Gungrave

So you decide you want to play a game where you jump around and shoot lots of things, but Devil May Cry is too technical and Max Payne is too hard. Look no further; Gungrave is the game for you! Developed by Red Company and published by none other than Sega, Gungrave takes you for a ride through a living comic book on your Playstation 2. It begins with a small girl dragging along an enormous case almost the size of herself. She ends up making it to her destination – a scientist by the name of Dr. T. This doctor sort of takes care of our hero, and as he lays her on his couch a very large man busts through the door. It’s none other than Grave, the games main character. With much ease he carries the huge case one-handed over to a table where he reveals its contents. Inside are two large guns roughly the size of a grown man’s torso. These guns are your weapons.

The more you play, you find out that an evil syndicate is out for you. You fight its numbers throughout many different settings such as dance clubs, construction sites, trains, and many others. Upon entering the battleground the instructions appear across the screen: “Kick Their Ass”. In the beginning they are quite weak. You’ll mow through countless enemies with little to no effort (depending on what difficulty you play the game, in this may not always be the case). If you happen to die, you can always continue from the last point the level had to load with full health. Later on, enemies brandish bigger weapons and don’t go down as easy.

Have no fear, not only do you use your monster guns, but the coffin chained to your arms can be used as a weapon as well. Hurray! It can either be swung around to clear away all those pesky rushing enemies or as a very large gun, much larger than your pistols. Depending on how crafty you are and how well you destroy your enemies, you will earn new attacks for your coffin-gun. The result of these special shots is usually lots of explosions shown in slow motion, and from what I can tell the slowdown is intentional for these attacks. Other times you’ll find the game likes to slow down while lots of destruction is on-screen. I haven’t had this happen too often, but you can tell when it’s intentional or the game just can’t keep up.

Usually the game has you pound away at the Square button, but there’s an option to change the firing mode to rapid. This allows you to just hold down the button to keep Grave shooting. There are quite a few attack styles at your disposal. Like I mentioned before, there are the special shots you can earn. You get a limited number of these per level so don’t use them too often. You can also hold down L1 to target enemies, allowing you to strafe or run sideways while continuing to focus your fire on that single target. The X button is what causes you to jump, but when pressed while holding a direction, Grave will dive that way. Mix that up with some trigger pulling and you have yourself a way to easily rack up points. If enemies are piling up in front of you, leave the movement joystick neutral and Grave will perform some sweet moves as he keeps shooting at the enemy. At first you’ll just dive because it looks cool, but later on you’ll have to master that diving move. It will save your life more than once!

As far as controls go, they take a bit of getting used to. They can feel pretty clunky at first, but once you get used to the targeting system, strafing, and diving they become second nature. It can still sometimes be a pain when you’re completely surrounded since Grave turns so slowly. At that point I usually just used my special shots, which provide flashy animations and the destruction of almost everything around you. Did I happen to mentions that almost anything in each level can be destroyed in one way or another? Well, they can, and you are rewarded points for how much stuff you can shoot at once. The environments look very good too, before and after. While the graphics can look a little rough around the edges, overall it is a highly stylized and well-done cel shading. The pre-rendered movie sequences between each level are some of the most beautiful on the Playstation 2. The game came from very talented artists, and it shows. In many of the levels you feel like you’re running down the halls of a comic book right before a gang of three syndicate members bust out of a mall storefront. The characters both good and bad are animated well. They jump, duck, and have a variety of death animations. Grave also moves very fluid. Just watching him run makes that coffin on his back look very heavy, and the way he dances and dives during gunfights is really fun to watch. Grave’s coffin even reacts when bumped into an object or wall.

If you’ve ever seen Cowboy Bebop, you know that jazz goes well with action scenes. It keeps sort of a calm feel during scenes of frantic action. Gungrave’s soundtrack has sort of a jazzy feel, and plays in the background during all the shooting scenes. You’ll also hear various other noises, such as explosions of flammable objects, gunfire, yelling, and ricocheting bullets. You don’t need much more than this, because there’s not much else to this game. The voice acting for the cut-scenes was kept in Japanese with English subtitles along the bottom. This may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but personally I don’t mind it.

If you’re not a fan of shooters, steer clear of this one – you’ll bore quickly. If you’re not a fan of shooters and you liked this game, maybe you really are a fan of shooters and just didn’t know it. The game has a solid story and unique style to it. Gungrave is just oozing with artistic talent. The movie sequences are cel shading at its finest, and Grave’s moves are just plain cool. This game has a lot to offer in the area of simple fun. There are no puzzles or platform jumping, just walk around and shoot at the guys coming at you. The only thing really wrong with the game is the slowdown, after that it’s your opinion. Basically, if you think shooters are fun, you’ll most like enjoy Gungrave to some extent. If it sounds like your thing, definitely try it out.

Gameplay: 7.5
I can see most audiences becoming bored with Gungrave. Even though I enjoyed playing it, it grew redundant after extended periods of play. I also experienced intense slowdown during wild and crazy gunfights. What scored points with me was the way it was all put together, giving it a very unique feel. Plus, the game is a lot more fun if you try to do the more technical stuff such as diving – it adds flavor and style to the mayhem.

Graphics: 7 
They did a great job of making you feel as if you’re playing in a comic book. With cel shading getting more and more popular you’d think it would get old by now, but each developer seems to find a way to add their own style and flare to it. Gungrave has a very cool, unique feel; you feel like you’re in a gritty graphic novel.

Sound: 8
Bullets pinging, computers and vending machines exploding, and all while jazz tunes playing in the background. There’s not much to complain about on the side of sound.  It’s not terrible, but at the same time, there isn’t anything really spectacular about it. It does get you involved, though – this is a game to play loud! 

Difficulty: Easy
If you can press the square button, you can beat this game. Fortunately there are different difficulty modes to choose from: Normal, Hard, and Kick-Ass. Normal is more like a very easy mode, Hard is a Normal mode in disguise, and Kick-Ass mode is a little less kick-ass than one would assume. But in terms of what the game requires, Gungrave is about as simple as it gets.

Concept: 9 
The concept itself isn’t all that unique, but the way it’s presented is. Borrowing moves from Dante and Max Payne, Grave takes his own spin on the genre. The grittiness of the cel shading in the game adds to the setting and style. If they used vivid colors and defined lines like in Robotech, you wouldn’t get the same feeling out of the game. The overall feeling of the game is accomplished well using sound, graphics, and style.

Multiplayer: N/A

Overall: 7.6
Overall, Gungrave is a lot like Gradius or Raiden. You’re basically maneuvering around enemy fire while mashing on the fire button. The story is pretty good; they start revealing very little, then slowly explain it throughout. Decent graphics, great movie sequences, and highly stylized gameplay make this an entertaining play. While the graphics are cool, they’re also choppy. Many gamers’ arms may become sore from the repetitious button pounding, or frustrated from the slowdown. This game is great shooter, and if you can get by the rough graphics and occasional slowdown give it try – just don’t rush out and buy it before you play it.