As many of you will know, I was waiting for Gravity Rush 2 with baited breath. I couldn’t even bring myself to play The Last Guardian knowing that Kat and chums were calling me to save the topsy-turvy universe once again. No matter the bond between a boy and his Trico, a floating girl and her starry cat was more up my street.

The game starts promisingly. I love it when a new game goes right into the action. No menu screen or difficulty options. You just whack it on and start playing. There’s a weird nod to that Metal Gear Solid lift scene too (albeit in reverse) as the game opens. It’s quite a slow start, but once the gravity suit comes off and you get to play as Kat everything comes flooding back.

To be fair, it wasn’t that long ago I was in the world of Hekseville, having only Platinum’d Gravity Rush Remastered last year. The controls came back almost instantly, navigating the small floating town and the air above feels super natural. First up the graphics. WOW! The art style is enhanced ten-fold thanks to PS4. Character models look solid, straight out of the most beautiful anime you can think of. The soundtrack, also, could have been pulled right out of Studio Ghibli. I. Was Loving. It – I am loving it! However, there has been one massive upset that listeners to the podcast will have heard me talk about…

After the first hour or so you get to a new area, a sprawling, colourful town with a busy marketplace and skies full of airships. This place is so beautiful that Syd, your policeman buddy from the first game, hands you a camera to capture some picturesque scenes. To activate your camera it’s simple. Press UP on the d-pad. Yep, UP, ok, I’ll try again, UP… Nothing happened…

I decided to neglect it’s brokenness and carry on doing story and side missions for another few hours. The game is just AWESOME – I highly recommend EVERYONE reading this to go out and buy it – so here’s a link BUY. I promise I am not being paid by Sony. Anyway, I then had a side mission to photograph proof of a dodgy deal going down. The UP prompt appeared on screen. I pressed it, nothing happened. And again, and again, and again… Balls… I went straight to google, then Twitter then AskPlaystation. It seemed no one else was suffering from this Photo Mode glitch. I was devastated. A game I was loving so much. Broken beyond mend.

@AskPS_UK here’s a video pic.twitter.com/irBPsHpgdy

— Dan (@my_nameis_dan) February 6, 2017

With a lot of help from @AskPlaystation & @AskPS_UK, I tried lots of work arounds. Reinstalling the game, numerous DualShock 4s, Remote Play, Safe Mode Database rebuilds... The list goes on. I then tried the same disc in another PS4, used the cloud save feature and low and behold IT WORKED! This was both great news, and bad news. My Shiny, New PS4pro wouldn’t allow me to play a new game properly. My last throw of the dice was to reinitiate the system & reinstall the firmware. This meant I would have to redownload everything. But, it would be worth it if it meant my hunt for the Platinum trophy could continue on Pro.

After an hour or so (& many many more hours of trying fixes in all) I reloaded my save, pressed UP and… PHOTO MODE!!!

This was mega! I am so happy I can now continue to love what had been an amazing experience up to that point. To be honest, I haven’t even scratched the surface of the story yet, or the challenges. But I know I am going to thoroughly enjoy this title.

I would like to publicly write just how good the support from PlayStation was. Each tweet was responded to. Every time with something new to try. They were on it! When it seemed the issue was bigger than 140 characters, they set up a live chat. Again, brilliant, helpful & thoughtful. I cannot say a bad word against @AskPlaystation or @AskPS_UK, so thank you guys, so much!

That brings me to the end. It wasn’t intended to be a review, so I am not going to sum anything up until I finish the game. It’s more a piece about my struggles. Hopefully it may help somebody else who suffers with Photo Mode not working – or hopefully it might just convince you, yes you, to buy this amazing game!

Thanks for reading D