Gungrave

"Style over substance can't mask repetitive gamplay"

The worst kind of disappointment is the kind of disappointment you experience when you have no preconceived expectations yet you still are let down. Such a game is Gungrave.

In terms of graphics, style and presentation, Gungrave surpasses every other title out there. The game engine closely matches the superb anime cinematics. The outrageous characters designs are especially worthy of note, praise and drool. This game is quite literally bleeding style out of every available pore.

But there’s a trade off for such tasty graphics and that’s speed. Our hero chugs along like he’s walking along the bottom of the sea in cast iron booties. This point needs to clarified and emphasized: the game does NOT have a slow framerate, it’s intentionally paced slow so the engine doesn’t get overloaded. This actually shows foresight on the part of the developers. Red was determined to do whatever it took to impress visually and knew they had to make a deal with the devil in order to do it. And while it’s not inexcusable for a next generation title to have a rather noticeable cut off distance, it does give you PSone flashbacks.

I might mention the story here but there really is no story. Just a rough outline of the standard mafioso-type betray and revenge we’ve all yawned at before. I could also carp about the random menu pop up I experienced or the fact that your powerhouse ''demolition shots'' tend to be more and more useless against bosses as the game goes on. These flaws don’t bring the game down in and of themselves but when your right thumb is firmly holding down the ''fire'' button and your left thumb is wiggling the control stick around enough to get our hero from point A to point B your brain has a lot of free time after it gets bored watching the same guys die over and over again to notice these things.

But none of this is a deal breaker yet. Gungrave has been created by a team that obviously trying to squeeze everything they can out of the hardware. I commend them rather than hold it against them. But it’s hard to make an exciting shoot ‘em up action game that moves slow. Maybe if they had included a greater variety of weapons. Maybe if there were more than six levels to clear or that every one after number two didn’t already give you Gungrave deja vu. Maybe if there was something else to do but shoot endless hordes of identical-but-for-their-weapon enemies rinse and repeat.

The bottom line is that I want more games like this, I just want them to be good. We need more game developers with the sheer creative horsepower that Red proves it has with every frame of sweet, sweet eye candy. But style before substance cannot disguise the one note gameplay that makes Gungrave a fun rental but an unsatisfying purchase.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 10/19/02, Updated 10/19/02