lock on mechanic. If Kat is floating, have the camera pointed towards the Nevi, and press the square button, she will automatically launch herself at the eye of the nevi. It keeps battles constantly engaging, drawing you to the center of the action. This mechanic alone sells the combat because of how engaging it makes it feel.

The lock on system, however, does have its flaws when fighting bosses. The lock-on works by setting a point on the enemy and launching Kat towards that point. She DOES adjust mid-air if the enemy moves, but if they move too far away, Kat will just shoot into space until you stop her. This happens very rarely against regular Nevi, but against bosses that move around a lot, it can get frustrating. This was obvious for me in the boss fight against [spoiler] at the end of chapter 8. [Spoiler] moves around too quickly to land a lot of blows at once. The battle, in turn, is way too long and slow, especially juxtaposed to the fast-paced combat of the rest of the game.

The controls, admittedly, are a tad weird. The R1 button both makes Kat float and launch herself forward. This control system might have made sense with the Vita’s limited controls, but the PS4 has enough buttons to be able to map these two controls onto different buttons.

Another odd non-change from the Vita version of the game is the motion control aiming. Whilst floating, you can aim two ways: with the right stick or with motion controls. Unless you’re spinning in your chair constantly, you’re going to almost exclusively use the right stick. And while there IS a way to turn off the motion controls, I was unaware of this during my play through. It made the gameplay feel jarring sometimes, when the camera would shake while I was trying to make a precise shot.

DLC Packs

The original game had three DLC released for it; each costing $4. However, since this is the remastered version, it comes with all DLC free of charge! Each of these packs comes with two missions and a costume. The costume really only serves as fanfare, good fanfare at that. Fans get to see what Kat would look like as a maid, spy, and a soldier. The big content is the two missions included with each pack.

The first mission of each DLC pack is extremely lackluster. It usually serves as a story building mission; to make you familiar with the characters. The second DLC mission is really where its at. Each one features new mechanics that aren’t in the main game at all, such as putting out fires with water tanks in the military pack. The dev team put a lot of time and effort into making these a worthwhile purchase for players of the original game. It only makes it that much better that these packs are now free for the remastered version.

Character Upgrades

Kat has skills, such as combat and specials, that can be upgraded using gems. These gems are found in the open world, in levels, and by completing challenges. The gems found in the open world and in levels are usually just lines on the ground or on the ceiling that are a slight distraction on your journey though the world/mission.

The real gem hunting comes with the challenges. These are usually started by spending a small amount of gems to repair something in the city, which unlocks the challenge. The challenge is something simple, like a race with checkpoints, and have 3 tiers based on the criteria of the challenge. These tiers each have a number of gems tied to them.

Unfortunately, I started ignoring these challenges all together. The rewards for these challenges weren’t enough to entice me to go out of my way to complete them. Especially in the later levels, there are tons of 25 gem gems scattered around, making a 200 gem reward less enticing.

This speaks to a problem with gems as a whole. While each upgrade lists the effect it will have, I never really noticed the upgrades. Maybe this speaks to there being a great difficulty curve, but I highly doubt it, as the enemies don’t really change throughout the whole game. The upgrades were just too menial to make me go out of my way to collect gems.

Graphics

The game got a much needed 1080p, 60 fps upgrade with its move to the PS4. The original game ran at 544p, the native resolution of the Vita. While this looked fine for the Vita, when it was extrapolated to videos on sites like YouTube, the game looked pitiful. The 1080p upgrade finally does the game justice in footage online.

The upgrade to 60 fps, however, is a huge upgrade. The 30 fps of the original looked choppy sometimes, and was not well suited for a fast paced action game like Gravity Rush. The 60 fps adds a much needed enhancement to the game’s overall feel.

There were also a lot of new textures made specifically for the remaster, giving it extra visual appeal over the original’s somewhat drab textures.

Voice

There is almost no voice acting in the game. The majority of the story is told through comic-like sequences. Some of the drawings in the comic look ugly. Deformed characters, missing features on faces, etc. It makes me wonder how much budget went into these character drawings.

The sections that are voice acted are, unfortunately, are Japanese-only. There are subtitles, but not having any English option kills any appeal that these inclusions would bring.

Final Verdict

Gravity Rush lacks a great story, but makes up for it with its spectacular gameplay. The graphics are an improvement over the firsts, but the upgrades and the voicing leave something to be desired.

Story: 5/10

Gameplay: 8.5/10

DLC Packs: 9/10

Character Upgrades: 6/10

Graphics: 10/10

Voice: -/10

Overall: 7.5/10