Don't Plague my Heart
No Gravity: The Plague Of Mind is space shooting in its purest form. Is this enough of an indy effort to make this download-only title worthy of its $10 price tag?
Published: March 10, 2009
When I turned on my precious little PSP to fire up No Gravity: The Plague Of Mind for the first time, I knew almost nothing about it. I had no idea what genre I was reviewing, nor had I ever heard of the title's rather sympathetic indy development background. The knowledge about No Gravity's roots does make this review a tiny bit more complicated than I anticipated, but let me begin at the beginning.
I usually like to commence reviews by giving the reader a small insight into the world the game is set in or dish up a brief, hopefully spoiler free, summary of its story and/or characters. Well, let me put it this way: No Gravity offers the most laughable excuse of a "story" ever given to players in order for them to shoot things up. But it's not only the lack of storytelling, no, it's also the lack of a proper presentation or rather one that can be taken seriously. The game serves a couple of extremely weird and random cut-scenes which ultimately made us speculate on just exactly how stoned the guys at Sony must have been when they let the developers of this indy-homebrew title go through with implementing these "cut-scenes" into the final release.
Sure, when playing a homebrew game one can't expect a triple A presentation, but after having spent a couple of days with the review build of this download-only title I just can't stop fantasizing about how fantastic this game could have been. There is so much potential here, it almost made me cry seeing how scarcely the developers were able to use it throughout the game's 31 missions and its story and presentation. Let me make this clear: A good game can stand alone on its gameplay, but an average game can be made good with enough care, love and effort put into its story and presentation. Unfortunately, No Gravity is neither a very good game nor does it offer a decent presentation, not to mention an endurable story.
However when your resources are limited, it makes things more complicated. How can I criticize a game knowing its makers did the best they could despite the limitations they had to work with? Well, normally I wouldn't, but this is a 10 bucks download now and I therefore have no other choice: I have to compare it to the big boys in the biz. Would this game have a five dollar tag or maybe even less, I would have probably been a little more forgiving. Though Everyday Shooter, the PixelJunk series and Super Stardust have proven that with a simple, yet fun concept you don't need a triple A budget to fascinate and impress. And this is probably the biggest problem with No Gravity. It tries to be something that it never manages to become: A fully fledged PSP title that will keep you coming for more for a longer period of time. Sadly its 3d space shooting gameplay simply can't work without a bigger budget.
Speaking of gameplay: The by far most severe problem with Anozor's space shooter is its tedious mission design. Yes, you will face "bosses", and yes it occasionally happens that you won't be dogfighting in space (instead you'll be dogfighting in the atmosphere of a planet's surface), but overall, with only a few minor exceptions towards the end, you won't be stunned by variety. Sadly instead: This game demands patience. And when I say patience, I mean lots of patience! Shooting and dying are the two things you will be doing over and over again. Then, about 70% into the story, suddenly a mission pops up in which you can't shoot. This is one of those very rare moments where variety is brought about. Unfortunately these moments are indeed very rare.
I usually like to commence reviews by giving the reader a small insight into the world the game is set in or dish up a brief, hopefully spoiler free, summary of its story and/or characters. Well, let me put it this way: No Gravity offers the most laughable excuse of a "story" ever given to players in order for them to shoot things up. But it's not only the lack of storytelling, no, it's also the lack of a proper presentation or rather one that can be taken seriously. The game serves a couple of extremely weird and random cut-scenes which ultimately made us speculate on just exactly how stoned the guys at Sony must have been when they let the developers of this indy-homebrew title go through with implementing these "cut-scenes" into the final release.
Sure, when playing a homebrew game one can't expect a triple A presentation, but after having spent a couple of days with the review build of this download-only title I just can't stop fantasizing about how fantastic this game could have been. There is so much potential here, it almost made me cry seeing how scarcely the developers were able to use it throughout the game's 31 missions and its story and presentation. Let me make this clear: A good game can stand alone on its gameplay, but an average game can be made good with enough care, love and effort put into its story and presentation. Unfortunately, No Gravity is neither a very good game nor does it offer a decent presentation, not to mention an endurable story.
However when your resources are limited, it makes things more complicated. How can I criticize a game knowing its makers did the best they could despite the limitations they had to work with? Well, normally I wouldn't, but this is a 10 bucks download now and I therefore have no other choice: I have to compare it to the big boys in the biz. Would this game have a five dollar tag or maybe even less, I would have probably been a little more forgiving. Though Everyday Shooter, the PixelJunk series and Super Stardust have proven that with a simple, yet fun concept you don't need a triple A budget to fascinate and impress. And this is probably the biggest problem with No Gravity. It tries to be something that it never manages to become: A fully fledged PSP title that will keep you coming for more for a longer period of time. Sadly its 3d space shooting gameplay simply can't work without a bigger budget.
Speaking of gameplay: The by far most severe problem with Anozor's space shooter is its tedious mission design. Yes, you will face "bosses", and yes it occasionally happens that you won't be dogfighting in space (instead you'll be dogfighting in the atmosphere of a planet's surface), but overall, with only a few minor exceptions towards the end, you won't be stunned by variety. Sadly instead: This game demands patience. And when I say patience, I mean lots of patience! Shooting and dying are the two things you will be doing over and over again. Then, about 70% into the story, suddenly a mission pops up in which you can't shoot. This is one of those very rare moments where variety is brought about. Unfortunately these moments are indeed very rare.
