AntiGrav is to the EyeToy what Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was to action sports.

Wow... that’s saying a lot, isn’t it?

Because it depended on launch titles that were little more than mini-games, Sony’s innovative gaming gadget has pretty much been more toy than EyeToy. Harmonix, the developer of AntiGrav, combined hoverboarding with EyeToy’s ability to translate up, down, left, and right movements of the player’s head into inputs that control the player’s character. Does that translate into something that’s fun?

That is the question... And more about that later.

The game’s graphics are colorful, and considering the amount of terrain you can see at any given time, the detail is quite acceptable. Anyone who thinks it’s easy to make a hoverboard game with airborne skyrails, without mitigating the processor speed with LODs (Levels of Detail) on assets, mid-mapping textures (to reduce texture size as objects recede into the distance), and sectoring (to limit the amount of world that’s displayed at any given moment), should think again. Harmonix shows it knows its stuff.

Portions of each level take advantage of the PS2’s particle systems, glows, and other lighting effects. The game makes good use of the console’s tech side while managing not to take a frame-rate hit. Harmonix also deserves full kudos for attempting to blend concrete and steel cityscapes with more natural mountainsides and forests.

AntiGrav could do with more music and less talk. The agro shouts by competitors are old after about two shouts. Make a stand! Eliminate enemy character taunts! Sound effects are above the norm to quite acceptable. The game’s music combines just the right amounts of fun, funk, and attitude to fit right in.

In the future, hoverboarding is the extreme sport of the masses. Racers navigate through courses made up of grind pipes and jumps. Hit a jump and you’re airborne; there are obstacles to fly through and pickups to collect. Grind and you’ve got blocks to jump over and duck under, and even more pickups to snag. Everything is controlled by the player’s head movements. Note: Think of your head as the tippy top of an analog joystick, and you’re kind of down with the notion.

The game starts with eight player-selectable racers, but it includes other unlockable secret racers, board upgrades, and such. The character designs are crisp and colorful. Environments are full of large buildings that are majestic to look at while restricting the player’s view enough to keep the game from chugging.

EyeToy: AntiGrav has only five courses total. They’re very futuristic and loaded with flying vehicles, a la “The Fifth Element” movie. The courses are divided to become Speed races and Style races. Players that make the effort to snag gear icons and change their course will realize that these five courses are actually pretty big, but the bar has been raised in most action sports titles, and one way to build a good buzz is by offering more diverse-looking race environments. The game alludes to environments that can be unlocked, but at the time of this posting, I had not unlocked one (shame on me).

AntiGrav is a very innovative little EyeToy game, and it delivers on nearly all of the criteria that such a game should be judged by. Players who take the time to really get into the moves, the pickup icons, and the branching routes, will find they’ve played out more than enough to justify what they’ve paid out.

The difficulty in EyeToy: AntiGrav comes solely through coordinating your body movements with what you want the character to do on screen. Get it? You have fun. Don’t. You won’t. But with only seven movements to master, it’s not like rocket science.

Of course, imagining the effect is one thing. Playing it is quite another. Unlike EyeToy’s other games, there is no feedback image of the player displayed in the video frame. This is good! Most people do not look like a high-steppin,’ hoverboard-totin,’ spandex-wearin’ action/sports star, and most folks really don’t like seeing themselves playing an EyeToy game. It’s a distraction, albeit a necessary one for some of EyeToy’s previous mini-games. The game’s concession to head position is a double check graphic that shows the current head and hand positions. What’s impressive is when the player actually begins to get the hang of making the on-screen character react correctly with his or her body movements.

AntiGrav succeeds best when you can suspend your disbelief and just go with the flow. It’s very helpful that you’re doing so in the privacy of your own home and not in an arcade or mall location (self conscious gamers?? Nooooooooo, of course not!). Feeling this connection while playing as an action/sports star makes the other EyeToy games seem pretty pathetic at best.

Control movements have been kept minimal so that more people (of all ages and stages) can get the hang of AntiGrav and enjoy playing it. There are seven different movements: an arm shooting left or right, the head moving up or down, an arm moving from bottom to top on either the left or right side, and both arms moving upward at the same time. Take the time to learn these moves by themselves, because it’s possible to link moves together if you can catch enough air. If you learn them well enough, you can mimic the movement icons that appear at the bottom of the screen after each big jump. Mimic all the moves and you initiate a special combo move. Each player character has one combo.

The most important skill a player can develop to have fun with AntiGrav is precision waving of the arms. By waving effectively, the player can make his/her character snag groups of passing icons. Single icons are good. Snagging a whole group rewards the player with a turbo or some similar benny. The best icon is the one shaped like gears; snag this one and the grinding rails reconfigure to send the player off in a different direction. Talk about hot. This is white hot, in game speak, that is.

For players who have more than the normal amount of hand/eye coordination, EyeToy: AntiGrav’s seven hand and head movements may grow tiresome and repetitive. It’s even possible that those people who aren’t gifted in this area may grow tired, too. Is this the price that you pay for inclusiveness? Probably. Could Harmonix have worked in some movements for players to unlock during later courses or stages or for unbelievable performance? It’s not for me to say, but it would have been cool.

Sequels nearly always manage to pull off more stuff for the same price than the originals. If that’s the case, let this be the first place you hear of the call for EyeToy: AntiGrav 2.