By Ned Jordan
Gravitronix is essentially a version of the old Atari game Warlords … a
slower, harder to control version, that is. One to four players are given one
quadrant of a circular playing area and are tasked with protecting their area of
the circle while attacking the areas belonging to the AI or other players (the
game supports up to eight players at a time, but once you get past four players
the players start doubling up and sharing quadrants). The play area is filled
with bouncing objects that move and interact with each other as if the circle
was a zero-g environment, and players attempt to use those objects to first
break through the shields protecting other players' quadrants and then, once
that's done, to damage the other players directly. To accomplish this each
player has a paddle which can be moved along the surface of their quadrant and
has a dual-purpose repulsor beam. The beam can send out a gentle push that
nudges objects in the opposite direction, or that can temporarily capture
objects and hold them while charging up to fire them out at a fast speed.
I'm not going to knock Gravitronix too much for its mediocre graphics or for
the fact that it's locked into 4:3 resolution and displays black bars on
widescreen TVs. Little arcade style games can be a lot of fun without looking
that pretty compared to full commercial games. However, Gravitronix does lose a
lot of points for control and gameplay, and these kind of problems are hard to
look past in any kind of game.
Motion controls bring a lot of interesting possibilities to games, but when
not done right there's very little in gaming that's quite as frustrating.
Gravitronix doesn't need motion controls and shouldn't have been made with
motion controls, but nonetheless you need to rotate the Wii Remote along its
long axis (or do the same with the Nunchuk) to move your paddle. The response of
the paddle to your movements is terrible. Too often there's no response from the
game to your wrist twists, and at other times it responds but after a slight
delay. This is a game that relies on quick movement to protect your quadrant and
yet you can only get your paddle to react the way that you want it to, when you
want it to, only a portion of the time. The game would have been far better
served if it had simply used the directional pad for control, but once again you
have a Wii game sticking motion control where it doesn't need to be with
disastrous results.
Control issues aside, the gameplay itself is not all that much fun. If
perhaps things were faster and more chaotic, as they are in Warlords, it would
fare better, but as it is it's more tedious than fun. Games play out pretty
slowly, with victory a waiting game in which you hope that the AI makes its
inevitable dumb mistakes before you take too many hits as a result of the
control issues. A game or two into it and you'll have had your fill.
One final note, if you do decide to give Gravitronix a try, then skip the
text-based tutorial. It's one of the most confusing and convoluted tutorials
I've seen in a while, which is an especially impressive accomplishment
considering the fact that you can figure out how to play in less than thirty
seconds if you just jump in and start playing.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
35%. Don't let Gravitronix pull you in.
