Gravity Rush Five Years Later

Published: February 9, 2017 9:00 AM /

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Gravity Rush 5th Year

3D worlds have been a big part of gaming ever since the release of Super Mario 64 ,and since then even Mario has toyed with the idea of shifting gravity, but no game took the idea of changing perspectives on the world further than Gravity Rush. Originally releasing for the PlayStation Vita in February 2012 in Japan, and then to the rest of the world in June even though the platform wasn't widely adopted, Gravity Rush was received by the masses fairly popularly.

In Gravity Rush players follow a girl named Kat, who has been granted the ability to change gravity. While she doesn't completely understand her power, she knows it was given to her by a mysterious cat named Dusty. After saving some of the residents of the strange city of Hekseville, including a friendly police officer named Syd, from the strange monsters called Nevi, she is dubbed a Shifter. As she continues to help out members of the city, she meets another Shifter called Raven. It's from there that the story begins to really pick up as you continue your fight to save Hekseville, fighting a variety of strange and unknown foes. If you're someone that can deal with a bit of strange in your story, then the escalation in Gravity Rush might be something that you'd look forward to.

gravity rush remastered wallIt wasn't just the story that a lot of people enjoyed about Gravity Rush but also the interesting, and literally gravity defying, game mechanics. As a Shifter, at any point in the game's overworld you could press a button to "turn off" gravity on Kat. From there you can point to where you would like your new "down" direction to be. Once you press the gravity button again you begin to fall in that direction. If you were happily running down the road but instead wanted to walk up the wall next to you, that would be possible, while the rest of the world would continue to function as normal. This ability ruins any potential of Gravity Rush being a traditional platformer as you could fly/fall anywhere you want.

Releasing within the launch window of the PlayStation Vita, this was one of the titles that made good use of the graphical quality, touch pad, and motion controls of the new handheld. When you're floating in the air you can change the way that your gravity will pull you based on how you tilt and turn the device; while you could also make this change via the right stick, the ability to do it on tilt was a fun addition.

gravity rush remastered

Combat in Gravity Rush also relied heavily upon the use of gravitational manipulation. While you couldn't affect the gravity of any of your enemies, you would be able to fall towards their weak points, glowing red orbs on their body, and shatter them as you kicked at terminal velocity. Each of the Nevi would have glowing orbs attached to their bodies—which was their weak point—and the more powerful a Nevi became, the more orbs it would have. This can mean starts of difficult fights are quite easy, as you have so many points to target, but when you get a boss down to only having one or two orbs, it can be difficult to line up your kicks just right.

When the sequel for Gravity Rush was announced players of the original title were looking forward to another chance to dive into the world of Hekseville, while many others were left confused as to what Gravity Rush was. It was because of this that in early 2016 PlayStation 4 players were able to get involved in the action in Gravity Rush Remastered. Gravity Rush Remastered was received by some critics even higher than the original title, and while it wasn't able to take advantage of all of the features of the PSVita, it will still able to use all the controller based controls.

Check out our thoughts on its sequel, Gravity Rush 2.

Did you play Gravity Rush when it first released? Were you excited to see its remastering and sequel?

Have a tip, or want to point out something we missed? Leave a Comment or e-mail us at tips@techraptor.net


Andrew Stretch Headshot
| Senior Content Manager

Andrew has written Video Game and Entertainment news, reviews, and guides for 10+ years. As Senior Content Manager, he assists in creating and editing… More about Andrew