Gungrave

"Anime and Shooter fans, are you ready to kick ass?"

Gungrave is a very overlooked game, I though anticipated it for quite a while, hearing the creator of Trigun was involved in it. It succeeds to have an anime shoot-out feel, but it grows almost as tiresome as watching an actual anime over and over.

Story:
Ex-syndicate member Brandon (Gungrave) returns from beyond the grave to seek revenge upon his friend who betrayed him. Plenty of syndicate members are in his way too, but his trusty double pistols and giant coffin will do the job.. I made it sound pretty lame, but the story is presented through very nicely animated anime cut scenes, that just get you ready to grab your pistols and go on a shooting spree.

Graphics:
Judging from screenshots from this game, I could hardly tell what was going on. When I played the game I understood why, it is FAST. The cell-shaded graphics add to the anime style and even have a gritty look. First lets talk about Grave. He is animated pretty well when he jumps, shoots, and when you tap the shoot button long enough standing still he enters in a very impressive “burst mode” which you just have to see to believe, which just doesn’t look nice but increases your firing speed. What makes me a little angry though is you can’t move the camera at all (the right analog stick would be nice) so you are always facing his back. It gets pretty tiresome just looking at his coffin the whole game, I tried making sharp turns just to at least see his face, but you can’t even see it. The enemy’s are extremely basic, your typical dispensable thug, but to spice things up for every level there’s a totally new set of enemies. The bosses on the later level are huge and creative though, one I’ve even heard someone call a robotic chicken!

Score: 8

Controls:
The controls are pretty basic, as the case for most shooters. Square is fire, X is jump, and O is to run. Its customizable though and I suggest that you do, to run while shooting is a little tricky on the default setting making you push down the left analog stick while your moving, but its easily fixed going into options.

Score: 8

Gameplay:
First of all I suggest you ignoring normal and easy difficulty, and not putting on rapid fire in the option. Easy is way too boring, and normal becomes boring soon. You start off in a level and make your way through any body you see. The levels are linear, with an arrow to guide you which room to go through next, though if you want to get a good rating sometimes you have to wait in a room for enemies to pop up for the 100% kills. The environments are destructible during the fights, which cause some pretty sweet things to happen like car explosions killing the enemies and bottles in bars blowing into bits. The combo system known as the beat count requires you continuously shooting enemies to keep it up, so you have to keep that thumb tapping constantly. A high beat raises a meter faster to get a special shot (called demolition shots) and gets you a good rating for the level. The four special shots are firing giant missiles out of your coffin, to blazing everything down with machine gun fire. The beat count system doesn’t let this game get too repetitive for a good while.

Score: 7

Replay Value:
Yes this game does get old, but it has plenty of extras to keep you playing at least 20 hrs, if you are that in the game. You can unlock cut scenes from the game, and action figures that let you look at all the bad guys you killed up close (not to mention without the bullet holes). Also you can always try to get rank S on every level, but ranks always have seemed useless to me, and doesn’t unlock anything special in the game.

Score: 5

Overall, I suggest you rent the game first to give it a try. I bought it right away, and after a couple of weeks it’s still given me some enjoyment, but its not the kind of game to play hours on end. Once you unlock all the extras you might want to play through it occasionally mastering the jumping and beat counts. Also the movies are great to watch over again. Thankfully this game doesn’t get sent to the grave! Ok you can kill me for that one.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/27/02, Updated 12/27/02