ANATOMY OF A MAJOR LETDOWN
Also for: -
Let's begin with the good news.
I urge everyone to check out screenshots and videos of the artistry that
Team Siren put together for Gravity Rush 2. The game
features a huge, levitating open world of great verticality and creativity,
the likes of which I've rarely seen. You traverse it by altering gravity to
work in your favor. For instance, if you want to reach the top of a cathedral,
you aim for the steeple, press a button and literally fall into the sky. You
may even stop moving mid-air and redirect your fall. Free of all shackles, you
can explore the open world however you wish, from top to bottom, looking for
secret treasures and optional bosses.
Furthermore, the story is political in the true meaning of the word, and
not shy about it either. It sports a rare, old-fashioned class awareness, at least for the
first half of the game. Gravity Rush 2 depicts a city levitating in the sky,
where the spoiled elite live on floating islands far above the veil of clouds, where the sun shines constantly.
The underclass live far below, shrouded
in mist, taking shelter in ramshackle buildings surrounded by filth. They live
off of the scraps of the wealthy. And in between we've got the workers, the marketplace, the entertainment district and the harbour full of levitating freighters. The place is teeming with life. Floating cars take passengers from one part of the city to the other, or at least the ones who can afford the ride. The brilliant soundtrack echoes the vibe of
every location or situation. The color of the sky reflect the
living conditions.
Add to that a most spectacular cast of memorable characters, and we've got
ourselves a triumph in world building. Kat, the heroine you're controlling (in immersive third person), is super charming and quirky. Her extroverted personality is
infectious with wild mood swings depending on how the community treats her.
She longs to belong. Being a gravity shifter, her powers make her a superhero, but at the same
time she harbors many insecurities that make her more humane than most, and
deeply relatable.
In the beginning she finds herself in a new location on board the houseboat
fleet, working alongside its residents as they sail across the ether. They stop at
certain locations to mine for precious crystals, a currency in this world. The first
two chapters of the game concerns the politics of the fleet and the employers
that seek to exploit them, and later expands to involve a brand new city. The story grabs me right through to the end, and
Kat's friendship with her equal, Raven, is touching, loving and uplifting. Raven's appeal is more introverted and mysterious - and she's one helluva looker.
The dialogue is told mostly through comic panels, and the entire story feels
like it could've been lifted right out of a good manga. Some of the more
comical interludes make me laugh, and every minor side role is well-written by
writers that have a good grasp on how to establish character. The story is
also unusual in that it's broken up into several, mostly standalone chapters
(Dragon Age II did something similar). Some may not like it, but I find
the approach refreshing.
So far so good. In terms of story, character, dialogue, inventiveness and
world building Gravity Rush 2 is top-notch - even better than the
first game. Really, it's creme de la creme. I've seen a few YouTube-videos
praising this game, and they tend to stop right here, pointing at these
elements as evidence, and call the game "underrated", "an unsung classic" or
"the forgotten gem of the generation". But this annoys me to no end, because
it's a half-truth, turning a blind eye to droves of obvious flaws, bad ideas
and horrendous execution in gameplay mechanics.
I struggle to tell you how disappointing it is. I've been looking forward to
play this sequel ever since I finished the first game and found it so
promising, but felt as if it was only half-finished. And here's the thing: My
own political conviction also leans heavily to the left (way more than you'd
perhaps think), and upon finally finding a rare game that syncs with my
ideals, I so wish I could join the choir, but I could not look you in
the eye if I did. Because playing the game is nothing short of dreadful. It's
obnoxious and tedious almost every step of the way.
In terms of mission design and most things tied to the controller in your hand
- movement, camera and combat mechanics - Gravity Rush 2 is an absolute train
wreck. The only thing that works well are the flight controls in free-form
exploration, where you make no real progress, apart from collecting precious
gems used for character upgrades. You can improve Kat's gravitational powers,
such as her gravity kick, dodging ability and the stasis field, which is
mainly used for grabbing hold of things and flinging them at enemies.
None of these combat-related movements work well. And once you start a
sidequest or story mission, combat starts to feature heavily, showcasing
frustrating mechanics that haven't improved at all since the first game. In the
center of it all is an auto-targeting system. It's supposed to help find
enemies' weak spots, but half the time Kat will miss and glide right past or
shoot her projectiles into the surrounding ground.
It's a shame, because if the combat was fun, we would have had a
great game on our hands. The boss encounters could've been amazing, particularly a few late ones that boast great visual creativity. But the
unsynchronized camera/movement-dance keeps mocking me every step of the way. Not even experimenting with your equipment - the occasional power-tweaking talismans - helps much, because none of them can repair the broken camera and hit detection.
The camera goes berserk all the time, trying to find the currently auto-locked
enemy as you miss. If you crash into a wall or hit the ground, you can bet
your sorry ass the viewpoint gets stuck on the other side. You can't see shit.
While you try to find your bearings all other enemies have plenty of time to
release their deadly attacks off-screen. Just as you finally find your way out
of the mess and pick a suitable target again, your gravity gauge runs out and
you start falling towards the ground. Once you regain some gravity power, the
camera angle has changed and you need to find a new target.
As a concept, floating combat is very anime, but I doubt this
is how Team Siren envisioned it. The encounters never end, because it's wave
after wave of repeated foes with very obvious weak points you repeatedly fail
to hit. This is no power fantasy, it's a disempowerment nightmare. You want
another quote? You've got it: This is no force for good, it's a farce for bad.
Even worse are the missions where the game rips the flight mechanics right out
of your hands, forcing you to stick to ground level. You must remain
undetected, so you have to sneak your way to the current objective. The game
doesn't have a proper stealth mechanic, and doesn't offer much freedom in
tackling the situation. In certain missions they made sure I didn't
veer too far off the critical path and teleported me right back to the
beginning if I tried to experiment a little.
Some stealth missions require you to take photos of your objective. In other
words, Team Siren can't even let the photo mode only be a fun, innocent tool for self-expression. What if some players don't wanna use it? No, it must feature in
the gameplay, no matter how boring it makes the mission, because otherwise the effort gone into implementing it might be wasted.
And those dungeons - yuck - those dreadful, drawn-out "dungeons", where you
need to complete a trial before moving on. "Collect gems before time runs
out", "Defeat all enemies", "Defeat your enemies with your newfound powers"...
A couple of them introduce new forms Kat can change into. One featherweight
form, which involves the floatiest movement I've ever seen in a video game,
and a heavy, hardhitting one, with kicks that take so long to charge that
every enemy will line up to deliver a free bitchslap while they wait.
Almost every mission - whether main quest, sidequest or challenge quest -
hinges on some bad or boring mechanic. At the top of my head, I can mention
two missions I liked: (1) A sidequest that was heavily inspired by the great,
classic 1978 scifi-movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and (2) a late
quest in the main game that was a 3D puzzler. It required me to raise and
lower blocks to create an unbroken chain of blocks. They were both unique and
worked without a hitch. I also remember a plethora of bad ones, too many to
list here.
Other than that, I've got nothing about the gameplay to praise. I can't
believe this is a sequel to a game that had so many great ideas and novel
concepts. Maybe the critics weren't harsh enough towards the first game's
flaws, because I expected Team Siren to learn from them and create a superior
sequel (like Ubisoft did with Assassin's Creed II). Instead they
made it worse. They improved the things that were already sufficiently good,
and did nothing to rectify what was bad. They even added new bad mechanics, all of which feel more broken than what was already in place.
To add further fuel to the fire, I encountered four serious glitches. (1) One
hard freeze, forcing me to replay a seriously flawed, long sidequest from the
start. (2) One hard crash, forcing me to start a long fight sequence all over.
(3) I once clipped through the wall and got stuck, forcing me to restart the
game and load the latest checkpoint. (4) One mission kept teleporting me back
to the quest giver for no reason. I had to restart the
game and retry the mission. I'm sure plenty of other bugs exist, but I was
lucky enough to miss them.
Not even Raven or Kat herself could lift my spirits. Their charm only made me
feel guilty for hating Gravity Rush 2 for long stretches of time. Your potential
enjoyment I can say nothing of; some people are so laser-focused on narrative
and world building that they seem able to completely disregard everything
horrible that surrounds it. It's a mystery to me, especially when the flaws
impede the progression of the good story. If such things don't bother you at all, and if story is all you care about, you too could join the Gravity Rush 2 choir and start singing its praises.
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