Gravitron360 presents each level as a glorious 2-D vector landscape, under which you there is a network of tunnels, caves and spinning rooms, all layered with lashings of bright neon colours. Littering this environment are gun emplacements, rockets, lasers, mines, more lasers and enemies that chase you unless you pick them off quickly enough. Your mission is to find a number of reactors on each planet, destroy their shields and get out of the planet's blast radius, into the safety of space before the reactors destroy the entire level in spectacular style (after 60 seconds).
Control of the ship is perfectly implemented - right trigger to thrust in whatever direction and angle the craft is facing and left trigger for reverse thrust, all the while taking into consideration the light gravity. Such delicate levels of control are possible that after an hour or so of learning the ropes, you'll be flying around as fast as you dare, taking liberties and toying with enemies, all the while wondering just what you can get away with. In some situations, exact speed and directional mastery is needed and luckily the ship can be piloted so precisely that blame for mistakes lays squarely on the shoulders of the player. Four control schemes are selectable, consisting of two distinct flight types and 2 button layouts. Be sure to try scheme C or D which control just like Thrust did, i.e. left and right to rotate the ship. Types A and B point the ship in the direction you push the stick, but these aren't nearly as natural as the rotation schemes.
To help along the way, any surface can be landed upon as long as the ship is perpendicular to it, good for a quick breather or to ride a moving section. Keep an eye on the fuel and shield gauges. Fuel runs down during thrust and when the shield is activated, but can be topped up at occassional fuel points. The shield gauge is depleted when hit without an active shield. However, when bullets hit your activated shield, the resulting shrapnel bounces off at random and can destroy enemies in its path. The shield gauge can be topped up by finding and rescuing scientists trapped around the level. How the shield actually works varies depending on difficulty. Easy mode employs an auto shield, so when hit, you just lose a bit of fuel. Also on Easy mode, the generators do not recharge their shields, so can be destroyed fairly swiftly, even under heavy fire from protecting gun emplacements. Medium mode requires the shield to be used manually and if bullets hit you without an active shield, a fair chunk of shield gauge is depleted, not to mention the ship getting bounced all over the place, potentially taking more damage off nearby walls. The Medium generators recharge if not taking constant hits, thus making them harder to kill.
The gap between these difficulty levels is therefore quite pronounced, making the whole experience significantly different. Whilst you should not be fooled into thinking Easy means it's actually easy, it is by no means as hard as it first seems, especially if you forget about rescuing the scientists and just concentrate on the reactors. Once the physics is accustomed to, the first 30 or so levels can be whizzed through, but the following 15 levels provide a whole lot more challenge. Once those 45 are done, then there's the terror of Medium. Beware hair loss and grinding of teeth. It uses the same levels, but the manual shield separates wheat from the chaff. We have no idea yet if there's a Hard mode that unlocks upon completing Medium, but are going to have a lot of fun finding out. There is a separate bonus set of levels included too.
Additionally, there are a handful of challenge levels - rescue all scientists in a time limits, complete the level without firing (shield bounce bullets into the generators), race through checkpoints and a set of tractor beam levels where you have to tow the orb to safety much like in the original Thrust. Perfecting these alone will take some serious dedication and make you realise how much better you can be. There is so much game here for the money - it's always difficult to know if value should be factored in to reviews, but 80 points for so many hours of thrilling pick-up-and-play gaming is hard to put to one side. Gravitron360 comes very highly recommended to anyone that likes a bit of arcade action with great controls and demon level design.
Score: 9/10
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