At the heart of any action game needs to be compelling action. It doesn’t matter who wrote the storyline or how stylish your characters are. If the action isn’t fun, you simply don’t have a game. That’s the problem with Gungrave Overdose. The fact that it retails for just $15 isn’t an excuse; a bad game is still a bad game.

Overdose is an improvement over the original Gungrave, as the speed of the action has been bumped up a few notches, and there are now three selectable characters. The main character, Beyond the Grave, is some kind of undead cowboy with a coffin strapped to his back and a pair of pistols. The coolest character, Rocketbilly Redcadillac actually fights with an electric guitar; it spits out lightning bolts and such. Those two characters play pretty much the same, focusing primarily on long range attacks. Juji Kabane, a blind swordsman, is different, though. He has a few guns, but his swords do most of the talking for him. There’s no denying the appeal of these characters, and Yasuhiro Nightow’s designs are top notch. You can play through the game as any of these characters, but the basic experience is the same.

“Kick their ass!” flashes on the screen before each level, and that pretty much sums up the whole game. As one of the three heroes, you’ll mow down hordes of nearly identical enemies until there’s nothing left in the room. That includes furniture and any other objects, as they’ll likely have been blown to bits by stray bullets. One memorable level begins in a supermarket, but by the end of it, all the aisles will have been completely destroyed. The game does have some satisfying moments like that, such as when a car pulls up and enemies begin to pour out of it, only to be reduced to ash as your rocket launcher ignites the vehicle.

The characters each have a simple move list. The standard attack fires your pistols, or in Billy’s case, his guitar. Each character also has a melee attack, and special Destruction shots. There are three different types of these, and they can be leveled up to do more damage. There’s a screen-clearing 180 degree shot, a bullet-time effect, and a straight-forward rocket launcher. You can also do Max Payne style shoot dodges, albeit without the bullet-time. Finally, there’s a useless lock-on feature. I say useless because the game auto-aims for you anyway, and you have to get so close to your target before using the active lock-on that it’s pointless. It does, however, allow you to strafe, so I guess it’s not without purpose.

The real problem is that the game just isn’t enjoyable. Unloading your dual pistols into hundreds of the same clones just isn’t satisfying, and the levels tend to recycle parts of themselves just to make the game last longer. You’ll go through nearly identical rooms in every level, fighting nearly identical enemies. There are no surprises, outside of a couple cool boss battles.

From a technical perspective, Gungrave Overdose is a nightmare. Most levels have horrible draw-in and fog, the likes of which I haven’t seen in years. Even with that, the game cannot maintain a steady framerate. This is likely because there’s just so much happening on screen at once, with bullets flying every which way and blood splattering all over the place. Still, I’d rather they turned down the flashy bullet effects and gave me a steady frame rate. The fully rendered anime-styled cinematics look great, though, and tell an interesting enough tale.



Article By: Joe Mackie