Flying High With No Gravity

Veteran gamers and retro aficionados may remember Playstation One space shooter Colony Wars, and its subsequent sequels, subtitled Vengeance and Red Sun. Like many Psygnosis games, the titles featured brilliant art design, gorgeous graphics and controller-hurling difficultly. Unlike most action games of the era, the Colony Wars titles included multiple endings based on player achievement.

Although there have been a few three-dimensional space shooters for subsequent hardware platforms, from the Star Wars: Rogue Squadron series to recent 360 title, Project Silpheed, the popularity of the genre has waned considerably over the years. When we first saw videos of recent PSP title, No Gravity: The Plague of the Mind, our trigger finger grew inpatient. Could the title be a proper update that reinvigorates the space shooter?

Upon starting the title, players are presented with three protagonists, each with a distinctive ship and playing style. Bishop’s ship is nimble, but weak defensively, while Kazawa’s vessel is a sluggish battle cruiser with a brawny offensive punch. McCudden’s ship traverses the middle ground, offering a strategic combination of power and rapidity. Within moments we felt complete adept with No Gravity’s controls- players navigate 3D space with the analog stick, while speed in controlled with the directional pad. A single press of the shoulder buttons will initiate a roll, and a double tap performs an evasive maneuver that becomes crucial in completing the later stages of the game. Players have two weapons at their disposal- the ‘X’ button launches a feeble laser burst toward a highlighted target, while the square button releases a homing missile. Both weapons can be enhanced by collecting power-ups left in the wake of disposed enemies.  Due to the small size of the PSP’s screen, we often couldn’t determine if our laser fire was damaging targets when blasting from an outlying proximity. Worse yet, shots often connected with allies who displayed a frustrating lack of tactical intelligence. Predictably, these troubles were remediated by moving closer to enemy vessels, putting us in precarious conditions.

One of the greatest obstacles of space shooters is overcoming mission fatigue. A majority of titles in the genre rely on a handful of mission types- from destroying enemies, escorting an incapable ally, or some combination of the two. No Gravity’s thirty-one missions do little to expand on these tropes, however the game wisely varies its environments, allowing players to occasionally skim the surfaces of planets.

Like the Colony Wars series, No Gravity is a graphically impressive title. The framerate is typically silky-smooth, with the occasional drop regulated to periods of intensive on-screen activity. Many objects from lasers to ships exhausts have a translucent glow, giving the game a distinctive appearance.  Foes explode in a sufficiently satisfying manner, leaving a radiant blast wave. As the player’s ship accumulates damage, the screen shows an escalating amount of cracks, indicating an impending shattering.  The title’s one Achilles, is its sense of speed- unless the player presses the afterburners, ship momentum feels decidedly sluggish.

Overall, No Gravity : The Plague of the Mind will appeal to players who crave a bit of old-fashioned, uncomplicated space shooting. For ten dollars, the title is an illustrious example of what smaller developers can accomplish with a downloadable PSP entry.  At 51MB, the game is as gentle on the PSP’s memory card as it is on player’s wallet.