Gungrave G.O.R.E. does not have a good reputation online. I did a little looking to see what the general opinions are, and they seem pretty consistent that it’s a mediocre, mindlessly shallow game, across multiple consoles and both professional reviewers and general audience. Well, one person’s trash is anothers treasure, cause this game rules.

In Gungrave you play as a nearly unstoppable undead gunslinger aiming to take down an international drug cartel. The story is as simple and bare bones as can be. You’re quickly introduced to the 4 main villains, then you smash your way through level after level of enemies til you reach them and defeat them one by one. There’s a pretty bizarre and outlandish twist towards the end, not really foreshadowed by anything unless you’ve played the obscure sequel to the original game that came out in 2004, but otherwise the story is quite basic.

The basic gameplay loop is introduced immediately and remains basically unchanged for the entire game. This seems to be the main issue people had with it in reviews, coming across as outdated and simplistic by modern game standards, which often try to pack as many mechanics and gameplay modes into a game as possible. This is a big part of why I jokingly refer to the game as a PS2 game. It’s the kind of level-based, pure action, repetitive gameplay you don’t see a lot of these days.

The combat consists mostly of running into a room, being surrounded by dozens of gun wielding goons, and gunning them all down before moving on to the next room. I’ve heard the mechanics described as mindless, but this really isn’t the case. I think people are just not open to a 3rd person shooter style that takes absolutely NO inspiration from modern games like Uncharted, Tomb Raider, or Resident Evil.

There is traditional defensive play in Gungrave. You are not ducking for cover, you are not avoiding most gunfire. You are, generally, taking damage every second of a gun fight, and it is up to you to wipe out all of the enemies before that damage becomes a problem. Your character has a shield mechanic that auto-recharges when not taking damage and which can be recharged by performing special execution attacks on weakened foes. Only if this shield gets punctured can you start to permanently lose health. And that health can be restored by using super attacks which also freeze all enemies and make you invincible during them, which makes them your primary defensive abilities, while also being room clearing moves.

But this doesn’t mean the game lacks strategy or challenge. At any given time, you should be prioritizing enemy targets, moving out of the way of area effect attacks, deflecting enemy missiles with your melee attacks, moving to prioritize passive cover, managing 2 separate meters, looking for weakened enemies to execute, deciding on the best super move the current situation, etc. There are a number of games I pair with podcasts or youtube videos while I play, to give me a little something extra to focus on during downtime, but I never felt any temptation to split my attention with Gungrave. It’s the kind of game where you feel like you aren’t thinking at all, but there’s actually a ton of processing going on in your head, mostly subconscious. It’s honestly kind of a meditative experience, which also makes the repetition go down smoothly.

That’s not to imply that the game never evolves. It absolutely does. One very interesting detail I noticed is that as I played through the game and got achievements for critical story moments, like beating bosses, the percentage of other plays on Xbox who had gotten that far dropped to shockingly low numbers. By halfway through the game, it was less than 2%, and my achievement for beating the last boss had less than a half a percent. This is partially due to the game being on Game Pass, meaning a lot of people probably downloaded it and didn’t play more than a few minutes or so. But it does show that very few people experienced the later parts of the game.

As it goes on, more and more enemy types are introduced that require specific reactions in combat, making it more complex and strategic. Homing missiles that must be deflected, melee enemies that will knock you down, melee enemies that deflect all bullets, and laser shots that will instantly destroy your shields if not dodged all really ramp up the combat, making it stay challenging even as you become continuously more and more powerful. At one point I accidentally changed the game to hard mode (it lets you change difficulty whenever you die) and didn’t notice for a whole level, until I kept dying on the boss. From that experience, I can say that if you crave a challenge hard mode is actually extremely intense and pretty punishing, without really changing how you play the game. You just get fewer mistakes allowed. But I switched it back to normal, because my whole reason for wanting to play was to play a pure high octane shoot-em-up, so I was fine with not having to replay sections a whole lot lol.

Despite having completely different mechanics, and completely different types of enemies, I think the style of combat in this game can actually be best compared to a Musou game, the likes of Dynasty Warriors and such. Highly repetitive, predictable, but satisfying with the basic goal of smashing your way through dozens of enemies at a time. It’s a lot of fun to just hold down the firing trigger and sweep your cursor through, methodically destroying enemies while you build meter. It even has a mechanic to encourage you to keep shooting when enemies aren’t even in the way. You have unlimited ammo and build your BEATS combo meter, which allows you to do special secondary area effect attacks, even from shooting destructible objects. So when you gun down all the enemies on one side of the room, just keep blasting the hell out of everything as you sweep over to the other side to finish off the rest.

Another aspect I want to praise is the music, with one caveat. The sound effects are louder than the music by default, and for reasons described above, you’re pretty much going to be hearing constant gunfire from yourself and enemies like 90% of the time you’re playing. So I’d suggest turning down the sound effects to 70 or 80 in the menu so you can listen to the music, which is comprised mostly of hard pounding drum and bass, electronic cyberpunk sounding tracks.

The environmental art is also a joy to move through. I said this was a PS2 game at heart, but the visuals are very nice, if not up to the pure graphical fidelity of modern games (something I never really find that impressive anyway). The world of Gungrave is a slick, futuristic cyberpunk setting with equal mixtures of gritty poverty and high-tech extravagance. The environments are quite varied and interesting, with reuse of assets actually kept to a surprising minimum compared to a lot of games these days. Often a level will be signposted as a very clear sort of one-off environment: the church district, a casino, a jungle military base. Then they’ll surprise you by continuously revealing new environments all within the one level. For instance the casino gives way to a corporate office building and then to a deluxe penthouse area all within one single “casino” level. The environments never felt lazy, and with how fast moving the game was and how short the levels are the environments never wore out their welcome.

One detail that might interest some of y’all is that the game takes place entirely throughout a setting not-to-common in video games: Southeast Asia. It starts off in the fictional island city of Scumland (not a nice place, you can probably guess), which bears a striking resemblance to Final Fantasy 7’s iconic Midgar. But from their you travel around to Hong Kong, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Singapore before heading back to Scumland. These locations don’t feel especially stereotyped to me either, being mostly futuristic cities. You pretty much spend all of your time in them gunning down cartel thugs, but the villains are described as an international group who have been expanding out into these various Asian countries, so it doesn’t feel particularly exploitative to me personally.

I don’t have much of anything good to say about the cutscenes between levels though. They aren’t horrible, and I never felt tempted to skip them, but they’re fairly forgettable, outside of some dumb fun action sequences. The character acting animation though. It’s… weird. I kept thinking the voice acting was bad, but listening to it in isolation, it’s pretty okay, fairly average. It’s only when the voices are paired with the frankly bizarre character animation that it looks off. The animation is over-the-top, but also weirdly disconnected from whatever the characters are saying. The game has three native language settings for voice-acting, English, Japanese, and Korean. Maybe it would work more seamlessly in the other languages, I didn’t check. From what I could find, the game studio is a Korean one creating a sequel to a Japanese game they liked, published by a German publisher. So I’m not sure what language the animation was initially set to.

By pure coincidence, I played through this game as I happened to be in the middle of a rewatch of the original early 2000s Gungrave anime, a low budget show that can be surprisingly good at times, while also being pure dumb fun. Gungrave G.O.R.E. lives up to that pedigree just fine. If you’re interested in trying it, have an open mind and try and play for a while before you put it down. After a while, the gameplay just clicks, and I found myself just slipping into the cathartic madness of it. Hopefully it’ll do the same for someone else out there.

F the mainstream gaming media and Youtubers for ignoring, dismissing or s**tting on this game. Gungrave G.O.R.E. might be lower budget and rough around the edges but it is a blast to play.

Gungrave G.O.R.E. is in third person and a shooter but don’t think that it is going to be like the third person shooters you’re used to. Gungrave G.O.R.E. is an arcade action shooter and has more in common with games like rail shooters, beat ‘em ups and shmups.

You move Grave, the main character through linear stages in a slow and deliberately designed way that works with how the game plays. He has plenty of actions at his disposal to deal with the waves of enemies. First up is his regular shooting which auto targets or can be more controlled and doesn’t need reloading. You can do a charged shot too which is handy for shielded enemies at a distance. He can jump and dodge. The dodge doesn’t just get you out the way but also gives you a small invincibility window and you can shoot during it too. The jump can also double as a dodge and again you can shoot during it. Grave has melee attacks and starts with a basic combo for breaking shields and deflecting rockets. Grapple ability lets you hold enemies as a shield while still shooting and then throw them and there is a chase which is like a charge forward.

There’s fury mode which when activated pushes close enemies back and gives you a temporary damage boost but you need to have earned it first. Killing enemies in this mode also builds your art score. The art score is one part of getting a good rank at the end of the stage. Burst mode is stationary rapid fire with camera control for dealing with crowds. Storm Barrage is similar to this but needs to be earned and is way faster and as long as you have shield it can’t be interrupted. Executing stunned enemies builds art score and recovers your shield. Finally there are demolition shots, that need to be earned, which are like special attacks that give you a brief window of invincibility and can be devastating to crowds, knock enemies down and gives health back.

All of this works really well together and the game is about constantly moving forward while keeping your beat going (hit counter). When no enemies are present the beat can be kept up by destroying objects. While doing this you need to always be picking the right actions at the right time and the right targets too. Then on top of that you need to build your art score and keep an eye on your shield, health and actions earned. Gungrave G.O.R.E. rewards you for playing well during the action and after stages with a rank and points that can be spent on upgrades and new abilities. Stages are a short blast, about 10 minutes or less and it is fun and addictive.

Unfortunately gameplay can be held back at times by a lack of polish, poor AI and spawns happening too slowly. I got stuck on the environment twice and enemies were frozen and unkillable a couple of times too. The constant onslaught of gameplay, bullets and explosions can be tiring and repetitive. There are two side characters as well which go underused and in Quartz’s case is underdeveloped too. Gameplay would have benefited from a shorter run time with less but more highly polished stages.

I can’t say how well Gungrave G.O.R.E. does presenting the source material because I haven’t played the previous games or seen the anime. I found the story, characters, dialogue and cutscenes to be pretty bland and didn’t get into it at all. Don’t get me wrong it can be freaking cool from time to time but mostly it’s just not. It lacks charm and charisma. Cutscenes can often feel lifeless and the whole experience exudes low budget. The voice acting doesn’t help either. Gungrave G.O.R.E. could have benefited a lot from just going all out silly and way more over the top. At least the sound effects and music are fun and pretty well done.

The visuals of Gungrave G.O.R.E. are not too impressive. It looks like an older game that has been polished up a little for a PS5 release. The developers have done a good job making up for this with style and variety. There are 31 stages that take you different places in the world with different types of settings. It also has a diverse line up of enemies to blast away and multiple bosses too. The old anime/ PS2 era style is cool and a bit nostalgic.

I hope that the developers of Gungrave G.O.R.E. are well aware that there are plenty of gamers out there that still appreciate this type of game and that what they have achieved here is pretty cool. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this developer to see what they do next. I’m having plenty of fun with Gungrave G.O.R.E. but I know many players will bounce off this game quickly. I would still give it a strong recommendation to anyone that enjoys arcade and action games.

7.0/10