Review: Gravity Chase
Gravity Chase is from micro indie game developer studio Repixel8 (Chris met developer Andrew Jeffreys at EGX last year) and is a futuristic anti-grav racer.
Giving you the option to race alone or with up to 3 other friends in split screen mode (no online multiplayer), you then get to choose any of ten different craft to fly, which can each be upgraded by using the in game credits earned in the races.
Once you have amassed enough credits you can then choose whether to upgrade:
- Acceleration
- Maximum speed
- Handling
- Weight
- Strength
With each craft having a different set maximum to all the above, this allows you to pick a craft that either has great speed and strength, or go for a slower craft that has better acceleration and handling. These decisions all come into play depending on what track you are racing on, and also what mode you are playing…you can choose to play either an arcade race, combat racing, or eliminator races, all of which can be played in either beginner, advanced or expert difficulty settings.
As is the usual with racing games; the higher the difficulty the great the rewards, with the rewards being given in two ways: credits and points. The credits are used for the upgrade paths on your various crafts, with the points accumulating until you have enough to unlock new tracks and move your player level up.
Gravity Chase is fast and fun with no noticeable slowdown no matter how much you’ve bumped up your crafts top speed. It looks great with vibrant colours and a pleasing art style, and although the music wasn’t to my taste (which let’s face it, how many games are going to be scored by 80’s hair metal!?) it fits the frantic racing well as you concentrate on picking up speed boosts, weapon ammo and repair icons, all while trying to avoid icons which will damage you and/or slow you down.
Coming from an indie developer with a much smaller team and MUCH smaller budget than AAA titles, corners often have to be cut. The inability to see where other racers are in relation to yourself takes a lot of excitement out of the races. Being able to see a mini-map in the corner of the screen with everyones position would be a great addition, or even just a list of the players names with how much time is separating them would add to the immersion of racing against other people. You can’t even look behind you to see if a rival is close, only finding that out in a combat race when you suddenly start taking damage.
Similar applies when on the offence, with a crosshair automatically locking on to the nearest craft in front of you, leaving you little more to do other than stay close to them and keep your thumb on the fire button.
Gravity Chase is a good anti-grav racer that definitely excels when played in local co-op with friends, but the single player experience can become a bit of a lonely grind as you whip around the tracks with no idea where anyone else is.
All of that and I didn’t even mention Wipeo…….
Gravity Chase is available now on Xbox and Steam.
Review by Dave from an Xbox code kindly supplied by Pixel8.