--Gade the Creator, Gravity Rush
"The Nevi was only trying to protect the girl, but I destroyed it. They were more than monsters. I know that now."
--Kat, Gravity Rush
The strangeness of Gravity Rush as its various components come together is one of its strongest qualities. While occasionally some of its elements are neither artistically nor thematically helpful, at its best, it has some of the most novel fighting and traversal mechanics in gaming, and this is a more philosophically direct game than many, even if it some characters say things about reality that are logically impossible--and thus they must by necessity be untrue even in the fictional game lore but misunderstood by the characters. Brimming with style, uniqueness, and rather deep lore, Gravity Rush also integrates the special functions of the portable system it debuted on.
Production Values
The floating city of Hekseville and its adjacent dimensions and lands look great on the Vita's small screen. This 2014 game has a very distinct art style that it maintains across its diverse landscapes, some of which are very colorful or otherwise visually grand (a section set against the backdrop of outer space being an example). Comic-like illustrations and dialogue introduce certain events, and while the Vita could have handled full cinematics with voice acting in their place, in another sense, the miniature visual novels are right at home on a portable system. The sound that is there, like Kat's attacks and the noises of the Nevi creatures, is executed well. It just would have been more representative of the Vita's power as a handheld console if more of the game had voice acting.
Gameplay
A highly creative game that is odd by comparison to many Western games, Gravity Rush lets you soar upward or downard or in any direction you choose as long as the gravity meter has not depleted, and this gets used to traverse great distances, dodge enemy attacks, or launch attacks of your own as you build momentum and then slam into hostile creatures. Kat's hair and scarf will still fall in the direction gravity would normally pull something even when she stands on a wall or is floating upside down--it can sometimes take a few moments to figure that out just by looking around. The duration of Kat's gravity powers, their recharge rate, the power of her various but limited attacks, and more can be upgraded with gems obtained throughout the hub city of Hekseville and the individual missions. Optional challenge missions grant additional gems, and since character upgrades make an enormous difference later in the game, it is in the player's best interest to at least attempt them.
Story
Some spoilers are below.
A girl named Kat wakes up forgetful of her past only to witness strange gravitational anomalies, find she has a tie to a mysterious cat that seems to give her powers of gravitational distortion, and encounter another young girl with an animal, this time a raven, who has has her own power to manipulate gravity. Kat soon meets a man who insists he is the Creator and tells Kat of another world where people were pulled out and placed in the floating city of Hekseville. The enigmas of this world are many. A bus full of children has allegedly vanished without a trace. Monstrous creatures called the Nevi appear in Hekseville. There is also the other girl who can bend gravity to her will, and she regards Kat as a threat. Slowly, the intertwined nature of many strange occurrences come to light.
Intellectual Content
Gravity Rush directly selves into the pseudo-theistic and more abstract metaphysical nature of its lore, with one thing it does not address being the fact that the laws of nature like gravity could have been different and even now could change at any moment, without warning or evidence that would suggest this is coming. Unlike the necessary truths of logic, like logical axioms, all behaviors of matter and the very existence of a material world are not fixed by necessity; the former could change to any other logically possible set of scientific laws and the latter could blink out of existence because it is not logically necessary that it continues existing. What Gravity Rush does tackle is the idea of a being dreaming a universe into existence. Because the game states all of its characters except the dreamer are figments of someone's imagination, it falls into the blunder of treating consciousnesses as existing within another consciousness, an impossibility: either a dream figment at most only seems to be conscious but is not, or one consciousness sustains another mind that is still metaphysically distinct from it (as is the case with logically possible forms of basic theism).
This issue starts to develop as a theme somewhat early in the game when a man Kat helps wonders if none of Hekseville is real and if the people are just figments of someone else's imagination, but he has it backwards. If anything, the city and the other people could be figments of his imagination if he really is conscious, for a conscious being cannot not exist as a mind as long as it perceives anything at all, meaning one's conscious mind (and the laws of logic that make consciousness and certainty and truth possible in the first place) cannot be an illusion. Consciousness cannot be illusory, even if many perceptions of the external world, memories of events, moral emotions, aesthetic perceptions, and so on do not actually correspond with external existents like the material world or real moral obligation. It is other minds that would be epistemologically uncertain or metaphysically nonexistent and not his own if he has one. Soon, though, Kat meets someone named Gade who claims "I am the Creator of this world," only to later be told by the possessed body of a young girl named Cyanae that Cyanae is the Creator: "This world is a dream. Cyanae's dream. You and everything in it are just crystallized figments of her imagination." As aforementioned, since logical impossibilities cannot even be portrayed or hypothetically possible due to being false by necessity, this is a case of characters in a story simply saying things that cannot be true when the real nature of reality must be different than what they claim.
Conclusion
Gravity Rush is a highly original game that at least minimally takes advantage of the Vita's touch screen and motion sensors. A bizarre story, the sheer uniqueness of gravity-based combat mechanics, and the increasingly philosophical nature of the lore all work together to make Gravity Rush a fine example of what can be made when developers are open to more unconventional ideas about creating a game. There is plenty for a sequel, which it eventually received, to expand upon, including providing more combat options and offering more side quests, but this is a game like few others, and not in a negative way. More games like this could have helped salvage the Vita's struggling sales and reputation back when it was still being produced.
Content:
1. Violence: Non-graphic kicks and other attacks are exchanged between Kat and her Nevi enemies.
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