Gravity Rush Indulges the Need to Fail at Flying Around

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

Gravity Rush Indulges the Need to Fail at Flying Around

I think what I look for in a superhero sandbox game is superpowered movement that looks easier than it is.

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[bificommander]

Don't own any Sony consoles so I can't play this game. But I hear ya. That's why I actually like the Battlefied/GTA helicopters that can be tricky to handle and easy to crash. And why I didn't care at all for Just Cause 2's helicopters, which were of the "press W-move forward, release W-come to a complete stop" variaty. I didn't feel like I was flying at all.

 

[StormShaun]

It's funny how this came up.
I just purchased the game a couple of days ago, and boy, it is worth every penny so far.

Yes, you do fail quite a fair bit at the beginning. Either by running out of gravity gauge in mid-air and smashing into the ground (thank goodness their isn't no fall damage, in fact, it only makes failing fun) or by doing as you said, and smashing face-first into walls and all kinds of things.

Yet when you master, or at least get to know the system. You'll be floating, kicking, and flying around the whole map, especially when you unlock all of the world. It also feels really good to fly, yes, sometimes it can be a little finicky, but it isn't too much of a bother, especially since it is the first game in the ip. Plus a lot in the game can easily make me ignore the finicky controls, especially since I really like the main character, Kat.

I'm really looking forward to Gravity Rush 2. I hope they can perfect their system, and hopefully make it seem more like a superhero game... at least a tiny bit.

 

[ColeusRattus]

Well, what Mr. Croshaw is decribing as a game he wishes to play is basically Just Cause 3. To me, it's quite a thrill to traverse Medici with grapple, wingsuit and parachute, on the perfect sweetspot between skill and grace.

Too bad you have to do tedious grinding of side-content to unlock all the abilities needed to fully enjoy it.
Also, it baffles me why most of the main missions boil down to escort quests... but that is another story.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Well, what Mr. Croshaw is decribing as a game he wishes to play is basically Just Cause 3. To me, it's quite a thrill to traverse Medici with grapple, wingsuit and parachute, on the perfect sweetspot between skill and grace.

Too bad you have to do tedious grinding of side-content to unlock all the abilities needed to fully enjoy it.
Also, it baffles me why most of the main missions boil down to escort quests... but that is another story.

Have you seen the trailer for the first upcoming DLC/expansion? It give you a rocket powered wingsuit with machine guns and missile launchers!! Along with some flying sky fortress thingy, i dunno. But if that isn't the coolest transition to jetpack in a game ever, i don't know what else is.

 

[nickpy]

Being one of those "mad people" who did play Gravity Rush on Vita, I happen to know why you have to press a button to "re-aim" and again to actually change gravity. Whilst I fully agree that on the PS4 it doesn't make much sense, since you would obviously by looking in the direction you want to travel, that's not true on the Vita because you actually aimed where you wanted to go using the accelerometer, i.e. you physically moved the console to choose where you wish to fly. This was why the button was necessary, because otherwise it'd start madly waving your viewpoint around when you weren't flying everytime your body twitched.

 

[SiskoBlue]

I'm in agreement about freedom of movement, and it being a requirement of skill. There's a lot of games I really enjoyed just because the movement starts off difficult but as you learn and upgrade you become a master of your domain. InFamous, Batman games, Far Cry, Dark Souls/Bloodborne.

Nearly all these games feel quite clunky when you first starting playing. You fall off things, run in to things, it's difficult. But if you stick with them and learn to drive them, almost like a car, you get that feeling of being one with the character. You don't think about which buttons you press to launch Cole off a car, grind a wire, launch in to a floating fall and then ground pound a ring of enemies on top of a building. You just do it instinctively, and it's that feeling people enjoy, mastery. The problem is, it only comes from things that feel difficult at first and that flies in the face of developers and publishers focus groups.

 

[Darth_Payn]

This game didn't sound like the kind Yahtzee typically plays, but now it sounds like this one's worth a look. Even though I don't have a Vita, I don't know what his beef with that system was.

 

[Xman490]

Grand Theft Auto is my choice for capturing this feeling of wild motion that could end up horribly. With a fast car going off a ramp/hill, you can make it soar in a direction, perhaps making it spin or orienting rightside-up so it won't be stuck bottom-up/exploding. One time, my care got stuck from such movement in GTA V, between a rock and a hard place, unable to flip over. The sense of speed in general in those games is beautiful. Oh, and the glitchy swingset: I would spend minutes driving into one - perhaps letting my car get so broken it could barely move - just so that it might twirl 50 feet into the air and smash into an apartment building.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Sounds like Yahtzee is a fan of QWOP

 

[Jorpho]

Makes me think of Umihara Kawase (aka Yumi's Odd Odyssey on the 3DS), whose various iterations are finally available on Steam (shortly after the developer went kaput). Of course, you control a little girl with a fishing pole there instead of a superhero, but it's got the whole arduously-intricate maneuvering thing down.

 

[Flame Sama]

Being a fan of nice movement mechanics, I'm surprised then that Yahtzee was committed to shitting all over Sunset Overdrive. The movement mechanics, while being easier than Spiderman 2, demanded a certain level of finesse to do well in the game and there were plenty of parkour and speed challenges to make a use of them.

 

[anonymity88]

This game didn't sound like the kind Yahtzee typically plays, but now it sounds like this one's worth a look. Even though I don't have a Vita, I don't know what his beef with that system was.

If I'm remembering correctly they took the disc drive out of the Vita and tried to make it all online, so you'd have to redownload any PSP games you already owned/there wouldn't be a secondhand market.

I might be wrong though...

Other than that I just don't think it sold particularly well?

 

[nickpy]

If I'm remembering correctly they took the disc drive out of the Vita and tried to make it all online, so you'd have to redownload any PSP games you already owned/there wouldn't be a secondhand market.

I might be wrong though...

Other than that I just don't think it sold particularly well?

I own a Vita and honestly, the main problem with the console is lack of support and/or the wrong kind of support. The console itself is great, but as we all know a console is only as strong as its game lineup, and its game lineup frankly sucks. Sony barely made any first-party titles for it at all, and pretty much the only good games on it are ports from other consoles, which is hardly a sustainable business model. Further, I think they tried to push the "PS3 quality games in your hands!" aspect too much - If I want to play large, expansive games I'll do so at home on my TV console or Computer. Basically what most people want on the go is just a different kind of game, one where a logical "stopping point" occurs every five minutes or so, not one where it takes a full hour to get fully into the game. The main games I myself play on my Vita nowadays are Rayman (port), Patapon (PSP BC) and Sound Shapes (Vita-exclusive, I think). The fact that only one of the three main games I play on my vita is actually a vita game speaks volumes in itself.

Of course, the outrageous prices (for the memory cards in particular) didn't help, and a lack of TV-out was in my opinion a bit of a downer. True it did drop UMD support so no direct BC with physical PSP games, but I don't think that was done out of malice, I think they just decided that the newer flash-based carts were a better bet. All digitally owned PSP games are fully BC.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Does anybody else think those boxes that take a quote from the article you are reading and stick it on the side are really dumb? Like, I'm already reading the article, why are they taking a part of it completely out of context before I've read it.

And maybe it's because I should have gone to bed 3 hours ago, but I find the one in this article to be really hilarious.

Yahtzee is talking about how there should be some challenge and skill to the movement mechanics in that paragraph, and then the quote ends it with a non sequitur about how he wants to look like a shopping bag in the wind. The best part is that they add a full stop there, and make it look like it wasn't actually the set up for a joke, and that Yahtzee would really love nothing more than a game where you float about like a shopping bag.