Anti-grav racers have been getting a bit of comeback lately, with the likes of Pacer and now Gravity Rush taking inspiration from the legendary Wipeout titles. What made that series stand out was the ultra-fast racing and the cool, techno imagery and music. Gravity Chase can’t match the latter, but the racing is almost up there.
The feel of the craft is key in racers such as this, and Gravity Chase has this down pretty good. Craft are fast and responsive, with a boost that is frankly ludicrous at the high speed classes. Sweeping left and right around the courses is fun, and it’s these courses that give Gravity Chase its hook.
Unlike the aforementioned titles, Gravity Chase takes places predominantly on tubular courses with the occasional half pipe style one thrown in. This means that we don’t need to concern ourselves with bumping into walls or any particularly tight cornering. Instead, it’s all about finding the best side of the track to be on to hit boost pads or collect items. I found this freedom of movement, well, freeing; instead of worrying about pinballing about the place I could just focus on the racing ahead of me. It can get quite dizzying at points – oftentimes I found myself circling the tubes repeatedly while trying to get ahead of the pack – but it sure makes for a visual spectacle. Seeing yourself and up to seven other AI racers swinging and swerving all over the place is a sight to behold.
This is helped by some great effects work and use of colour. The tracks all have bright neon colours and flashing lights, while the backgrounds are decent enough to fill in the void of the track being suspended in space. The design does have a knock on effect in making most of the tracks look and feel very similar though.
The downside to these bright visuals is that is can make the pick-ups a little hard to easy see, especially as they’re hard to grab as it is thanks to the way the tubular tracks work. Even a small bend can see us veering off course, and I found myself missing far more than I managed to pick up.
This is only an issue though in two of the three race modes: Combat and Eliminator. The former is a standard race to the finish with weapons and shields activated, while the latter is a fight for survival with last place getting eliminated each lap until there is only one racer left. Both of these are my preferred modes of play, with the standard Race mode removing the weapons and focussing purely on racing action. Each can be played on one of three speed classes, with the tracks recording our best result on each one. Gain a bronze or higher and we get a little medal to show for our efforts. We also accrue points and money for completing races. Points are used to unlock further tracks, with the money letting us upgrade some stats on the crafts. Both of these accrue across plays, and are a nice incentive to play, though once I’d settled on a few favourite craft there was little point upgrading the rest.
The racing is fun then, but outside of this (admittedly core) element, there’s very little to Gravity Chase. We’re presented with a singular race option on the title screen (not even any sign of an options menu) which then lets us sign in up to four players before taking us to the track select screen. Each session is treated as its own Career of sorts, the scores tracked in a ranking until we exit the game, with it starting over the next play session. Bizarrely, when I loaded in with four players all my progress I had made in unlocking tracks was not counted. This’ll mean that unless you have a core group of players to always play with then you’ll need to spend time unlocking tracks over again for all differing player counts. There’s an air of arcade sensibilities to Gravity Chase, but this is one that is not for the better. Ship upgrades seemed to remain intact though, so that’s something at least. There’s also no online play or leaderboard support, which could have made this a much easier recommendation.
Conclusion
The racing in Gravity Chase is fin and the use of tubular and half pipe tracks means there’s less time worrying about crashing and more focus on the actual racing. The sense of speed, especially when boosting, is top notch even if it makes accurately hitting boost pads or pick-ups difficult at times. Unfortunately, the samey-feeling tracks and need to unlock them for each player count meant that my enthusiasm for playing dwindled far quicker than I’d have expected.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox Series S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
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