LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Gungrave
built 215 days ago
The original Gungrave, as mentioned earlier, was smart enough to realize that this style of game was one that would wear out its welcome in short order. As such, the game was beaten in roughly three hours the first time through, and even at the end of three hours it was getting tedious. For some odd reason, someone decided that Overdose—which features the exact same game mechanics—would be better served by being nearly twice as long as the original. If you thought Gungrave was getting tedious at the three hour mark, imagine just how much fun hour five is…six hours of mindlessly blasting bad guys and destroying everything on the screen (albeit with no background music other than the sound effects of my guns) had me questioning why I even play videogames. Games are supposed to be fun, and Overdose is the veritable antithesis of that.
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A nice thing about Gungrave: Overdose is that much of the environment can be blown up at any given time. This isn’t just great for the sake of watching things explode; it actually serves a purpose. When you fire a shot or whack someone with the grave and the attack “connects,” you earn what is called a beat point. These are used to fill up your demolition shot meter, which I’ll discuss later. If, for instance, you kill a group of ten bad guys, you may’ve earned 50 or even 60 points, but if you continue moving forward, shooting things around you like barrels, control panels and whatever else, you can keep the number of points going upwards. The more beat points you acquire, the more your demolition shot meter fills up, and when the meter is full you earn one demolition shot.
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Gungrave Overdose’s story picks up not far from where the original left off. As usual, you play as Grave, an undead ass-kicker who carries a casket around along with his guns that have no ammunition limit. In this case, Grave and his friends are on the case of the Corsione family, a new group of organized gangsters again trying to unleash Seed (a dangerous narcotic) on the world. But its not just Grave this time – you ... have two ‘friends’ that become playable characters; Kabane, a blind swordsman who uses a ‘Gunblade" (somebody decided Squall was worth emulating??), and Rocketbilly Redcadillac, a ghost who attacks with lightning that emits from his guitar (between this and reviewing Katamari Damacy & Shadow Hearts II, I think I’ve met the ‘weird games’ quota for 2004). They all have the same story of sorts, but things happen in slightly different ways. For a pure action game, the story actually is coherent and useful to the game with plenty of twists and turns, and is very well-presented in terms of animated cutscenes and old-school RPG-esque ‘panel’ cutscenes.
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Gungrave is a 26 episode series that originally aired in Japan in October of 2003. Gungrave is created by Yasuhiro Nightow the man behind Trigun with animation produced by Madhouse the team behind Texhnolyze, Trigun, Tenjo Tenge, and Vampire Hunter D. Geneon is releasing the first volume out of seven of Gungrave on July 6th. The LE box comes with Yasuhiro Nightow illustration and a LE lenticular mouse pad. This is a screener with the first two episodes dubbed.
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The camera in Gungrave is always set behind your character, as you do not have 360-degree control. In order to attack enemies that are behind you, you need to press the "R2" button which immediately swings the camera around, allowing Grave to strike down vengeance on his foe. Blasting away enemies is the goal of the game, and as repetitive as it sounds, it is a ton of fun. The cel-shaded graphics look very good, and do not come off as too cartoonish, thankfully, because of the gritty look of the characters and backgrounds. The game environments are ... destructible, which adds to the intense action that's prominently displayed throughout the demo.
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For all its visual splendor, Gungrave is really just a mindless shooter not unlike those from the Super Nintendo and Genesis era. The gameplay boils down to nothing more than shoot everything in sight and keep advancing. Grave is a big, lumbering lug, so trying to avoid the barrage of enemy bullets is essentially pointless. Thankfully, his resurrection from the dead seems to have made him abnormally strong, meaning he can take quite a bit of punishment before dying.
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