It's Not Flying, It's Falling With Style
Who knew Woody was right all along? Gravity Rush doesn't need you to be Supergirl, it just needs you rethink what flying really is.
Published: May 25, 2012
There's a word that gets tossed around a lot in games, at varying levels of efficacy: atmosphere. In most reviews, it's sort of regulated to spooky games, or ones that are going for a certain effect, and I suppose in that respect Gravity Rush is definitely aiming for... something. What that something is can be a source of confusion and, I suspect, a little debate. I don't think most would argue that the game pulls so heavily from Japanese storytelling tropes that it trends toward the dreaded "anime" catch-all description that ignorant or lazy folks use to box something that's uniquely Japanese into a comfy dismissive box.
Make no mistake, I am by no means a Japanophile, nor am I any sort of anime connoisseur. But I see stuff that uses a familiar presentation style to Japan's animation and watch people instantly assume it's riddled with the same sort of quirkiness and cliches and just dismiss it out of hand. Problem is, Gravity Rush isn't exactly going to help with that. To be frank, the story kind of goes off the rails toward the end and turns decidedly existential at times. It's not abstract; the pieces are there, but you aren't going to get them funneled to you in any kind of clear-cut order toward the end, which sort of throws the basic structure of the previous eight or so hours into disarray.
What I genuinely loved about the game, above all that "atmosphere" I'm going to get to (I promise) was that this felt like a Japanese superheroine's origin story. The best part of the better adapted comic book movies is riding along with them; you get to see Spider-Man leap around rooftops before he starts swinging. You see Bruce Wayne build up his litany of toys pieces at a time until he's freaking out petty criminals. The origin story, when nailed right, lets you become a passenger in their discovery. That's what Gravity Rush does so perfectly, but through the lens of Japanese storytelling. You wake up along with Kat, an amnesiac (see? Tropes!), and get to learn her origin just as she does.
This isn't an ordinary heroine discovery, though. Long before she really understands why she can lift off the ground, aim at a new point and make everything around her fall toward that new bottom (including people, which is never really addressed and sort of made me feel guilty that some people in this world were dragged along and likely fell to absolutely horrible deaths), Kat finds her nemesis in the form of another, far more adept doppelganger. Kat wakes up and finds, fittingly, a cosmic kitty that allows her to shirk the normal influence of gravity and redefine it at will.
Her nemesis, another mystery girl with a raven instead of a cat, is far more adept -- seemingly more committed to wreaking havoc and thus appears to be rather... evil? She's certainly trying to stop Kat from slowly bringing this odd floating city called Heksville perched over a seething pit of darkness back together. As is the case when you're controlling a heroine, she can't really stop you if you try enough, and as each chunk of the missing city is loosed from a kind of swirling nether realm and re-attaches to the tower that disappears both above and below you into actual obscurity, you help reunite the denizens in your "home" chunk with those they've lost.
Make no mistake, I am by no means a Japanophile, nor am I any sort of anime connoisseur. But I see stuff that uses a familiar presentation style to Japan's animation and watch people instantly assume it's riddled with the same sort of quirkiness and cliches and just dismiss it out of hand. Problem is, Gravity Rush isn't exactly going to help with that. To be frank, the story kind of goes off the rails toward the end and turns decidedly existential at times. It's not abstract; the pieces are there, but you aren't going to get them funneled to you in any kind of clear-cut order toward the end, which sort of throws the basic structure of the previous eight or so hours into disarray.
What I genuinely loved about the game, above all that "atmosphere" I'm going to get to (I promise) was that this felt like a Japanese superheroine's origin story. The best part of the better adapted comic book movies is riding along with them; you get to see Spider-Man leap around rooftops before he starts swinging. You see Bruce Wayne build up his litany of toys pieces at a time until he's freaking out petty criminals. The origin story, when nailed right, lets you become a passenger in their discovery. That's what Gravity Rush does so perfectly, but through the lens of Japanese storytelling. You wake up along with Kat, an amnesiac (see? Tropes!), and get to learn her origin just as she does.
This isn't an ordinary heroine discovery, though. Long before she really understands why she can lift off the ground, aim at a new point and make everything around her fall toward that new bottom (including people, which is never really addressed and sort of made me feel guilty that some people in this world were dragged along and likely fell to absolutely horrible deaths), Kat finds her nemesis in the form of another, far more adept doppelganger. Kat wakes up and finds, fittingly, a cosmic kitty that allows her to shirk the normal influence of gravity and redefine it at will.
Her nemesis, another mystery girl with a raven instead of a cat, is far more adept -- seemingly more committed to wreaking havoc and thus appears to be rather... evil? She's certainly trying to stop Kat from slowly bringing this odd floating city called Heksville perched over a seething pit of darkness back together. As is the case when you're controlling a heroine, she can't really stop you if you try enough, and as each chunk of the missing city is loosed from a kind of swirling nether realm and re-attaches to the tower that disappears both above and below you into actual obscurity, you help reunite the denizens in your "home" chunk with those they've lost.
