2012’s Gravity Rush was a pleasant surprise on Vita; a stylish action game built around a very unique central hook: players could change gravity at will, literally dropping in any direction through the world.
The sequel is shaping up to build on this blueprint nicely, while taking advantage of the PS4’s significant grunt and the fact that it’s now a big screen experience. I’ve popped in to see an early build of the E3 demo while at Japan Studio to play The Last Guardian, and I’m glad I did.
The world design makes an immediate impression. Set in an entirely new city, it’s reminiscent of a Western European-inspired take on BioShock Infinite’s Columbia; island blocks bob about, high up in the sky, while barge-like platforms move between them. Once again the visuals are heavily influenced by comic books and anime, with a wonderfully cel-shaded world and comic book panel cutscenes.
A much greater sense of scale than the original too.
Zooming over to the nearest city block, the streets are full of people and vehicles criss-cross the skies above. “In the original there was very much a European feel, a very subdued town environment,” creative director Keiichiro Toyama tells me, “but in this game we want it to be more lively, more dynamic, more intense, to really have a strong city flavour… there are always lots of things moving, it’s a very dynamic environment.”
It’s a huge step up from the original and far more colourful too. The focus on dynamism also extends to the many physics objects in the world. As Kat floats up into the air, barrels, boxes and anything that isn’t nailed down floats up with her. She even has an amped up version of her Gravity Grab move that creates a swirling maelstrom of objects around her that she can then fling at enemies.
It’s a move that comes in handy during the combat encounters I see, and while the fundamentals of battle remain much the same, the team is implementing new fighting styles – Gravity Styles - to inject a bit more strategy into proceedings. “There are three styles you can switch between during combat,” Toyama says, “and you can switch at any time, no matter where and when.”
“Every so often you’ll encounter enemies that are too quick to attack using normal means,” he continues, “so this is where Lunar Style comes in… this changes the way gravity affects Kat. Her attacks are weakened, but she’s now become extremely light and can jump very high. She can now use her gravity actions without spending the gravity gauge, which she usually needs. And the Gravity Kick is transformed into the Wormhole Kick, where you can basically teleport directly to the enemy, making it much easier to hit them than [with the] ordinary Gravity Kick.”
The Gravity Kick is transformed into the Wormhole Kick, where you can basically teleport directly to the enemy
“In contrast to the Lunar Style, there’s a style which makes Kat heavier, which we call Jupiter Style. She becomes slower but her attack power is increased… the Gravity Kick doesn’t become the Wormhole Kick, it becomes the Surge Kick, which can destroy lots of enemies – pretty much anything in the nearby area.”
They’re good changes, allowing players to instantly switch it up – fast and able to instantly close gaps one moment, powerful and capable of doing damage to multiple enemies the next.
As mentioned, though, the combat is quite familiar, particularly when Kat is fighting the enemies from the original – the bizarre alien race known as the Nevi. Thankfully, this time they’re joined by human enemies and mechs, which will hopefully add some more layers to combat.
Each of Kat’s Gravity Styles can be upgraded over the course of the game, in much the same way you upgraded your attacks in the first game. Players will also get some help in combat from Raven – Kat’s rival from the first game who is now an ally, and shows up for flashy double-team moves.
Double-teaming a mech mini-boss.
On top of this, Gravity Rush 2 lets players equip Talismans, which essentially function as perks, adding “special effects to your character.”
“Many of them are things that you would probably guess,” Toyama tells me, “things that make the gauge decrease slower, things like that, very basic, but there are others that are a little bit more finicky, where something will become half as powerful, but as a result another thing becomes twice as powerful, things like that.”
The most interesting Talismans will be earned through the game’s new mining mode. “I can’t give you too much information about it, but… [these] are separate stages that allow players to gain power-up items that are different from ones they would get from ordinary gameplay,” Toyama explains.
Why mining? Because at the start of Gravity Rush 2, Kat loses her gravity powers and ends up in a very poor mining town, where she’s forced to work. She soon gets her powers back and ventures into the new city, but her brief foray as a miner obviously isn’t left behind.
Interestingly, the mining mode will have an asynchronous online element where players can have their friends help them. That’s not the only online integration. “There’s a challenge mode,” Toyama tells me, “where your friends can challenge you to complete missions at a certain speed, and their ghosts will be imported into your game and you can race them.”
Gravity - an awesome game mechanic to play with.
The focus, however, is very much on the single-player, story-driven experience. “We got a lot of feedback from players [of Gravity Rush] wanting more,” Toyama says. “They wanted to play longer, they wanted to see more of the world, and we’ve responded in this title. The overall size of the map – of the world – is 2.5 times as big as the original, and there are over three times as many missions as there were in the original.”
I ask about how the team is trying to ensure that missions are varied to avoid one of the major criticisms of the first game – a reliance on repetitive fetch quests. “We actually got lots of positive feedback about the game,” Toyama replies, “but as you say, there were some people who had issues with the types of missions and also just the overall amount of gameplay and playtime, so we really wanted to respond to that and you’ll find in this title, like we said, there are many more missions, the world is a lot bigger, and we made sure that there’s lots of things you can do in the missions, it’s not all the same thing. And that holds for even side missions, not just the story missions, so I think you’ll see that you get to do a lot.”
We won’t get a chance to go hands-on until E3, but it's cool to get a greater sense of the team's plans for Gravity Rush 2. And it really is worth reiterating how striking the visual design is. “I feel like, especially recently,” comments Toyama when I compliment the game’s look, “that it’s hard to find titles that really emphasise the Japanese aesthetic, the Japanese feel. We want create a game that anybody can enjoy, but we want to use the Japanese aesthetic to tell an interesting story.”
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