After the initial plans to shutter Gravity Rush 2’s servers generated fan outcry, granting the game a brief reprieve, the secondary outcry that hoped to push their execution even further down the road proved unsuccessful. Gravity Rush 2’s quirky multiplayer elements have now been officially killed off, rendering the overall experience slightly less enjoyable. Now, you might be surprised to hear that from me of all people, multiplayer-averse as I am, but Gravity Rush 2 is one of the few games that got multiplayer right. There were no people screaming obscenities and racial slurs at you, and trying to beat the score of other players involved competing against a replay of their attempt, ensuring that they couldn’t even react to your presence. More, photo checks left a smattering of user-made photographs across the world that documented other people having fun, with many of the pictures being playful and using different costumes and expressions that you might not have unlocked yet. Then there were the treasure hunts that tasked you with hunting down a chest shaped as a red apple based on a random person’s photograph of it (and the game telling you when you’ve strayed too far). Gravity Rush 2 is still a good game without these things, but there’s really no denying that it’s also a slightly less joyful one.

I was kind of hoping for a last-minute save

I spent something like an hour and a half playing Gravity Rush 2 last night, doing the treasure hunts and accepting challenges to help the people who hadn’t unlocked everything yet get there before time was up. As for myself, there were a few pieces of furniture for main character Kat’s house that I was (and now, forever am) missing. Deep down, though, I was hoping that the fans would manage to save the servers and that all of the video I took last night would end up proving unnecessary. When I loaded up the game today and tried to upload a photograph, I got the above message that confirmed the servers’ demise. Truly a sad fate for a 2017 game.

Saying farewell to Gravity Rush 2’s multiplayer

Treasure hunts were the most prevalent online feature, meaning that they were typically the first to show up when you started up the game. Since I was still missing furniture, I went ahead and did all of the available treasure hunts. It wasn’t until 17:32 that I came across a photo check, and after that there were several more treasure hunts. Around 23:57, though, things stopped showing up. That’s not unusual for Gravity Rush 2, mind you, but it’s definitely a little aggravating when the servers are only hours away from death. I decided to wander around and cause trouble until something showed up, eventually leaving mediocre Gravity Rush 1 land and leaping around Fantasy Brazil in Lunar Style. It wasn’t until 31:12 that a challenge finally showed up and I took on a ghost-replay at a minigame, and after that was finished, the easiest treasure hunt ever appeared. Hey, I’ll take it.

By this point, I’d basically exhausted the pool of available online stuff, so I wandered around aimlessly, smashing things and hitching a ride on some of the flying vehicles. A challenge showed up before long, one that I failed horribly as I totally forgot how that particular minigame works, but that was pretty much it. Instead, I shifted my focus to taking screenshots, uploading some of my photographs while there was still time, and experimenting with costumes and gestures (which I unlocked a bunch of and never did anything with). Around 26:45, I got bored with that and started dropping photo items on NPCs, but when a lady walked right through my attempt to box her in, terrorizing NPCs became the name of the game. Sadly, I got distracted by a photo check at 28:43 that allowed box lady to escape my wrath, but other NPCs wouldn’t be so lucky. Apparently you can’t fling them over ledges to send them hurtling to their death (there’s some kind of barrier there), but this doesn’t apply when they’re sent flying as you normally shift and fly around with R1 for whatever reason. Once I figured that out, many people were sent over the edge. No mercy.

At the end of the last video, I got a notification about a gravity storm in progress. Gravity Rush 2’s mining was kind of weird, meaning it’s difficult to get a sense of whether they’re reliant on a server or if the various gravity storms are generated in-game without the need for internet. If a gravity anomaly that showed up when I started up the game this morning is any indication, it’s all single-player content. Still, it not like I had any multiplayer content available, so I decided to wander around and mine for awhile. Eventually I made it to the Delvool trench mine and found a “ghost of the fallen” at 5:24, which was actually the first one I’ve ever found. This was a multiplayer feature where people who died in the trench could be found by other players, and some of their talismans recovered. By this point, multiplayer content was a slow drip, so I called it quits. Still, I’m really glad to have finally found one of these ghosts, and it feels poetic to end on one of the rarest multiplayer features.

You shall be missed, Gravity Rush 2 multiplayer.

The post Sleep well, Gravity Queen – Gravity Rush 2’s servers are dead appeared first on Killa Penguin.