Ludography
74/100
Players85 ratings
79/100
Critics12 reviews

Where to get it

Gravity Rush Remastered cover

2015 · Remaster · SCE Japan Studio · Platformer · Role-playing

Gravity Rush Remastered

PlayStation exclusiveRemaster

Gravity Rush is an action-adventure video game developed by SIE Japan Studio and Project Siren, and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. Gravity Rush Remastered is the PS4 remaster of the original Gravity Rush game which is bundled with all the previously released downloadable content.

Released
10 December 2015
Platforms
PlayStation 4
Genres
PlatformerRole-playingBeat 'em upAdventure
Developers
SCE Japan StudioProject Siren
Publishers
Sony Computer Entertainment
Modes
Single-player
Perspective
Third person
Themes
ActionFantasyComedyOpen world
Age ratings
ESRB TPEGI 12
Languages
English, Japanese

About

Gravity Rush, known in Japan as Gravity Daze, is a 2012 action-adventure video game developed and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation Vita. Gravity Rush Remastered, a high definition remaster developed by Bluepoint Games for the PlayStation 4, was released in 2015 in Japan and 2016 in the West. In Gravity Rush, players control Kat, an amnesiac with the power to manipulate how gravity affects her, and uses her powers to help the people of Hekseville against the mysterious Nevi, helping its people against threats and uncovering the mystery behind her past. Gameplay has Kat exploring the open world of Hekseville, completing missions for townsfolk and defeating Nevi. Navigation and combat heavily involve Kat's gravity-altering abilities.

Beginning development for PlayStation 3 in 2008 under the title Gravité before moving to the Vita, Gravity Rush was conceived by director Keiichiro Toyama prior to his work on Silent Hill and the Siren series. The team overcame technical challenges due to the gameplay and chosen hardware. The world, story and artistic style drew from Japanese and Western comics including the work of French artist Jean Giraud. The music was composed by Kohei Tanaka, who worked on the project from an early stage.

›Story

The game opens with an amnesiac Kat waking up in Hekseville, a floating city around a structure called the World Pillar. Kat is accompanied by a mysterious cat names Dusty; in saving a boy from being swept up in a gravity storm, she discovers that Dusty has the ability to manipulate how gravity affects her, enabling her to help people fight monsters spawned from the storms called Nevi. After saving Syd, a police officer who becomes her friend, she learns that those with her powers are dubbed "Shifters" by Hekseville's people. As she begins helping the city's denizens, she is confronted by fellow Shifter Raven, who sees her as an enemy.

Kat becomes involved in operations to catch Alias, a criminal linked to the Nevi — she eventually defeats him, sending him into a garbage crusher where he is killed. Alongside this, Kat helps restore sections of Hekseville swallowed by spatial rifts with the aid of Gade, a man who claims to be a "Creator". Kat restores all of Hekseville despite further interference from Raven, who apparently dies during a fight with Kat. Her exploits earn her the name "Gravity Queen".

Following Alias' defeat and the return of the final missing part of Hekseville, Kat is offered a place in the city's military if she will follow orders of its commander, Yuri Gerneaux, but she refuses.

Kat then meets a woman who dropped the last letter she received from her deceased boyfriend over the edge of Hekseville. To find it, she travels inside the World Pillar, a gigantic column that supports Hekseville and stretches from the sky to below the clouds. On her way down, her Shifter powers fade, and she is confronted by Raven, but the two are attacked by Nushi, a giant Nevi. Kat wakes to find herself captive in Boutoume, a city beneath the Pillar, where a group of children are living under the protection of their leader Zaza.

Kat and Raven help protect the children from Nushi, but they learn that the dark sea beneath Boutoume is slowly rising. One of the children, Cyanea, later confronts Kat — in a trance, while possessed by a being called a Dream Guardian, she reveals herself to be the Creator of the world through her dreams, and sends Kat into a dream where she learns that she is from a higher part of the World Pillar where she held a powerful position and suffered due to a great burden.

Having regained some of her forgotten power, Kat activates a ship called the Ark, which can transport everyone back to Hekseville. As the Ark launches after Kat beats back Nushi, Kat learns that Raven was originally one of the children trapped in Boutoume, and that she had been told by Hekseville's city alderman D'nelica not to retrieve them. On the way up, Kat succumbs to exhaustion and is separated from the Ark. Making her way back up the World Pillar, she ends up receiving the letter she was sent for from the boyfriend's ghost.

Returning to Hekseville, she finds that a whole year has passed due to the temporal distortions experienced in the lower parts of the World Pillar—under constant Nevi attacks, Hekseville has come under martial law and D'nelica has become its mayor. Kat is forced to fight Nushi one last time, before it is destroyed by an enhanced military operative called Yunica. Syd has become part of the military after its absorption of the civilian police forces. Offered a second chance to join the military efforts against the Nevi, Kat again refuses.

She is then asked by a scientist to help gather data about the Nevi, but it is a ruse to find out more about her Shifter powers.

After suffering from a nightmare about Alias, Kat wakes to find that Cyanea has reappeared, although Raven and the rest of the children are still missing. Attending a rally with Gabe and Syd where D'nelica unveils the Nevi-destroying weapon Sea Anemone, Kat responds to a Nevi attack and is captured by Yunica together with Dusty. As Syd attempts to free her, the Sea Anemone — which was constructed with a Nevi core as part of D'nelica's plan to control both Hekseville and the Nevi — goes berserk and begins attacking the city. Cyanea's Dream Guardian self decides to intervene and frees Dusty, who subsequently frees Kat.

Kat manages to damage the Sea Anemone, first with help from Yunica, who uses her mechanical weapons to damage its armor; then from Cyanea and Gabe as they combine their powers with Kat's to summon the Ark as a missile. D'nelica activates the Sea Anemone's self-destruct function, heedless of the collateral damage, but Kat, Raven and Yunica are able to stop it before that happens, and fling it at Neu Hiraleon, where it explodes. The people hail Kat as their savior, while calling for the wounded D'nelica's resignation for his part of the fiasco. The children within the Ark remain in stasis, with Cyanea saying they will wake to help restore light to the world; D'nelica learns Kat's original identity through a red crystal in his possession; and Gerneaux remembers a prophecy about a harbinger of catastrophe falling from the world above, referring to Kat's appearance.

Keywords

  • gravity

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Gravity Rush is an action-adventure video game in which players take the role of Kat, a young woman who can manipulate how gravity affects her, allowing her to walk on walls and fly through the air. Kat navigates the game's open world of Hekseville both on foot using roads and walkways, and using her powers; activating Kat's abilities, the player tilts the PlayStation Vita, aiming Kat and allowing her to "fall" in that direction. Kat can use her abilities to walk on vertical surfaces or areas such as ceilings and the underside of structures. Kat's gravity-based abilities are tied to an energy meter which decreases when her powers are active. When fully depleted, Kat's powers deactivate until the meter recharges.

Combat takes place either on the ground or with Kat using her powers against enemies. When on the ground, Kat attacks by kicking enemies in their weak spots. When using her powers, Kat can rotate and aim at those weak spots. Increasing Kat's distance before using her powers increases the amount of damage. Some abilities used in combat, such as the ability to locate and lock onto weak points, are tied to a cooldown timer which must replenish before being used again.

Story

Gravity Rush opens with an amnesiac Kat waking up in Hekseville, a floating city around a structure called the World Pillar. Kat is accompanied by a mysterious cat named Dusty; in saving a boy from being swept up in a gravity storm, she discovers that Dusty has the ability to manipulate how gravity affects her, enabling her to help people fight monsters spawned from the storms called Nevi. After saving Syd, a police officer who becomes her friend, she learns that those with her powers are dubbed "Shifters" by Hekseville's people. As she begins helping the city's denizens, she is confronted by fellow Shifter Raven, who sees her as an enemy.

Kat becomes involved in operations to catch Alias, a criminal linked to the Nevi — she eventually defeats him, sending him into a garbage crusher where he is killed. Alongside this, Kat helps restore sections of Hekseville swallowed by spatial rifts with the aid of Gade, a man who claims to be a "Creator". Kat restores all of Hekseville despite further interference from Raven, who apparently dies during a fight with Kat. Her exploits earn her the name "Gravity Queen".

Development

The initial concept for Gravity Rush came to Keiichiro Toyama during the beginning of his video game career when he joined Konami. His initial idea was a vague image of people floating in space, with later concepts and ideas forming over time. Due to his work first at Konami as director for Silent Hill, Toyama was labelled as a horror game director, leading him to work for Sony Computer Entertainment on the Siren series working out of the company's Japan Studio development team. As Siren: Blood Curse was nearing completion, and noting the combination of increasing costs and decreasing revenue for horror games, Toyama decided to prove his ability to design outside the horror genre and turn his concept for Gravity Rush into a video game.

Toyama pitched Gravity Rush to Sony in April 2008 as a "gravity action" game for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) under the title Gravité. It was a title aimed at hardcore gamers which would be expanded with downloadable content (DLC). The main staff were made up of veterans of Toyama's Siren series.

Reception

Gravity Rush received "generally favorable" reviews from critics, according to review aggregator website Metacritic.

Famitsu called the setting "outstanding"; while James Stephanie Sterling of Destructoid said that while Kat was an "adorable" protagonist, the story became nonsensical by the second half. Edge Magazine said the story provided "an engaging blend of eccentric nonsense", providing engaging scenarios for Kat while also praising her for breaking away from the physical superhero norms. Mollie L. Patterson Electronic Gaming Monthly praised Kat as a protagonist, while Christian Donlan of Eurogamer praised the writing, narrative, and the light tone adopted to tell the story.

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
PlayStation 410 December 2015Japan · North America 2 February 2016 · Europe 2 February 2016

Editions and related releases

Part of
Gravity Rush
Remaster of
Gravity Rush

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Collections2 collections

Platform libraries

Years

Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.