Gungrave: Overdose

"Shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out (or, for $15, how could you go wrong?)"

Gungrave Overdose is a wickedly wild action-shooter in the style of Devil May Cry, but falls short of greatness in a few key areas. Just like DMC you're a gunslinger of enormous power sent to destroy an evil force that threatens the safety of the world. Unlike DMC, though, all you need to know to beat the game is to hammer that square button till it starts to smoke.

Five or so years ago this game might 've been an ace in the hole for these two unknowns Mastiff and RED, but they must've hit a snag in the time rift and came in 2005, and not 1999. You see, after DMC gamers wanted more than just shooting everything you see, they wanted style... and this game is a mixed bag.

Graphically, GG:OD is very serviceable but also behind the curve, apparently no one told the guys at RED about aliasing: Jaggies abound! Environments are the low point in the graphics, with cut and paste textures, weak looking colors (I never knew vibrant colors like Red, Blue, and Green could look so bland) and objects that look straight out of the beginners guide to programming. Not all is bad though, because even though the environs look bad, most of them are fully destructible, and as we all know destruction is good! But there is a silver lining to this cloud, and that is Characters. From a design point of view, these characters look awesome, from the main man, Beyond the Grave, with his huge coffin/gun/missile launcher strapped to his back, to Rocketbilly Redcadillac-(yes, I know that name is horrible.. who came up with THAT?!) a ghost that haunts an electric guitar that shoots lightning and acts like David Lee Roth in his prime. Oh and don't forget the blind swordsman, Juji, whose swords also have guns attached to them. Each character is cool to look at and animates wildly. Characters have this slight cel-shade look going on, but not really to heavily put on, more like a low budget Zelda: Wind Waker style, without the heavy black lines that outline the characters like in the first GG. The animation is probably the highlight of the game, graphically. The way each character moves and attacks really shows what each character is like as the story doesn't really give that much backstory. Grave is pretty standard, basic dives and slides and gunslinging. Rocketbilly is insane, with stage dives and knee slides showing that he rocks HARD! Juji (the blind swordsman) has some sick looking slices and graceful leaps and bounds. Effect wise, pretty basic: explosions, screen-blurring, slow mo... all stuff you'd see in almost any action game.

For a game that uses a large anime influence (An anime was released after the first game) musically, this game falls flat on its face. Most of the time the music is playing so low that you can't hear it, or the sounds of gunfire and screams drown it out. But when there is a brief moment to listen to it, it's nothing special, so if you want to blast some of your own jams while playing, it's not like you're gonna miss anything. Especially when most of the cutscenes are mugshots of characters talking with subtitles underneath. Voice acting ranges from ok to who hired these guys, Donald: the deaf intern? Cam Clarke of Metal Gear Solid fame (he was Liquid Snake) voices a couple of characters, but he's the only actor I recognized. One thing that bothers me is during actual cutscenes (that use a different cel shade style) voices sound crisp and clear, but in game and in those talking head scenes it sounds like they recorded using two soup cans attached with a string in a garage during a rainstorm.

Now I bet you're thinking, "How can this guy give this game a 7 and badmouth it for the whole review?" well maybe that's not what you're thinking, but the reason why is simple: Gameplay. This is where most of that $15 you spent on this is going. By my estimation, $4 goes to the graphics, $1 goes to sound budget, $10 goes on gameplay. Now I did say that this is five or so years behind the curve, but oldies can still be goodies. Gameplay consists of one school of though: Shoot anything and everything. Enemies, boxes, exploding barrels (my god, original~!), pillars, desks, statues, basically anything that looks destructible, is. Doesn't sound too fun does it? But therein lies the secret, by chaining successive hits with anything destructible, you start a beat, and higher beats mean bigger scores, and juice for your Demolition Shots, super powerful attacks that usually clear out whole rooms. Demo-shots have more purpose than just killing, by using them in crowded rooms or areas with lots of destroyable items you get a jackpot number, which is tallied in at the end of the level, and recovers you shield gauge. Your shield is very important as it protects you health bar. In GG you have 2 bars one for health and one for shield. Health is unrecoverable (maybe if you get high combos you CAN recover), but shield takes after the Halo-school. If your shield runs low, just hide out for a moment, shields charge up, you charge out into battle. That is if you can get a break. Battles are almost constant or never ending with literally hundreds of goons to mow down every level. Difficulty is a factor on normal expect to die, and often. Easy is exactly that, and anyone who can hold a controller and press square can beat it on that difficulty. Hard is really that as you have to have zen-like mastery to rack up those high combos to get demo-shots you need to live.

But not all is well, the most glaring problems are the most important for any game to succeed... camera and controls. The camera is the biggest offender. It works well in the first few levels, but when you hit tight quarters combat, it seems to bet so close you can't even see your character, or the fact you can't adjust it to any angle that works and keep it there as it goes right back to the shoulder. Maybe the developers thought that keeping the camera close will get rid of the problems that many games have, but sometimes it just makes things way worse. Now I can live with poor camera work, I beat Ninja Gaiden, and didn't have the Hurricane pack that fixed the camera, and I very much enjoyed Mario Sunshine, which has terrible close quarters camerawork, but poor controls are unacceptable. Controls are easy to learn, sharp and responsive early on in the game, later on when you're constantly surrounded by goons, some with powerful attacks that send you flying, it seems like the controller is underwater, while you shout commands at it, and it says "maybe" in reply. Pressing square as fast as you can pours out bullets just as fast, but every other button seems like it takes the presses as suggestions. Being surrounded and pounding on the quick turn button and seeing my on screen self do nothing, is very frustrating. The fact that turning around 180 degrees is a chore for Grave and Co. is such a problem that many needless deaths are on this one fact. That and trying to run away from a crowd and pressing the 180 turn button and the Demo-Shot button at the same time usually garners a DS shot at a wall or otherwise empty space, is a pain cause DC shots are needed a lot, and wasting one could be life or death.

But what am I complaining about? At $15 bucks you'd be a fool not to get this. If you're reading this review you must be either: an anime fan, an action game fan, or both... or you might just be looking around and stumbled on this. But trust me on this it's an awesome game, and this is coming from someone whose never seen the anime, and played 10 minutes of the first game. I picked this one up on a whim and I was very surprised. Probably the best game that's priced at $15 on it's release.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/10/05