Sony has previously ported its portable games to its home consoles. The PS2 saw ports of original PSP games like Twisted Metal: Head On and Secret Agent Clank. The PS3 saw the PSP God of War games as well as the Vita version of Hot Shots Golf. Even the PS4 saw an early Vita port with Escape Plan. It should be no surprise, then, that Gravity Rush would do the same now that there's an upcoming sequel. With Bluepoint Games at the helm, it shouldn't shock anyone that the port is good.

You play the role of Kat, a woman who suffers from amnesia. Upon waking, you discover a cat with celestial fur sitting beside you who acts as your companion. Almost immediately, a resident of the city of Hekseville requests that you rescue his son, who's in a house that is about to be sucked into a gravity hole. After getting an ungrateful response for your good deed, you wander into the city and try to find someone who can explain things to you.

From the start, the story emulates an anime rather well. Your character starts by trying to help someone but soon has no issues jumping into the fray. Almost all of the important characters are introduced early on before cutting back their appearances to mere glimpses until the middle of the tale. You get a section where you have to deal with the temporary loss of your abilities before you realize your true potential. Most importantly, the game doesn't always throw you into action, as the early parts focus on getting acclimated to a normal life despite your abnormal ability. It also helps that Hekseville is an interesting location with people trying to go about their normal lives despite the locale consisting of a series of floating islands.

The only criticism about the story is that it feels like a setup for future games. There are a few key questions that are answered during the 15 hours of gameplay, but more questions are brought up, and the game ends before providing answers. The inclusion of the previously released DLC packs act as nice diversions but are wholly unrelated to the main tale. While Vita owners may be lamenting that it took so long for a sequel to be announced, PS4 owners won't have that burden if things stay on schedule.

The hook comes from how you travel in Hekseville's interesting layout. Since you have the ability to alter gravity to your will, you can essentially fly anywhere you want and use all of the walls and ceilings as your own floor. Though you can aim at any surface and make gravity stick to that direction, you aren't always bound to it since you can change your landing spot mid-flight.

It's that feeling of controlled flight that makes movement so appealing. It takes some time to get used to, and even with the system only using two shoulder buttons and a right analog stick, the affair isn't immediately intuitive. Once things are ingrained into your muscle memory, you'll never feel like walking to any location since flight is much more fun. Of course, the ability to forego walking altogether only comes about if you level up your abilities; your default abilities limit the duration of your flight time.

To that end, Gravity Rush Remastered makes it enticing to use those powers to explore everything around you. Much like Crackdown, there are gems floating all over the place, and collecting them help you buff your powers. Some are completely out in the open while others are well hidden. The layout of the city helps make discovering these gems more interesting, and if you follow the trail and have enough power to make the flight, the layout is such that you're almost guaranteed to be led into a stash of gems hanging from a ceiling or wrapped around a pylon.

The combat system also takes advantage of those powers to make fighting more exciting. By itself, combat is pretty basic, as you unleash a combo of kicks to enemies whose only weak spot is a glowing eye located randomly on their bodies. The kicking works, but the lack of a targeting system means that you aren't moving from one foe to another with any fluidity. The makeup of these enemies, especially bosses, makes it almost impossible to battle solely on the ground. You have a flying kick in your arsenal, and your powers augment it. Speed and velocity in relation to your target also help; kicks from afar (without stopping to change direction) mean your kicks gain tremendous power — sometimes even defeating an enemy in one hit. The bounce back from those kicks also gives you time to recover and aim again, and while it doesn't make fighting any smoother, it does elevate it beyond some open-world games.

One complaint is that the game doesn't seem to take advantage of the powers you're given. The story-based missions take into account your ability to bend gravity and perform basic fighting techniques, but otherwise, they ignore the rest of your powers. Only the fetch quests seem to remember your ability to create a gravity field to carry objects. The side-quests fall into the same trap, as you're either doing checkpoint races around the world or battling against foes in a limited time frame. The hope is that the sequel lets you go wild with your gravity powers, but as it stands now, Remastered simply lets you scratch the surface of what's possible.

Gravity Rush came at a time in the Vita's life when games were encouraged to use every single system feature to show off the platform. That philosophy is still here to a lesser degree, as the controller's gyroscopic motion can be used to manipulate your aim while in the air or tilt the perspective during the comic book scenes. These actions can be performed instead with the right analog stick, but it is nice that they are there for those who want to get the Vita experience. Other than that, the controls are pretty normal, especially since the game doesn't do much with the touchpad except for mimicking a button to perform the same kind of dodge; everything else is very responsive.

Graphically, there are segments that will remind you of the title's Vita origins. The lack of proper mouth movement when characters speak, for instance, seems like a move toward efficiency rather than an artistic choice. The sudden appearances of people in the world feel like it was done for the same reason. The artistic style is what you'll notice the most when you look at the game. The cel-shading and emphasis on sketched lines are reminiscent of Valkyria Chronicles but with a more subdued use of that effect. The important characters certainly have a flair to their designs, and while the buildings aren't bustling with detail, their color schemes make them less plain than expected. With a solid 60fps at 1080p resolution, it looks just as good on the big screen as it did on the smaller one.

Given the world and adventure the game has in store, it is surprising that the sound is pretty low key. The game isn't bombastic, and it doesn't go for a feeling of high tension or a rush to fight. In fact, except for boss battles, the soundtrack is rather calming when you're exploring the town, and the tone only changes slightly to let you know if enemies are around. Effects are in the same boat, while the voice work is nice thanks to the use of what sounds like a fictional language with French undertones. It's too bad that you don't hear as many voices since the comic book cut scenes leave them out, but you'll enjoy their presence.

Gravity Rush Remastered is a very solid adventure game whose charm really comes from movement. It may take some getting used to before it becomes effortless, but taming your personal gravity field is one of the better experiences in a video game. While the title could use more variety as far as missions go, they still make good use of your powers, and the story that goes along with it is told well enough that you're motivated to see where it goes next. It does a good job of whetting people's appetites for the upcoming sequel, and those who want to experience something distinctive will have a good time with this title if they missed it the first time around.

Score: 8.0/10