I decided that I’d been ignoring the offerings on Xbox Live Arcade for too long. The last game I’d “purchased” was Undertow. And we all know how that story ends.
But I came across this little game called Gripshift in the deep dark recesses of Xbox Live Marketplace. Now I’m blowing off CoD4 and R6V2 invites to instead collect gold stars like an addict. This game was totally worth it.
At 800 points (10 bucks) I demand a lot out of my games. Sadly, one of the only really compelling experiences I’d had at this price point before now was the incredible Roboblitz. (It’s also available on the PS3, and PSP. Buy it!)
But I found heaven in a little racer with a funny name. Gripshift puts you in control of a cartoony buggy (several to choose from) that is outfitted with your standard turbo thrusters. While the race modes can be a little too much like Mario Kart or Viva Pinata Party Animals to keep me coming back, to me it’s the Challenge Mode that sets this game apart.
Challenge Mode is something of a hybrid between racing and a wild 3-d puzzle, where you’ve got a set amount of time to try and finish the course. To truly “beat” a level you need to complete the track in “Gold” time and also complete a run collecting all of the gold stars that are strewn about the track or stranded on an island. These two things do not really go hand in hand.
Going for a Gold time often means looking closely at the flyover to try and pick out the perfect spot to catch some air, leave the track, fire up your Nitro, and try and skip huge portions of the track, landing by the skin of your teeth. The consequences for a miss involve plummeting thousands of feet to your death.
Every Gripshift track is somehow suspended high above the Earth. Exactly how a race track came to be levitated at such an altitude isn’t explained, but once you’re in the game it’s not something you think about.
Like any good puzzle, you’ve got to be creative with your super buggy to beat a level. While some of the early tracks are fairly straight forward, later levels can only be beaten through trial and error. On the harder difficulties, you’ll be sweating at the palms watching the timer tick down and wondering if you picked the right trajectory.
I whole-heartedly reccomend you drop the points on this fantastic title. As the Challenge mode was enough to compel me to endorse it, combined with the “okay” race modes, the game certainly overdeilvered on my expectations of a 10 dollar video game.
Gripshift was developed by Sidhe (official site)
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5 responses so far ↓
1 » Gripshift over delivers on my ridiculous expectations // Apr 15, 2008 at 9:35 am
[...] Video Games News and Press Releases | Just Video Games wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptI decided that I’d been ignoring the offerings on Xbox Live Arcade for too long. The last game I’d “purchased” was Undertow. And we all know how that story ends. But I came across this little game called Gripshift in the deep dark recesses of Xbox Live Marketplace. Now I’m blowing off CoD4 and R6V2 invites […] Read the rest of this story at SarcasticGamer.com [...]
2 Blackswordsman // Apr 15, 2008 at 10:12 am
Yeah ive got this game for my PSP, Still play it to this day.
3 Sean "Rothbart" Workman // Apr 15, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I picked this up for the PS3 when it first came out (having a proper controller solved all issues I had with the PSP version), but I found that right about 2/3 into the game, the difficulty ramps up CRAZY fast! I was basically getting everything on every level, then within the course of about 5 levels, went to lucky to get 2 goals complete, to another 5 levels later lucky to complete anything. I _totally_ got my $10 worth, but I felt a bit cheated not being able to play all the content because I couldn’t figure out the “trick” to each level… they went from “driving the best line” or “using the best route” to “exploiting the unobvious trick”. That part kinda sucked. I probably haven’t loaded the game in six months…
At least on the PS3, I could gameshare it with a buddy and he returned the favor with another title… made it more like $5.
4 Kelderek // Apr 16, 2008 at 8:47 am
I completely agree. Gripshift was one of the first XBLA games I bought and is definitely one of the best purchases. Tremendous value for the price. I was even playing it last night.
I agree that the difficulty ramps up pretty hard and if you aren’t willing to spend an hour redoing a level to get the stars, GS token and time then you will probably stop liking it at that point. Even so the first 2/3rds of the game on their own would be worth the $10.
5 Cody // Apr 16, 2008 at 9:44 am
I agree totally
I liked the game very much and was very impressed how much gameplay and graphics you can get with just downloading 148MB 
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