364th played so far

GravityCrashGenre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: Playstation 3/Playstation Portable
Year of Release: 2009
Developer: Just Add Water
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

After the release of the list’s second edition, 20 games were removed, with twelve of them unplayed so far. For completeness and because we wanted to try some of them, we decided to still play these twelve, but with shorter or changed write-ups. Today the eighth game – Gravity Crash

Sometimes, describing the different parts a game consists of is enough to explain where it’s fun and where it’s flawed. Gravity Crash takes a lot of its controls from Asteroids and its responses to the environment from Lunar Lander,ย with every surface dangerous and every move tricky. Momentum is preserved, meaning that any move can soon be dangerous and any inattentiveness can lead to death. With the colours drained, this could be an early 1980s arcade game.

It’s no wonder that the book describes the game as ‘very hard’. You need to worry about fuel, collect deposits, kill enemies and do a precise Lunar Lander style landing to rescue your crew members from the caverns (yeah, tight caverns) that you’re moving through. It felt frustrating in the tutorials alone.

Where we did enjoy it was in multiplayer, where you both face the difficulties and it turns the game into a manic 1vs1 shooter… or a surprisingly fun and tricky racing game. There are several modes, actually, that use the engine for some quite different challenges, all pretty fun. To be honest, it would have been a lot more fun if there had been 4 of us playing it together.

It’s not a game that will be badly missed from the book, to be honest, as casual players (like us for these games) will probably get frustrated before too long. Still, it’s an interesting diversion even now.