The game gives you an idea, intentionally or not, of the existential grind of its fictional working class.
#Gravity rush 2 Patch
Long stretches of dialogue patch together labor on an abstract alien environment, where Kat mines for ore, busting stone after stone after stone after stone. A game that promises a superhero soaring through crowded cities begins with an exhausting and patronizing tutorial set atop a claustrophobic mining vessel. The developers, SIE Japan Studio and Project Siren, created an introduction that’s doubly off-putting: narratively impenetrable to newcomers and aesthetically backwards to fans. (I’d encourage you to just read the Wiki, but the Plot section has needed expansion since 2013, as good a sign of cultural apathy as any.) The story begins where its six-year-old predecessor concluded, and the characters seem just as perplexed as incoming players. Hopefully anyone interested in Gravity Rush 2 made time to play the remaster. Rather it feels at odds with a game that otherwise has no interest in sexuality or even romantic relationships. There’s nothing wrong with strong women wearing sexy clothing. And many of the local women walk to work in bikini tops. Kat’s partner Raven wears a bodysuit that covers enough to avoid a Mature rating. The female characters, while sharply written, wear wardrobes imagined by men. Kat’s clothes include a sexy cat costume and a maid outfit - both originally appeared as DLC for the original Gravity Rush. You see, he claims he needs these photos or he’ll die. One early mission has Kat snapping candid photos of “pretty women” on the street at the request of an elderly man. While Gravity Rush 2 has some of the most relatable and well-drawn female protagonists in a blockbuster video game, it occasionally regresses to fan service. In January 2016, Sony published a remastered version of Gravity Rush for the PS4, a console that’s reach is tens of millions larger than the Vita. In 2012, Kat appeared in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, an aborted attempt to cordon Sony’s roster of exclusive characters in a middling fighting game. Over the years, Sony did the minimum to retain the game’s small, but passionate fan base. Its predecessor, initially released in 2011 on Sony’s neglected portable, the PlayStation Vita, was promising, but under promoted and overlooked, neither a critical darling nor a sales phenom. I’d claim the game lacks subtlety, but compared to the political blockbusters of Peter Berg, it’s Bulgakov.Įven without the political messaging, Gravity Rush 2 is an unlikely creative gamble from Sony. Kat’s power lets her steer the direction of gravity which is to say, in a video game about the pyramid of income inequality, you play as the person who can invert what goes up and what comes down. The politics in ‘Gravity Rush 2’ aren’t subtle On the lowest archipelago, tenements and industrialization are stacked atop each other, held together by a purple, mucousy fog.
Miles beneath, in the clouds, wades a collection of marketplaces ensconced by sun-cooked apartment buildings. The most affluent citizens live in spacious estates in clear skies.
Social status is layered like a bitter trifle. The game is set in the sky on a collection of villages and cities built onto man-made islands that float on air. With the help of a cat made of stardust, Kat pursues, often by force, a historic economic rebalancing. Gravity Rush 2 is, and this isn’t me reaching, 2017’s first (and potentially only) big-budget video game about the income gap, the ethical and personal complexities of salvaging modern capitalist societies, and one jumper-loving young woman. You know, like any socially conscious young person. A typical afternoon is spent delivering newspapers, catching runaway balloons, running errands for the elderly, and, with whatever she has left of her day, dismantling a financial system that favors the few over the many. Kat, the superheroine of Gravity Rush 2, has plenty of opportunities to save the day (and the world), but she most often spends her time and her powers on the mundane.