Gravity Crash

Those guys have got a rough deal.

Back in the early days of video games, you couldn't avoid a space shooter of one kind or another, be it Asteroids or Galaxian, or one of their many imitators. Throw in some physics to the gameplay and you've something like Gravitar and Lunar Lander, demanding precise input to float across the surface of another world, rather than slamming face-first into it.

Fast forward thirty years and developers are all nostalgic for those kinds of games, and we get something like Gravity Crash, a sort of twin-stick shooter, sort of physics sim.

Hopefully, we'll have learned enough about these genres by now to be good at it...

Fun Times

I'm emulating the PlayStation Portable port of Gravity Crash, which might as well be a practice run for how we'll all be playing old PlayStation games once Sony starts to 'focus on their PS5 store'. That's a conversation for people more clued-up than I am, but it does make a silly endeavour like this all the more challenging for future explorers.

Anyway, Gravity Crash has you playing as a robot in search of freedom, apparently. I had to look that up because the intro cutscene - if you could call it a cutscene - doesn't seem to spell any of that out.

After picking a control style and special weapon for your ship, and picking a starting galaxy to dive into to rid of space pirates or whatever we're up against, we can get stuck into the gameplay we're all here for.

You can fly your ship in one of three ways, but the layout that seemed to make the most sense to me was as close to a twin-stick shooter as the PSP could give me, ship movement on the analogue nub, shooting on the face buttons.

Spam the fire buttons - no reason not to, other than friendly fire, perhaps - and you'll earn points for destroying enemies and their equipment and infrastructure on this planet.

It's not our main goal, however. This level requires us to pick up some flashy glowing orbs of some description, which we can do however we like, but the quicker we do it, the more we destroy along the way, and the less we explode through crashing, the better our score will be.

Your ship is quite capable, and can even dive underwater, physics be damned, to get the job done.

And speaking of getting the job done, once your mission is complete, all that is left to do is find the end of level wormhole and fly out of here, and onto the next planet.

Your ship handles really rather well, and while some situations will challenge you and your precision, moving around these stages was more often than not a breeze, hampered only by getting lost or the occasional bump into a wall, where my automatic shields would protect my ship a couple of times before they needed recharging.

To further test your skills, stranded crewmates can be found wandering the surface, and collecting them by gently landing and letting them climb aboard will net you some extra points. They can be killed, though, including by your own weaponry, so don't get too trigger happy.

Dodging a volcano spewing hot rocks into the sky and completing whatever it was the mission wanted from us, and we can cross off another planet from Gravity Crash's campaign mode. There's been no story since that first brief conversation, so don't come into this thinking it's anything more than this.

You can choose one of four special weapons to aid you on, and my weapon of choice was a bunch of homing missiles, weak though they were. You don't have them all game, though, having to find a power-up if memory serves, and it's not the only power-up that can benefit you.

This multi-shot would eventually run out, but in the right situation could be exactly what you need to get on top of things, as it saves you from trying to delicately pilot your ship while avoiding rocks and incoming gunfire.

The shots, both powered up and standard, fall a little according to gravity and inertia, I guess, so there's a little learning to be done to maximise your effectiveness. The face buttons will shoot in that direction, the physics of the situation will fill in the details.

Lava is a little more dangerous than water, and in the heart of an enemy base with lots of targets to destroy, you probably want to be ready with energy for your shields. Dotted around the level are crystals that can be shot at and mined, converting them into much-needed energy and fuel.

Run out and you'll lose a life, but the checkpoints seem reasonably close by, so it's not too disastrous for your game, unless you're in it for the high scores, perhaps.

The final planet of this starting galaxy had one clear objective, destroy the boss. The boss in question was lurking in an underground lair, surrounded by alien jellyfish - it's not all robot vs robot in Gravity Crash.

It was actually a fairly underwhelming fight. I don't know how many shots it took to take him down, but a well-placed shot or two to the noggin will do it, and that was that. Thirty minutes since learning how to fly, I was taking down the boss.

Final Word

I would go on to read the 1001 write up for Gravity Crash where it was described as "hard. Very hard."

Was it? I survived an entire galaxy without a game over. Yeah, I've lost all my lives and one more will result in a game over, but I can manage, can't I? Or are those lives meant to take me through all of these galaxies? Several galaxies. Each with multiple levels...

I haven't gone back into Gravity Crash to find out. I thought, after half an hour, that I'd had a good time with a small game and that was about all there was to it. If this game is actually hard as nails, then I might have to revise that thought to something along the lines of "I could have had a good time".

In terms of reliving the kind of game that you just haven't - outside of Flash games, perhaps - in a long time, Gravity Crash is recommended, it does a great job in look and feel. But does it do a lasting job? I was satisfied after 30 minutes and didn't need to have any more. I'm not looking for a game experience like this. A quick spell is fine. Hours and hours of this may be too much.

I suppose if you're looking for this kind of game, here it is, and if you're only slightly interested, then dip in and give it a go, no harm in that.

Fun Facts

Music in Gravity Crash comes from Tim Wright, who I know better as the WipEout series' CoLD SToRAGE.

Gravity Crash, developed by Just Add Water, first released in 2009.

Version played: Gravity Crash Portable, PlayStation Portable, 2010.