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Gravity Rush: Remastered (2015, Playstation 4) Review


THE CHARM IS ASKEW


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An apple falls from a tree branch, rolls down a few hills and stops next to a slumbering girl. "There was another way", her voiceover narration states, alluding perhaps to the fact that for her, gravity doesn't need to go in one direction. Her name is Kat, and she's the heroine of Gravity Rush: Remastered, a short open world adventure with its own, unique and creative take on reality. Kat is quite the character; like a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, she seems summoned to restore some life into a city that threatens to crumble and literally fall into the sky.

Kat's superpower is the ability to alter gravity in several ways, like flinging herself or different objects into the air. She can stay grounded to walls, ceilings or rooftops, and then run diagonally, vertically or even upside down. She helps people by transporting them, or their heavy belongings for that matter, to their destination. Her abilities also have self-defense applications, since she can hurl anything not nailed down at enemies to inflict damage. She can even launch herself to deliver powerful flying kicks in the enemy's sweet spots.

In everyday life she ruminates on the same issues as you and me, matters like where to live, how to make a living, what to wear and how to belong. But, almost as if by accident, she also repeatedly saves her new home from peril - even as her fellow citizens struggle to accept her into the community. And little by little they learn to view her as one of their own.



All of this sounds much cooler than it actually is. Gravity Rush, originally developed by Sony's Japan Studio for the PS Vita and later remastered for the PS4 by Bluepoint Games, is such a fun concept that it stings to feel so apathetic about it. The act of playing the game feels like talking with a mouthful of bubblegum. Movement is stifled and slow, the quest design is often tedious, exploration seems pointless and the story has its charms, but leaves so many threads unresolved that there's hardly any reason to see it through. The end product feels half-finished.

As the game starts, Kat awakens from unconsciousness, only to discover that she is suffering from amnesia. She has no clear recollection of how she got to the city, nor does she remember who she is. By her side sits a black cat with a fur gleaming like the cosmos, who we quickly learn is the source of all her powers. If they get separated, Kat is like any ordinary girl.



After only a few minutes of exploration, we understand that little in this world adheres to real world logics. This is where Kat's amnesia comes in handy, as we learn the ways of this city, called Hekseville, alongside her. It reminds me of the movie Dark City; a grim, visionary sci-fi cult classic from director Alex Proyas, which also starts with an amnesiac awakening in unfamiliar surroundings. Gravity Rush is, however, a lot brighter and more uplifting than the dystopian movie.

Both take place in a location floating in an endless void with its own innate set of rules and logics. But Dark City got fully explained before the end, whereas Gravity Rush does nothing of the sort. This story fades out with a lot of mysteries unresolved, answers you would typically expect out of an amnesiac storyline like this. It feels like a snub; as if the Chekov gun of this story never really gets fired.


But this doesn't diminish the effect of what we actually get. Hekseville itself is a unique, homely setting, with realistic industrial features like brick houses, factories, sewers and streets paved with cobblestones. Townsfolk wander, some of them asking for help, and some are friendler than others. A few of them you can talk to but they don't offer much more than a few pointers.

Mundane stuff like that shares the screen with a mysterious skybox painted with weirdly colored ether and ominous vortexes. And ever so often, the city is beset by weird, supernatural phenomena; black and red blob-like creatures of varying shape that attack the residents. Most of your fights are with them, and they have their own, very apparent weak spots you need to target.


The opening of the game gives us a first glimpse of them, as you have to rescue a child that is about to get swallowed by a black vortex. His dad calls out for your help, and to make the situation even more alluringly alien, the spoken language is French with such a thick accent that I thought it was invented specifically for this game. This is where we learn that Kat belongs to a group of people called "Gravity Shifters", which are looked upon with suspicion because of their unique powers.

All this is presented through stylish, celshaded 3D animations, mixed with wonderful interludes of comic panels. The character design is distinct, with radiant personality from the first impression to the last. The plot takes us through a number of short chapters that often are self-contained stories, and together they form a disjointed narrative about a girl trying to find her place in this weird world. New characters come and go, and reappear once in a while, but none are so remarkable as Kat herself.


The game throws a lot of combat scenarios at you, but given the freedom of gravity-defying movement, the combat feels shockingly restrictive and boring. You know a handful of moves, but once you unlock one certain flying kick, there's no reason to put your character upgrade points into anything else (apart from hitpoints and stamina). No matter if you're facing standard enemies or bosses, the pattern is always the same. This makes combat insanely monotonous and simple. Were it not for yet another couple of flaws - egregious hitboxes and haphazard aiming - I swear you could win most fights using only a couple of controller buttons.

Even the power of flight feels sluggish and joyless, but I find the clumsiness of the flight animation kinda funny, and it is deliberate. Kat doesn't exactly glide smoothly through the air, like Superman. She rather drifts and rotates, seemingly out of control, until you make her stop, aim for another spot, and launch her into the new direction. After all, it's the cat that makes it happen, and Kat herself is only along for the ride.



At a first glance, the open world seems small, but expands as the story progresses. And with the added layers of gravity and verticality, it offers vast possibilites to explore. Too bad then, that there's absolutely no reason to go anywhere but the quest markers. The game doesn't feature a codex. Hardly any sidequests exist, save for a few challenge courses meant for grinding game mechanics such as maneuvering and combat. The only useful things you'll find off the beaten path are crystal collectibles used for character upgrades.

But as much as I disliked the interactivity of Gravity Rush: Remastered, I enjoyed thinking about its ideas. It deals with doomsday stuff without the need to feel particularly pretentious about it. Although the story doesn't amount to much, each individual chapter is well-written and entertaining. But above all, the main draw is the infectious charm of Kat and the unique world design surrounding her. The game is on the brink of greatness, it just needs refined mechanics and a coherent, finished story to reach it. 

This franchise is destined for a better future; a live-action movie adaptation is in the works as I write these words. So here's to hoping for a hard reboot, because this cool concept deserves a better fate than to just end up as another cult classic. It's no wonder people sing its praises; everybody secretly wants to be someone's champion, and in this case it is obviously Kat. For her sake, people seem unable to escape latching on to the creative ideas behind her game, and let all the flaws be sucked into one of those vortexes in the sky.

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