Gungrave Gore Review: coffin blows on Xbox Game Pass

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Iggymob’s work tries to resurrect a videogame genre that has now disappeared, proposing an adventure that makes simplicity its greatest pride.

 

We are at the dawn of the new millennium, and the gaming universe has now taken on the features of that black monolith that launched Sony into the homes of millions of people. Gungrave is released for the Japanese console, a game with extremely basic mechanics, but pardoned by the artistic direction of Yasuhiro Nightow, the mangaka who a few years earlier had given birth to that little cult called Trigun. The title developed by Red Entertainment will not remain engraved in the history of the medium, but will find the affection of a niche of enthusiasts who are always ready to welcome a simple and aware product (on our more “faded” pages you will also find Gungrave’s review) .

Incredibly, a sequel arrived two years later, while the exhumation operation in augmented reality is much more recent (here the review of Gungrave VR Loaded Coffin Edition), but we can say that the silent gunslinger of the series died before this game edited by the South Korean studio Iggymob. Gungrave GORE it rips a shooter genre that has been missing for decades from the grave, but – just as the creepiest horror stories teach – sometimes it’s better to leave the dead alone.

A space drug

In raising that banner of simplicity that characterizes the entire saga, Gungrave sacrifices almost the entire plot by proposing a predictable and contextual narrative, useful only to create a sort of frame that he doesn’t even try to justify the waves of lead that will turn the screen upside down.

Linking up with the two chapters for PlayStation 2, GORE picks up the threads left open by Overdose: Beyond the Grave – born Brandon Heat – is a mute gunslinger who is resurrected to embark on a path of personal revenge, which quickly transformed into the rescue planetarium from criminal organizations that exploit the Seed a drug capable of turning people into vile monstrosities.

The young Mika has formed a team dedicated to the eradication of this dangerous substance because, despite the victories of the undead warrior, the Seed seems more common than ever, and is turning the planet into a great coffin for humanity. Thanks to the research conducted on the drug, its origin is traced to Scumland an isolated island in Southeast Asia: the Raven Clan occupies the place and manages the production and distribution of the deadly compound, so the new mission of the gunslinger consists in rushing on the spot to slaughter the four bosses of the gang, so as to stop forever the spread of this toxic epidemic.

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Don’t ask, shoot

Without a doubt, linking a name like Yasuhiro Nightow to the rebirth of a disappeared brand draws the attention of the public, but it also imposes a certain standard of quality that cannot be avoided from comparison with other works of the mangaka: the pencil of the designer Japanese it is flashy in the character design of the protagonistand his involvement would have been evident even if it hadn’t been advertised by the Korean team.

Grave’s modeling closely resembles that of Vash the Stampede, especially in the long face and flowing clothing, combined with that coffin carried on the back which recalls the gigantic cross by Nicholas D. Wolfwood – in turn inspired (allow us a pinch of parochialism) to our Sergio Corbucci’s Django – but there is very little else of Nightow’s china in the video game scenarios. Bare environments and soft colors welcome hordes of very similar enemies, from the classic punk thugs to the futuristic soldiers of the corporation, passing through the monstrosities created by the Seed, which differ in the type of weapon used and therefore in the danger in combat . The constant recycling of assets affects opponents and scenarios in the same way, contributing to a feeling of creeping repetitiveness that explodes with the obsessive re-proposition of the same playful “challenges”, which ask the player only to continuously press the right trigger, without thinking about what swirls around it (we’ll talk about it in detail later). To begin with, the gameplay underpinning the experience is elementary: harnessed by a system of auto aim we are called to vent our frustrations on the fire button, barely moving a character as powerful as a tank but ten times slower.

Have you ever been beaten with a coffin?

Our anti-hero is protected by a shield that recharges in moments of calm, and his firepower is so high that it gives the player an aura of joyful invincibility, between charged shots that can wipe out even the most stubborn defenses and the use of a grappling hook which allows him to dispense death to those who believe they are safe with distance.

In addition to pelting opponents with a pair of Hell Pistols, Grave he can slaughter anyone who dares to approach brandishing the coffin which he carries around like a club, in a riot of quarterings that is amplified in the bloody finishers against stunned enemies. These moves allow the accumulation of style points which – together with other parameters such as completion time and remaining life – decide the final score of the level and the experience that can be spent in the shop, including damage upgrades, new melee combos and other skills to use in battle. He thinks about analyzing the player’s attention and efficiency the hit counter at the top and right of the screen, which pushes you to always keep your guns warm by destroying not only enemies, but also the objects of a scenario that accompanies from one shooting to another, trying to wisely manage the rhythm of the trigger and the low mobility of the character.

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The favorite game of orthopedic surgeons

Between the waves of minions to wipe out and the props to blow up to keep the shot counter always active, in Gungrave GORE you end up shooting non-stop, obsessively pressing on the right trigger. The only one that suffers more than the flexor muscles of the fingers during gaming sessions is the DualSense battery drained by the spasmodic use of the loudspeaker – from the controller comes Mika’s constant incitements during the battle, but also the explosions and numerous other sound effects – and by a powerful and sometimes out of place vibration.

A playful recipe devoted to simplicity and entertainment is accompanied by a substantially laughable difficulty for most of the adventure, because the enemies to be killed are characterized by minimal differences, which are lost in the chaos of the slaughter.

The accessibility of the shootings is canceled by some sudden and frustrating difficulty peaks, almost always caused by hordes of opponents who block the protagonist in a corner preventing him from moving, or by the unexpected transformation of the game into something it is not, as in the platforming sections to be overcome with Grave’s imprecise hops – also due to the revisable responsiveness of the controls – and his dodges at pachydermic rhythms.

An empty shooter

If the accusation of poor longevity was made to the previous chapters, the developers of Iggymob take precautions with fifteen hours of brain-dead shootingfunneled down one-way, empty corridors with no side branches, no missions to complete, no collectibles to hunt down, filled only with waves of forgettable enemy designs hurling themselves at Grave and his fiendish guns.

The non-existent artificial intelligence is revealed in opponents who remain motionless to absorb the fire of the protagonist, moved in turn by a narrow and woody animation park: slightly more interesting they become end-of-level boss challenges (despite three of these taking up the same gigantic beast unchanged), since they force the player to study its moves to avoid them at the right time, generally proposing a different approach compared to the carefree gameplay that moves the classic sections. A rocking and aggressive soundtrack is not enough to erase the flaws of one Spartan staging between the bright lighting of every nook and cranny and an unforgettable texture quality, while the constant explosions that echo around Grave are brought to the screen by effects devoted to saving.

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Gungrave GORE
Gungrave GOREXbox Series X Analyzed VersionThe resurrection of a saga that already failed to win the hearts of players twenty years ago turns out to be a bit empty, like the coffin that Grave carries on his shoulders: the developers of Iggymob offer an extremely simple experience through a shooter third-person shooter with basic mechanics, fixated on repeating shooting to mow down wave after wave of helpless enemies. The long and always identical corridors that form the backdrop to the carnage of the resurrected gunslinger frame an all too meager playful recipe, weakened by a spartan technical realization and a basic repetitiveness that is revealed within a few hours. The artistic direction of Yasuhiro Nightow is evident in a character design very close to the lines admired in Trigun, but it is not enough to elevate what remains an unambitious product.