The EyeToy is undoubtedly a cool little device, although so far pretty much all we’ve seen in the States are minigame collections. There’s nothing wrong with those, but it’d be nice if some creative design teams came up with some more innovative game ideas. That’s just what Harmonix, developer of the musical masterpieces Frequency and Amplitude, has done with Antigrav. They’ve designed a full and complete game that just happens to use the Eyetoy instead of a controller.

Antigrav is a hoverboard game, and it’s pretty comparable in design to something like SSX. There are both race and trick modes, although they don’t feel all that different. In race mode, you’re racing through one of five tracks as fast as you can, attempting to finish ahead of your competition. The tracks are so large, and there are so many routes through each one, that you don’t end up seeing the other racers very often. Typically, you’ll just feel like you’re racing against the clock, but it’s still fun, because the unique dynamics of the game are that enjoyable. The trick mode is the same deal on the same tracks, except there are no other racers and you’re trying to score as many points as possible by pulling off tricks and grabbing icons.



When you start the game, you’ll have to configure your head location. The EyeToy actually locks onto your head and tracks its movements, along with the movements of your hands. When you’re playing Antigrav, there’s no low-resolution image of yourself on screen; it looks just like any other videogame. Your character consists entirely of polygons; the only difference is in how you control him. Tilting your head from side to side steers your hoverboard, crouching makes your character duck, and jumping, well, I’ll let you guess what jumping does. The game reads your hands for a variety of things.

There are basically three modes of movement during each race. Normally you’re just kind of moving along, tilting your head or jumping to avoid obstacles. If you go off a big ramp or get large air some other way, you’ll go into trick mode. Three different hand motions will appear on the bottom of the screen; nail all three and fill up your turbo bar, which gives you a decent speed boost when you use it. You can pull off other random tricks while you’re in the air, which also help to fill your bar, but the gains are minimal unless you pull off your randomly determined combo. The trick system is the weakest aspect of the game.

At times, you’ll jump onto rails, which automatically carry you until the end. When you’re on a rail, you can move your arms around to make your character reach out and grab icons on either side. These start out pretty simple; you might have to reach up and to the right, then move your arm down to capture a descending series of icons. Late in the game, though, you’ll have to switch from side to side, at all different heights to grab these things. The icons either give you a speed boost or extra points, depending on which you’re playing. There are also special rail icons that will open up hidden areas if you can grab the whole string of them.



Finally, there’s the airborne mode, where your board flies through the air without limitation. Here, your head steers not only side to side but also up and down. Your goal is to fly through rings to gain speed or points, and steering is the only thing you need to worry about. You can’t do tricks in this mode, for some reason, but hitting all the rings is difficult enough. All three of the movement modes are enjoyable, and they’re blended seamlessly together during each race.

Once you get a handle on the technology behind it and understand just how to move so that it works best, you’ll have a lot of fun with Antigrav. You’ll begin to forget that you look like a fool waving your hands around in front of your TV, and instead you’ll just be concerned about jumping over that rail or ducking under that bar. It feels real, to a point, and the lines of reality blur just a bit. It’s a shame that the trick system is so shallow, and that there are only five tracks, however long they might be. The game design seems pretty well thought out, so why Harmonix decided to cut it short like that is beyond me.

Visually, Antigrav looks exactly like what I might imagine the real world of Amplitude or Frequency to look like. It’s a bright colorful future world, with ultra-hip looking characters and some rail sequences that feel like they’ve been ripped straight out of the aforementioned games. Despite the appealing visual style, though, everything is very simple. From a technical perspective, the game fails to impress with its low polygon counts and relatively simple environments. There can be a lot going on at once, though, especially after some big airs.



Article By: Katy Wickman