Some games are timeless, especially those from the fifth generation of consoles. The likes of Killer 7, Resident Evil 4, GTA Vice City and MSG3 are a perfect representation of an era of gaming that is highly inventive and can be enjoyed to this day. But what if you have a fifth-generation game, that was pushed slightly back to the sixth generation (PS3/Xbox 360 era), was sealed in a time capsule for 14 years and brought out to modern hardware?
Well, you get Gungrave G.O.R.E. Today’s review explores a game which feels very much of a different time, one that was much simpler, more focused on guns, gore and mayhem than anything else, and above all, is shameless and proud to be good old fun…. But also brings some 2000’s gaming problems back to life too.
What is Gungrave G.O.R.E? 
So, when playing through Gungrave G.O.R.E I felt like it was a game from an era long gone, due to its simplicity, thematic elements, and gameplay mechanics. After telling a friend I was playing it, he confirmed my suspicions that Gungrave G.O.R.E is the long-awaited (pretty much 20 years) sequel to the 2002 cult classic Gungrave. For one reason or the other, the sequel was meant to come out long ago but moved from PS2 to the sixth-gen consoles, and then disappeared altogether until now!
Gungrave G.O.R.E centres on quite possibly the most intense anti-hero in gaming, simply known as Grave; The Ronin of Death, the silent protagonist who carries a freaking coffin on his back! This is a cold-blooded tale of vengeance, as our titular Gunslinger embarks on a captivating venture of carnage, epic boss battles and insane action, to kill those who have wronged him.
G.O.R.E is set to deliver on old-school, over-the-top action, with influences from Devil May Cry and other classic early 2000s games. But is stated to mix the best design elements of Eastern and Western game design. This is an interesting and potentially alarming quote to say the least.
A classic tale of cold-blooded vengeance 
Graves is the resurrected gunslinger, who is continuing his journey for vengeance with a group of loyal killers looking to clean up the most dangerous place on Earth, Scumland (what a name!). The Raven clan and its masters have a stranglehold over Scumland and various other regions in East Asia. They’ve done some bad things and in need of a bullet or two. Lucky for them, Graves is known as the world's deadliest hitman, and he’s the prime candidate for the job.
The original game from 2002 saw Grave, formerly known as Asagi Mika, as a humble man, who was betrayed and killed by one of his closest friends. However, his story didn’t end there, and he was brought back to life by the "Necroraise Skill". This came with a price, and Asagi forgot most of his memories and emotions, and instead had only the urge to eliminate those who wronged him, in the most gruesome fashion. Scumland is a place thriving with crime, death, and corruption all thanks to the powerful narcotic known as “SEED”. Grave’s journey to take out the four crime lords of Scumland leads him to partner with Mika, and a group of other anti-heroes, as they set off to take down the SEED empire and free Scumland of corruption and crime once and for all.
The narrative is not usually the strongest component for a game like this, as anything in the early 2000s for gaming didn’t have the most confident or cinematic of plots. What came to be more important was the gameplay of course. And while there are plenty of cliches in the story for G.O.R.E, it does have quite a lot of fun elements and moments of gravitas which really impressed me. Character development is nothing to rave about, but again there are some neat bits to flesh out the supporting cast and leading man himself. There are ridiculous villains, Anime style banter and likeable attributes that you do feel something towards the cast of characters (despite Mika shouting out instructions during my time in the game constantly…).
And the variety of locations in the story ranges from the massive industrial hub of Scumland, to the more lush, green, futuristic landscapes of Vietnam, Cambodia, Hong Kong and Singapore in order to destroy the chain of distribution of SEED. There are also some bats*** crazy moments which you would expect from a game of this calibre, and if you’ve never played the original 2002 game (or sort of 2004 sequel), you can play this right away and follow what is going on. There is a recap of the 2002 game just in case you want to know more about Grave himself.
And in general, the presentation is nice, with some beautifully crafted cutscenes, a world that’s highly varied and stylised, and a good variety of enemies, monsters, and bosses to flesh out the game world. I did notice some oddities like certain rooms which felt bare, spawning zones for enemies that are just your typical corridors with no other entry point in them, and the music is humdrum and repetitive. But visually for enemy designs and certain environmental aspects, Gungrave GORE looks really nice, especially as game artist Ikumi Nakamura (The Evil Within) worked on this as well!
Time to unleash the G.O.R.E machine! 
Gungrave G.O.R.E’s 2000’s gameplay has indeed seen some modern improvements… but still remains largely something which feels as though it was locked away in a time capsule. What you do is quite simple, you run, you gun, you build up combos and dish out overpowered super moves when you fill up your gauge. Simple, fun, and straight to the point.
The general flow of each level is that Grave is dropped into an area, where he needs to venture from point A to point B and tear apart any enemies which stand in his way. And there are a lot of enemies looking to mess up Graves, ranging from standard cannon fodder to heavies, and the annoying dudes with unlimited rocket launchers who always aim perfectly. Yet Grave’s reliable dual Cerberus pistols will make short work out of most enemies, and have a multitude of different tactics and manoeuvres, adding some strategy in combat.
The transformable EVO-coffin is a neat method of dealing with supercharged, ultimate attacks that are capable of dealing massive damage to even the most powerful of enemies. To unleash the devastating attacks this trusty coffin has to offer, you need to get killing, but once the coffin is charged up, you can unleash multiple traumatic finishers from unloading a stream of powerful bullets from your coffin like an awesome minigun, to launching a massive explosive bullet, that would feel at home in a Mario game.
I always loved unleashing any of the super-powerful attacks, making me feel ungodly dealing death on a grand scale. They looked cool, they feel cool to execute and never got old as they were massively helpful in any situation.
You get the chance to learn new tactics and moves which become vital as the game gets progressively more difficult. Thus, elevating the basic combat, and transforming a simple use of dual pistols into more engaging manoeuvres, or being able to deliver more blows from your melee attacks. While there is not a huge amount of abilities to learn, they all feel useful and can help out in any situation.
There is a beefy and weighty impact to fighting, as the super-charged powerhouse attacks provide some awesome booms and visuals, while Graves can perform finishers and combos, adding to a performance/style counter. With the more stylised and explosive kills you do, the more your ranking will go up and thus you get rewarded more currency to spend at the lab, where you can buy new moves and upgrade your main attributes. For the first couple of hours, GORE is enjoyable, even if it may be quite repetitive. But there is clearly plenty of variety in enemy designs, locations, and boss battles that it feels like a lot of craft and care went into the world-building and fleshing out as much of the combat as possible, despite the big limitations in weapons and Graves mobility.
However, with the good of the old era of gaming, comes the outdated nature of unbalancing and repetition.
Might just put me into an early grave! 
My main problem with Gungrave GORE is just how immense the difficulty spikes can be, ramping up the intensity by mindlessly throwing more and more enemies at you, without adjusting the level design or adding in other neat dynamics to level the playing field. 80% of your combat will be simply hammering the right trigger to fight your pistols and while you can evolve your tactics to include more exotic melee attacks, player progression does not feel well-paced or meaningful. Mainly due to the fact that you don’t get currency to buy upgrades during the level it seems, only at the end and what you get is depending on your score. So if you get a D for time or have less than 50% health at the end of the level, that’s a couple thousand you’re losing out on, and mainly because the game becomes frantically and unfairly chaotic.
As the game is quite long, the pacing of acquiring new abilities is spaced out thinly and this becomes an issue when the game spikes the difficulty immensely. The point G.O.R.E showed its cracks was with a freight train level, which in theory could have been fun, but instead was a complete joke.
I love train levels; train levels and gaming are like bread and butter. But the design and intensity of G.O.R.E don’t work well for a linear, narrow train level, which felt overly long, and bloated and when you’re on top of the train, you just get wave after wave of spongey, armoured enemies and annoying drones. The overuse of drones did infuriate me, along with an endless supply of perfect-aiming rocket launcher guys.
This becomes a running theme soon enough, as there are more and more spongey enemies, and Graves is very limited in what he can do. Something like DOOM Eternal can get quite insane but provides so much to the player to give them an advantage, such as being able to dash, use more than one weapon, swing from monkey bars and so much more. Graves feels sluggish to move, barely able to sidestep out of the enemy fire and only has one main line of attack. A game like Ninja Gaiden 3 uses some of these annoying tropes, but at least Ryu Hayabusa can move quickly enough.
Combat arenas and environments in general became cluttered, making it easy to get cornered and stuck while moving, and with enemies having the habit of dog-piling you, it would drain your health in seconds. If you look at another high-octane action game, Bayonetta, you’ll see the designers give plenty of room to move around in, consider what enemies to use and gather for a fight, and always ensures there is an equal power balance. G.O.R.E just throws everything at you and the kitchen sink, which is fun at first, but gets more and more tedious as the game progresses, and the overuse of spongier enemies comes into play.
If this was a co-op game, I’d say this would work. If Graves moved quicker or were allowed to obtain more weapons, or gear to evade, defend and push back enemies, then this would work. But it doesn’t work so well.
While a lot of the later game is just a grind fest, there are indeed still some cool levels and for the most part, the boss battles can be an immense amount of fun. As they were incredibly over the top, entertaining and balanced, as it's usually just you and them (and they’re usually a lot bigger, which adds to the spectacle). I can’t help but love boss battles where you’re a human dude, fighting some gigantic walking death machine, armed to the teeth with all manner of deadly weaponry, and there are a few of these bosses in G.O.R.E thankfully. These moments are great, and the arenas where it’s you and a mix of non-spongey enemies, with large environments hazard are good, simple fun.
But there were so many instances where the combat arenas were ill-designed, or lacked enough checkpoints resulting in tedious backtracking, and just an overuse of spongey armoured enemies. Worst of all, there are timed events, and these were usually where the most spongey enemies would come into play … the train level still gives me nightmares.
Did these issues ruin the experience for me? Somewhat, as I tend to play games on the harder difficulty, but here I had to tone it down massively just to get through certain sections. It feels unbalanced and overwhelming at times, really making me think of some old games back in the 2000s that I played and called their BS out on. But the combat is solid, and while not offering the most layer combat tactics and strategies, there are cool boss battles and the occasional arena which is fun.
Overall Gungrave GORE is indeed a blast from the past, but with the good comes the bad from that era. The foundation of the combat is simple yet solid, with a world that looks cool, a story which is hammy yet enjoyable, and plenty of epic action to engage with. But the immense difficulty spikes, over-reliance on spongey enemies, plenty of poorly designed combat arenas and a lack of meaningful character progression just make this a somewhat enjoyable, yet tedious action game which would have benefitted coming out 20 years ago.
+ Presentation is quite nice, with cool enemy designs and cooler heroes
+ Solid, simple and easy-to-master combat which can be fun at times
+ Some awesome boss battles and occasional arenas
-- Insane difficulty spikes, some poor arena setups and overuse of annoying spongey enemies
- Character/combat progression is sluggish due to limited chances to obtain currency
- Could have done with more weapons and a co-op mode
The publishers provided an Xbox Series X/S copy of Gungrave G.O.R.E for the purpose of this review.
