Protagonist Kat awakens after a long fall to find herself in a strange floating city with no memory of her past. Gravity storms are ripping the place to pieces and a black cat, seemingly made of rippling stardust, is following the heroine.

The big gimmick of Gravity Rush is the ability to switch the direction of gravity. The right shoulder button suspends Kat in midair, and if you aim the camera in the direction you want to travel and tap it again you'll zoom off as if falling from a great height. The left shoulder button returns gravity to normal and, after a while, you'll be using the two in tandem to land exactly where you want with pinpoint accuracy. Movement this free feels liberating.

Challenge levels have you, ideally, going for gold medals and are unlocked by spending gems to fix broken parts of the city and come in different flavours. Among them are combat challenges, tasking you to defeat as many enemies as possible within a certain time limit, and races, for which you must take advantage of all the skills at your disposal to pass through the checkpoints as fast as possible.

Possibly the most fun of the lot are the sliding races; holding your thumbs to the bottom corners of the Vita's screen sends Kat zooming across the floor and control transfers from the analogue stick to the Vita itself, which you must turn like a steering wheel to change direction. This ability can be used at any time throughout the game and is actually far more fun in practice than it sounds.

For the first half of the game story missions involve helping out the local police and, later, a mysterious old man to rescue parts of the city that have been swallowed by the gravity storms. Doing so allows access to these new areas, and the game map is constantly growing. Things change pace a bit after that, with a few more strands of the story becoming apparent. While Kat herself is a little ditzy, it's easy to get embroiled in her mystery. Who is she? Where is she from? Why is she being followed by a magic star-cat who allows her to manipulate gravity?

Combat may seem incongruous in a game that is about flinging your avatar around Mario Galaxy style level-spheres, but actually it fits remarkably well. Kat has a pretty strong kick when planted on the ground, but mostly you'll find yourself throwing her at enemies at high speeds. Enemies are signposted with very prominent weak spots. These start out pretty small, but soon enough you'll be fighting much larger Nevi with multiple weak points, all of which need to be destroyed in order to defeat them.

Despite a few lengthy load times, a terrible name and an unimaginative character introduction, Gravity Rush quickly became a very enjoyable game indeed. It doesn't feel like a typical handheld title, either: Gravity Rush has the depth, length and graphical prowess of something you'd see on consoles. The mission-based structure is great for portable play and the story is worth the investment despite the many unanswered questions.

Virgin Media verdict:

• Gameplay: 8
• Graphics: 9
• Sound: 8

• Incredible freedom of movement
• Great art style
• Controls take a lot of getting used to
• Loading times are longer than we'd like