Gravitronix Review
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.
