At the last E3, we saw the PS Vita presentation. During this multimedia blitzkrieg of flashing images, which can only be compared to something out of A Clockwork Orange, we caught glimpses of what was to be launch titles for this latest of handhelds.I imagine what most people took home from that conference was Unchartered: Golden Abyss. Others might have latched onto LittleBig Planet, or ModNation Racers, Hot Shots Golf, WipEout 2048 and maybe even Super Stardust Delta. Not me, though. Yeah, yeah, I look forward to those titles, too, but one title in particular blinded me to all of the rest.  This was the game Gravity. One millisecond of exposure to those cell-shaded scenes and the anime whore inside me cried out, “Me gotta have!”

During the next few months of summer, very little news came out about this game, and about the only information that could be gleaned was title changes. First Gravity, which then morphed into Gravity Daze, but then it was decided that this title was only going to be used for the Japanese title. I guess they felt that the play on words within the title of Gravity Daze, being a combination of being in a daze and the hip-hop/rap spelling of days, would be lost on or over the heads of English speakers. Go figure.So ultimately, we were given Gravity Rush.

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, one glance and you can instantly tell that this game is from Japan, which is a look and genre I love! You see a young adolescent blonde-haired girl wandering in a world that can best be described as post-apocalyptic. The main character, the young blonde, has a black cat cross her path in this dilapidated world. Instead of being cursed with a string of bad luck, however, she inherits super powers that manipulate gravity. Of course, when given these powers, she stumbles across a quest that leads her to bosses which are trying to kill her, so I guess THAT is unlucky. Ironically, the girl’s name is Kat. Clever, huh? Well, as much as I love Japanese creativity in fantasy, sci-fi, or any genre for that matter, when it comes to naming, they have always struck out on that front. Seriously, if you ever learn Japanese and start to understand some of the words, you come to realize that most characters are literally named after what they are. The family’s pet dog is literally “dog”. For those who ever watched Inuyasha, his name was literally “dog demon”. Stuff like that. Anyway, naming conventions aside, this game looks soooo sweet! I have to say, this is THE reason I decided to pony up the dough for the PS Vita when it comes out, maybe even the sole reason.

For those not in the know, you can use the Vita’s gyro-axis controls to control Kat and the camera angles.You can use your power over gravity to fly through the air, and there seems to be almost a kind of a puzzle element to the game which seems similar to Crush, for those of you who played it. Basically, you have to change the angle of your environment to progress further through the level. Kat can walk on ceilings, up the sides of buildings, you name it. And when it comes to combat, the only thing better than a good ole-fashioned smackdown is a smackdown served up black hole style!

But as I was saying earlier, very little information was available on this game other than their indecision of the title of the game, which is never a good sign if they can’t even decide on a name. How are they going to make progress on more challenging fronts? Say for example, gameplay for one. As winter rolled around, more and more information was coming forward on all these other launch titles, and even some that are going to be launch titles but weren’t even shown at E3. Meanwhile, with Gravity Rush, nothing. Many websites had either TBA or the generic February 22^nd, which you know to be the North American launch date of the PS Vita.

Finally, I stumbled across a May launch date at the Amazon site. While everyone else still had Gravity Rush slated for TBA 2012, Q1 2012, or the February 22^nd, Amazon was the only site that had a date that differed from all of the rest.  The date is May 29^th. Now this sounded realistic, seeing that there had been no information coming forward and we were already coming upon 2012. Also, just a tip for all of you out there, I have come to rely on Amazon as an early, reliable source. They had a pre-order for Phantom Breaker about 5 months before it was declared that this game was even going to be localized. I’ve learned to not underestimate the internet store titan. I brought this release date up to GameStop, whose site still had the February 22^nd. They told me that if the site had it, then it must be right. So I told them let’s do a pre-order then, if it really is that date, but when they went into their system, it showed that it was not coming out in February even though their webpage had the February date. So bottom line, for those of you who are interested in this game, and for me who has to wait for a reason to even buy a Vita, looks like it’s gonna be the end of May.