Released: February 26, 2009
Developer/Publisher: Realtech VR/Anozor
Verdict: If you have a fondness for 3D space shooters or the homebrew games community, then Buy It!
Pros: Beautiful, simple and pretty fun to play, things go boom in space!
Cons: Targeting system blows chunks.
For a $9.99 downloadable PSP game, No Gravity: The Plague of Mind has a surprisingly rich history. It is the sequel to a freeware space shooter called, shockingly enough, No Gravity, originally released on PC. A demo of it was then ported to the PSP, where it gained notoriety in the homebrew community for being pretty fun and more notably, actually having production values. Excitement over a potential full version began to build, and the game was then announced for PSN release back in 2008, and subsequently disappeared, seemingly never to be seen again…until a week before release when it would be put up for sale on the PSN the following week.
Does it live up to the (relative) hype?
Do a barrel roll! Press L or R twice!
The game’s story involves something taking place in the future, circa 8002, where there are bad guys trying to blow you up, or something. The cut scenes that introduce each chapter are kind of boring, and have a creepy robotic female voice voicing them over. The story’s not really important to enjoy the game, though, and I skipped most of the cuts cenes, as the voice was grating and kinda creepy, too. The game features 31 missions, which are usually of the variety of hunting down enemies and/or protecting your units from being destroyed. The game has a sort of arcade feel, with basic controls and physics (although how one would judge a space shooter’s physics to be realistic would be difficult. But if you have participated in shootouts in space, then let me know, because YOU ARE AWESOME), so it’s pretty easy to get into, you don’t need to be a veteran of other space shooters to enjoy this one. The missions are fun, and there’s always something satisfying about blowing up an enemy ship and then salvaging power-ups from it. It’s a very visceral feeling, and reminiscent of the PS1 classic Colony Wars.
You will soon know pain like you have never felt. Or at least annoyance.
Now, the game’s controls are generally pretty simple, although they use every button on the system – you have gun firing, missile/alt weapon firing, speed boost, target change, speed up/slow down, camera change, and rolling on the triggers. There are several different control schemes, but the default one was the one that I found to work best. Now, the targeting system is…well, it’s borked. You may think that you’re targetting an enemy, but your missiles may split off and hit multiple targets, or the targetting may try to hit enemies that aren’t in your line of sight and you may hit the environment or your allied ships, which will generate nasty messages from your wingmen. This is easily the most frustrating part of the game, as manually hitting targets is difficult and not worth the trouble, so you’ll just have to get used to the problematic targeting system and work around it when it gets in your way. Also, the game gives you all sorts of color of targets, and won’t really tell you. In general, I’ve found red targets to be enemy ships, and yellow targets to be just static objects that you have to destroy, but in one mission I fired at yellow targets and my wingmen yelled at me for hitting them. But again, the targetting system’s flaws meant that I likely was hitting my ships without intending to. The game also doesn’t seem very willing to tell you what the red and yellow targets mean – it would be nice to define one as ‘friendly objects’, ‘primary enemy objects’, and ‘optional enemy objects’. Also, the HUD could have really used a speed indicator to tell how fast you’re going.
Also, there is one very annoying aspect when you get powerups – you can change your starting subweapon from powerups you pick up. Now, these have their uses for various scenarios, but often not when you need them. A button to switch between weapons would be nice so that if you pick up a powerup and don’t want it, you could switch. Nothing is more annoying than when you have to destroy some ships trying to destroy your allies, and your best weapon is the all-powerful shield. Annoying, for sure. While I’ve spent a while talking about the game’s shortcomings, I need to emphasize that the game is fun, and looks great. The game employs bloom lighting to an almost excessive degree, but it still makes the game look really impressive even in light of its simple textures. The game runs really smooth at 333 MHz, and offers a mode to kick the clock speed down to 222 MHz, which really only seems to reduce some of the bloom, but the game runs great either way. The game also has a solid soundtrack that helps add to the atmosphere of the game, which is ironic, since there’s no atmosphere in space.
*Rimshot*
In short, the game provides solid several hours of gameplay, with mild challenge, and is worth it to support small developers and especially to show Sony that homebrew games do have a future on the platform. So don’t just buy it for yourself (but it’s worth it even for that), but for your children, and your children’s children! But seriously, it’s a fun little space shooter, and worth checking out for the bargain basement $9.99 price.
Popularity: unranked [?]
