Gravity Rush: What Could Have Been

Sony’s Japan Studio is responsible for some of PlayStation’s biggest dark-horse, underrated gem games. While they’re most known for their Ico/Shadow of the Colossus/Last Guardian games, they’re also home to classics like Ape Escape, LocoRoco, and Patapon. This talented studio got the heave-ho in 2021, a decision I can’t comprehend two years later. Their biggest missed potential was with their Gravity Rush series. Allow me to share why I consider this one of the best exclusives Sony ever had.

The core of Gravity Rush‘s gameplay is what makes it so endearing and addictive: you quite literally control gravity. More specifically, you play as Kat and have the ability to move freely around terrain with gravity shifting until your gravity bar runs out, which refills almost instantly upon landing. Fighting the shadowy Nevi enemies lets you shift towards weak spots, or you can levitate nearby items to throw at them. It’s a formula that never gets old as you feel yourself slowly but surely master it.

Gravity Rush was originally a PS Vita exclusive, making use of the handheld’s gyroscope to tilt Kat’s trajectory with the Vita. The popularity resulted in a Remastered port for PS4. The limited physical release resulted in prices that will make you scoff if you check out a concurrent listing, so this is best experienced at its digital price point. We then got Gravity Rush 2 as a PS4 exclusive in 2017, which was released to critical acclaim. Sadly, it must have undersold to not warrant a further entry in this exceptional series.

The Gravity Rush series isn’t going to win any awards for storytelling, but that’s not its focus. This is a player-oriented experience with gameplay in mind, first and foremost. Its fun is derived from pushing the limits of imagination and using parts of the brain previously untapped. There’s so much side content and so many challenges to hone your skills in that after a few hours of fine-tuning, you’ll feel like a master of gravity that can bounce across the map with pinpoint precision and grace. Trust me, there’s no better feeling than that.

With Sony shutting the doors on Japan Studio in 2021, we can’t expect to see Gravity Rush in any capacity in the future. This is particularly disappointing as this series could have positively flourished with the current hardware of the PlayStation 5. What once was fog in Gravity Rush 2 could be a grandiose landscape where the player could see anything in front of them and think, “yeah, I can travel there.” Throw in DualSense feedback to simulate the wind zooming past the player and I can only imagine the boundaries this title could push.

While it’s sad to see Gravity Rush go by the wayside, it can still be enjoyed to this day. Gravity Rush Remastered hits a low of $7.49 on sale, whereas Gravity Rush 2 is only $19.99 at full price. Howlongtobeat places both games at 30 hours if you focus on the story, and up to 73 hours for completionists. With such a low cost of entry for a title I think all gamers should experience, now is the best time to enjoy these titles before any whisper of delisting comes about.