“That wasn’t flying! That was … falling with style!”
So protests Woody when cool, new toy Buzz Lightyear makes a splash in Andy’s room, impressing all of Woody’s friends.
The same line from 1995’s “Toy Story” could be leveled against Kat, the protagonist of “Gravity Rush,” an open-world urban action game that’s set up like “Prototype” and “inFamous” but plays much more like a platformer, indulging our fantasies about running on walls and flying.
Kat, like Buzz Lightyear, can’t actually fly. But, borrowing a gimmick from the 2-D Wii game “And Yet It Moves,” she can control which way is down.
| ‘Gravity Rush’ |
| » System: Vita |
| » Price: $39.99 |
| » Rating: 4 out of 5 stars |
We meet Kat waking up one day not knowing who she is or where. The floating metropolis she finds herself in is unfamiliar to her, but when she sees a boy falling to his doom, she springs into action with powers she didn’t know she had. The game uses this rescue scene as a tutorial, teaching you that if you hit the right shoulder button on Sony’s hand-held Vita, Kat levitates. Aim anywhere around her, hit the shoulder button again, and you start falling toward that point, until you land — be it on the ground, the side of a building or the underside of a flying fortress. Kat doesn’t take damage from falling, so you can “fall” straight up and come slamming back down to the ground, with no consequences. You can also shift gravity on the fly, even in the air, by hitting the shoulder button again and aiming somewhere else.
The constantly changing physics open up all kinds of possibilities, from platforming to combat. Kat runs into all kinds of enemies as the game tells her story, and it’s always handy to “fall” horizontally toward a bad guy to deliver a thunderous kick.
“Gravity Rush” is technically an action role-playing game, as you can improve and customize Kat’s abilities as you see fit, but above all, this is a messing-around game. Kat’s gravity-shifting powers transform the floating city of Heksville into an urban playground that taps into our most primal fantasies, like fellow gravity games “Jumping Flash and “And Yet It Moves.” As a bonus, Heksville is awfully pretty, visually and aurally. The graphics are rendered in a cel-shaded style, giving the game the look of a living cartoon, and the game features the rare orchestral sweeps and trills that aren’t forgotten as soon as they’re heard.
“Gravity Rush” brings up a concern never thought about in our daydreams of flying: It might be awfully disorienting. The mastery over falling that “Gravity Rush” grants you tempts you to shift gravity every which way, and it’s not long till you have a minor headache. “Gravity Rush” is awfully fun, but only in small doses.
