Game that came out 20 years too late.
Now if this just had PS2 graphics and was actually on the ps2 and you put this infront of 7 year old me, I’d say this was the greatest game ever made 20/10 game of the year.
I get that this is just trying to emulate the original with a modern coat of paint but it doesn’t work well enough to make this game good.
Every level is extremely linear.
All of the special attacks essentially do the same thing but with different animations.
Enemy variants were ok in the beginning but suck towards the end.
You can DMC 2 the crap out of any of the bosses with the chain gun shot.
The only thing that makes this game hard is the enemy spam with rocket and snipers.
Cutscene animations and voice acting is just awful and not even funny bad.
Also this game is way too long for how repetitive it gets.
Story is just weird and doesn’t make sense.
The only things I really like is the soundtrack and the sound design. They did a great job on that but failed hard on everything else.

Der Tod ist nur der Anfang

Hatte sich bereits der zweite Teil Gungrave OverDose etwas von der ursprünglichen Anime-Vorlage entfernt, hat der mittlerweile vierte Teil Gungrave G.O.R.E (Teil 3 war VR-exklusiv, daher nie gespielt) eigentlich gar nichts mehr mit diesem zu tun.
Gungrave G.O.R.E trifft für mich nicht einmal mehr den Look der Vorlage. Die Nicht-VR-Vorgänger hatten ja immerhin gemäß des Animes, den ich an dieser Stelle tatsächlich mal empfehle, durchaus weiterhin diesen trostlosen Stil mit Grau auf Grau. Gungrave G.O.R.E ist dagegen extrem bunt geraten.
Es ist alles extrem farbenfroh, was für ein Spiel der Gungrave-Reihe extrem befremdlich wirkt.

Angefangen habe ich das auf einer Xbox Series S. Hatte seinerzeit beim Erststart auf der Konsole ein paar technische Probleme. Die Performance lief nicht wirklich rund und dazu gab es auch ein paar Tonstörungen. Danach hatte ich aber keinerlei Probleme mehr. Fand das etwas seltsam und möchte das daher erwähnen. Es wirkte auf mich etwas so, als hätte das Spiel erst beim Start angefangen, die ganzen Assets und Sounds zu entpacken.
Die Story in Gungrave G.O.R.E wird im Gegensatz zum PS2-Vorgänger zwar diesmal in Zwischensequenzen erzählt, empfand sie aber leider extrem nichtsagend. Bezweifel aber ehrlich gesagt total, dass das Spiel überhaupt Sinn für Leute macht, die weder die Vorlage, noch die PS2-Spiele kennen. Denn erklärt wird hier leider ebenso wenig.

Dem Gameplay möchte ich hingegen mal ein Lob aussprechen. Es ist aus meiner Sicht der Gungrave-Teil, der sich am besten spielen lässt. Da merkt man dann doch die 18 Jahre Unterschied die seit Gungrave OverDose vergangen sind. Habe ich mich in den PS2-Vorgängern durchaus mit der Steuerung und einer schlechten Lock-On-Funktion rumärgern müssen, lief das hier endlich butterweich und wie es sein sollte.
Ein paar Neuerungen gibt es zusätzlich, wie beispielsweise einen ausführlichen Fähigkeitenbaum, wo man sich mit erspielten Punkten neue Superangriffe oder allgemein verbesserte Werte für Schaden, Lebensenergie und so weiter kaufen kann.
Wie auch im direkten PS2-Vorgänger gibt es auch diesmal wieder drei Charaktere mit denen man spielen kann. Im Gegensatz zu damals spielt man sogar alle drei während der Story. Abseits vom Protagonisten Beyond the Grave schlüpft man allerdings auch nur für insgesamt ein Level in die Haut eines anderen, was daher leider irgendwie doch zu einem Gimmick verkommt, was ins Leere läuft.
Durch einen nachträglichen Patch wurde es allerdings möglich einen der beiden anderen Charaktere dauerhaft zu kaufen, um mit ihm anstatt Beyond the Grave die Level zu bestreiten. Die Story ändert das aber natürlich nicht.
Ansonsten bietet das Spiel durchaus die gewohnte Gungrave-Formel. Man ballert einfach Gegnerhorden nieder, schlägt Raketen zurück, weicht auch mal aus und verhaut Gegner mit seinem Sarg oder nutzt bei größeren Gruppen einfach einen der vier belegten Super-Angriffe.

Also das gewohnte Programm und damit kein Spiel mit hohem Anspruch.
Leider aus meiner Sicht sogar mit zu wenig Anspruch, weil die zahlreichen Bosskämpfe total langweilig sind. Jeder Boss hat Angriffe, denen man mit Hechtsprüngen ausweichen muss und ansonsten ballert man die einfach über den Haufen. Es gibt keinen Boss, der tatsächlich was spezifisches benötigt wie Nahkampfangriffe oder sogar das Zurückschleudern von Geschossen. Da wäre für mich tatsächlich viel mehr drin gewesen, was auch schon Gungrave OverDose bewiesen hat. Das bot tatsächlich ein viel breiteres Spektrum, was natürlich die Schwierigkeitskurve dafür etwas wechselhafter machte.
Vom allgemeinen Schwierigkeitsgrad fand ich Gungrave G.O.R.E damit schon ausgewogener.
Allerdings bietet auch dieses Spiel zwei bis drei Stellen, die doch plötzlich spürbar schwerer sind als der Großteil des Rests. Aber Ausgewogenheit vom Schwierigkeitsgrad ist über 31 Level natürlich schwieriger zu bewerkstelligen als bei Gungrave OverDose, was nur 9 Level bot. Konnte ich hier damit wesentlich besser verschmerzen.

Was mir aber in diesem Teil als wesentliches Feature der Reihe gefehlt hat war allerdings die Zerstörbarkeit der Levelumgebung. Natürlich explodieren auch in Gungrave G.O.R.E jede Menge Objekte abseits von Gegnern, die damit helfen den Trefferzähler immer höher zu schrauben, aber insgesamt ist deutlich weniger zerstörbar als in den PS2-Teilen. Was Beyond the Grave schon 2004 mit seinen Cerberus-Pistolen zerschossen hat, erweist sich hier plätzlich als unzerstörbar. Hier hätte man echt das nächste Level der Zerstörbarkeit präsentieren können, um zu zeigen, dass Gungrave G.O.R.E auch in dieser Kategorie in der neuesten Konsolengeneration angekommen ist, stattdessen hängt man da sogar einem Spiel von vor drei Generationen hinterher.
Da hat man leider eine riesige Chance verpasst auch diese Zerstörung sogar noch mehr ins Gameplay einzubinden. Beispielsweise durch einstürzbare Gebäude auch Wege durchs Level zu eröffnen und so weiter.
Wie schon erwähnt ist das Spiel ziemlich bunt, daher ist es grafisch durchaus abwechslungsreich.
Die Gelegenheit, um den Spieler mit mehr unterschiedliche Feinde konfrontieren zu lassen hat man aber leider ebenso nicht wahrgenommen.
Um das dem Spieler direkt vor Augen zu führen, bietet Gungrave G.O.R.E wie schon Gungrave OverDose ein Casinolevel. Aber im Gegensatz zu früher hat man diesmal leider überhaupt nichts besonderes in dieser Umgebung gemacht.

Steuerungstechnisch ist das hier wie erwähnt klar er beste Teil. Technisch natürlich auch. Spielerisch steckt auch nach wie vor extrem viel Gungrave drin.
Aber ich kann mich echt nicht dazu durchringen, irgendwie zu behaupten, dass dieser Teil besser ist als die Vorgänger.
Gungrave OverDose hatte auch diverse Mängel, aber machte dafür in anderen Bereichen echt was spürbar besseres.

Die Handlung vom Spiel wurde vollständig auf Twitch gespielt und steht als VOD auf YouTube zur Verfügung.

This game really made me question, what exactly is a video game? The whole concept of this game is to just walk down a hallway and shoot/smash everything in your way. You might think, "Oh that's like so many games though". No, this is far more simple than that. It is literally hold down the trigger and move forward. The plot wasn't quite understandable for me, since I've not played any of the other games in the series, which I was unaware this was part of a series until looking more into this game after playing it.

So with all these complaints, why did I play it to the end? I have to equate it to dynasty warriors, where you want to see the numbers go up and get your combo as high as possible. That's about it.

Got through the first two locations and I'm so tired. I have no desire to play this any longer. I love how dumb, dirty and chaotic the combat is but there's just no variety to it. Every new enemy type introduced are not substantial enough to spice up the gameplay in an interesting way, and the level design tendencies are all the same: barely-big-enough arenas filled with at least 10 more enemies than there should be. The environments themselves are some of the most boring levels I've seen in recent times, so I'm actively trying to NOT explore. Get me out of here!!!

A game made out of an undead man, two guns, a coffin, and… a meter. Walk slow, shoot fast, build meter to earn special shots— use them well or die. Play better, build that meter faster, clear the room even faster. Blast through corridors, shoot away on the rails, clear out rooms to get to the next door—just keep marching your bullet storm forward relentlessly. And in the right state of mind, all this can be a pretty good time.

What I found interesting right away was the way it all feels. Grave is big, heavy, overburdened by the coffin he carries, and so his movement is deliberate, slow, even sluggish. But his basic attack speed is very fast. It’s a combo not seen in many action games. Beyond that, there’s enough verbs and systems here to make the gameplay satisfying. You walk very slow while shooting and you must keep shooting almost all the time. (Guns are firing so incessantly that after a long session the nerves in my hands almost felt overloaded from the constant aggressive rumble emitting from the controller.) You can run if you stop shooting, but it’s more of a jog than a sprint. On offense, pistols are basically always on with a variety of meter eating special one-off attacks sprinkled in. The pistols fire fast while walking, but even faster still if you stay in place for a few seconds. This lets you trade mobility for damage at any time. Pistols can be charged up to release a charge shot to bust through enemy shields. A 360° rapid fire attack stance be used if you have enough of a chain going and is pretty useful if you are getting swarmed. A double damage mode can be triggered if you have the meter for it, but you won’t build more meter while it’s active. As for defense, you can dodge roll (it’s a pretty heavy roll), melee goons that get too close with the coffin, parry incoming projectiles with said coffin, launch hook from said coffin to drag an enemy in to use as a body shield. As for healing, well you just keep shooting. Basic shots don’t heal, but special moves restore health. This is an action game inhabiting its own subgenre. Not much else feels much like this at all. For that alone it’s worth trying out. There’s something here for those who like arcade and action games. There are additional difficulty settings and a ranking system. Typical of good action games, these can both bring out the best in the combat.

I definitely saw limitations here— uninspired enemies recycled way too frequently, not so original locations, an indifferent story, and a pretty silly attitude. Yet I kept playing because the action was plenty satisfying to sustain a playthrough. And I’m even left with the urge to go back one more time on a higher difficulty. Is purely mechanical satisfaction enough to make a game good? If so, this is a good game. The mechanics are the message here and the message is the medium and this medium is a videogame.

Note: patches may have improved this game significantly since release. The most clearly important change has been that an auto-fire option is available now. Hard to imagine tapping the triggers as much as this game would require without auto-fire. Played the game on a PS5 about a year after release. The Switch edition apparently has even more changes. Some may be for the better. Will update this once I get a chance to play it.

I feel like a fucking crazy person.

For context on this psychological self report, I was already a fan of the original Gungrave. On a recommendation, I had picked up Gungrave along with the sequel for mere pennies on the dollar in an ebay lot circa 2017. I was a massive fan of Yasuhiro Nightow's work — Trigun being the inspiration for my username — so a game where his characters bearing their signature boldenly squared shoulders to carry freakishly huge, thematically blunt objects as weapons was a perfect fit for the medium of video games.

The original game was an arcade style third person shooter, where you play as the titular Grave himself, aka Brandon Heat. It's simplistic moveset involving diving while shooting, standing still to release a frenzy of bullets, and it's frequent special moves and heat mode squeezed an immense amount of enjoyment out of me. This was nothing massively complicated as a concept, but Gungrave provided the feeling of being this massive brick of a human being carrying a fucking coffin on my back with zero subtlety. The character had a massive sense of weight, the coffin would grind against the cramped walls of these desolate street rat hide outs, causing sparks to go flying. You'd shoot out in these fantastically stylized arenas where the music would kick into high gear and would elevate everything on screen as you blew away goons with your twin shooters. It was massive style, jam packed into a small, replayable shoot'em'up.

The sequel was more or less the same, though expanding on the insanity that is the story and the lore to Gungrave, but never quite provided anything new or substantial. As a sequel, it felt like it was by the numbers, but the gameplay was the core of my interest, and what it provided was more Gungrave style carnage.

These two games weren't necessarily jaw dropping, life changing experiences. They were fun, action packed, playable anime sci-fi gangster movies with a great sense of style. They managed to leave such strong impressions on me despite their brevity. I'd always come back around thinking about that first game and just how neat the experience was.

So imagine my shock when years later, a brand new game in the series had appeared abruptly in front of me.

What's this? The same studio behind the original games is working on the game? What?

Oh? A cool new cinematic trailer with a brand new character that's reminiscent of Nicholas Wolfwood, one of my favorite characters ever to exist? Oh me. Oh my.

Needless to say, my mouth was watering like Pavlov's dog. Each time a new trailer would be revealed at a gaming event, I would be that one guy yelling and foaming at the mouth in the voice call as this obscure game no one has ever heard of appeared on screen to the confusion of everyone. This was my shit, and I was absolutely here for it.

... Until the reviews came out.

The game was absolutely raked over the coals. One critic said that Gungrave Gore was "destined to become dead and buried". Ahh, clearly the media just didn't understand a cool game once again. I then decided to check the public opinion of a forum I would sometimes frequent. The reception wasn't great either. I distinctly recall one user on the forum posting a clip and stating a paraphrase of the following:

"This game is absolutely awful, holy shit. I used to love the original game, but this game is just awful. It feels like a fucking PS2 game, and not in a good way. I'm on the third level and this level is absolutely the most bafflingly bad experience I've ever had. Somehow it just keeps getting worse."

I was crushed. Here I was, hyped for a sequel to a niche series I liked, and everyone around me was aggressive in stating that the game was terrible. So, I did what was sensible. I passed up on buying the game. No one seemed to enjoy it, so I figured, why waste my money?

A week ago, I discovered the game was 7 bucks on Steam, and I just couldn't resist the temptation. I had to know how bad the game truly was. I had spent all this time getting hyped for the game, I might as well see it through to the end, yeah?

Upon first gaining control of my character, I could tell the game was different from the original. The sense of weight Grave carried was off, feeling rather floaty in comparison. Diving and shooting didn't have the same sense of weight to it either. Despite this, I was actually enjoying moving around and shooting at guys in the traditional Gungrave fashion. Killing dudes felt about on par to the original game, now with added mechanics like grappling enemies towards you, beating them down in a stunned state to regain shields, amongst other things. So far, this was alright.

Slowly but surely, I'd make my way through halls of baddies. These metallic halls held a very Unreal engine aura, like the game was primarily utilizing pre-built lighting systems or something. You could count the money allocated for the graphics through the textures. I'd clear waves of poorly voice acted Engrish mafia men, and eventually made my way to the third stage.

This was it, I thought. This is where the game was going to become one of the worst games I've ever played.

... And that time never fucking came.

I have never been more confused about the public's reception of a video game than I have with Gungrave Gore's. I'm typically fairly in tune with public opinions. Not that I fear of going against the grain, but I've often found that when I would demonstrate this act as a bitter sad sack pre-teen, I'd be unconsciously doing so with rejection of the status quo for it's own sake. I'd still try and be fair to the piece of media I'd butt heads with, but I'd often overlook/dismiss the game for surface level reasons without ever really giving an open mind to what was in front of me.

This feeling has nearly become extinct within me, and as a result, I've become more in line with the public's perception of good. I have my moments, Doom Eternal has been exemption for that, but rarely are they this drastic feeling.

First of all, what on earth was that guy in the forum saying? The third level is a sewer level with gross little mutant leeches popping up out of green mucky water from time to time, but they provided a break up to the rest of the combat loop. Sometimes, you'd have to run away from a spikey grinder that would attempt to crush you to pieces. But, like, so what? These diversions were fairly basic in their implementation? And I dunno, they were even kind of... Fun?

After playing Gungrave Gore to completion, the only thing I could really think of was that, it was fun. It wasn't anything unbearably bad, it wasn't anything masterful, it was just an incredibly enjoyable budget title.

It was another Gungrave game.

Granted, it's not the best Gungrave game to be made. GORE provides a leg up over Overdose with it's inclusion of multiple playable characters, a fairly decent progression system, and just being a more fascinating attempt in expanding Gungrave's core gameplay loop, but it's never quite as solid as that original title. But still, ultimately, GORE is another Gungrave game.

I have a feeling that many have forgotten what exactly Gungrave was all about as a game. Never was there a focus on exploration; you were here to shoot and kill bad guys. Never was this system meant to be complicated; Gungrave was never a complicated game. Their nostalgic perception of the game clashed with their modern sensibilities, and because of that, they forgot how unpolished and barebones the original game was in comparison to other combat driven action games at the time.

Of course, there are reasons to dislike this title. Perhaps in the heads of some fans, the lack of appealing style to the original was enough to dismiss the game outright. The game certainly doesn't look the best, washing out whatever shading was used originally for a more realistic art direction, albeit slightly more stylized to fit Nightow's concept art. Perhaps it's length overstayed it's welcome. The game has 31 stages, and while for the most part they do a decent job at mixing up combat situations with the mechanics at hand, by the remaining third of the game, they ramp up the difficulty and start chucking bigger and bigger boys towards you. Maybe these fans played on a higher difficulty than me, and struggled more due that experience. Normal was a relatively painless experience for me, but I could easily see how a higher difficulty on a first playthrough might be bone crushingly annoying.

However, many of the arguments I've seen from fans revolve around being fans of the original game, and the expectations from their fond memories of that game, so I believe there's at least a portion here that believes that original premise.

Of course, I come with my own set of biases. I didn't play the game at full price. I wasn't a mega fan of the original games, so I might not be aware of all the intracracies I'm missing out on. My expectations were set to the very bottom from public discourse of the game. But this game's goal was to be a sequel to Gungrave, from the same developers of that original title, and in that respect, they nailed the core of the game. From the stellar heart pumping music, to the insanely stupid and benign plot, to the absolute dumb coolness of every single character's design, they all are the epitome of what a Gungrave game is like. And for that, I honestly genuinely enjoyed Gungrave GORE.

Gungrave GORE has been a great teacher for me. Sometimes, your opinion on a game will be drastically different than what the majority believes. It's best to figure out for yourself if something is worthwhile to you. Experience is the best teacher.

But it makes me feel like a crazy person to be the one guy rooting against the rest of the crowd. Maybe YOU guys are the crazy people, not me.

I want to be on this game's side so bad. Cause this seriously is just a PS2 game, like down to the bone this is straight out of the 2000s.The animations are clunky and a lil jank, the enemies have 4 or 5 lines, the music is early 2000s metalcore, and dear god look at Grave's design. It's amazing how well it really captures that Era of games. The double edged sword is that it takes everything from that era of games. Including that these small studios didn't have much to work with.

I'll admit, i've only got about 2 hours into the game and i'm on the 6th level or something. I can already tell that this is gonna be the whole game. I gave it crap, but Evil West gave you a ton of stuff pretty much every level or so. And that was released at roughly the same time. So far, all you can do is shoot, do very weak feeling melee attacks (despite the animations being pretty neat), and do big shoot moves. I'll keep playing probably but I can't imagine it changes. It'll just be a nice little game to play in the background while I do other stuff.

I do get what the game's going for though. I like that pretty much everything can be shot and destroyed, and it all explodes in a silly way. But that just doesnt really save it when you have like 4 enemy types and all the levels look roughly the same, at least in terms of the color palette.

As a side note, it also runs pretty crappy. I know it's from 2022 but it should not be as choppy as it is on my rig. I have a 3060 TI and a decent CPU with 16 gigs of ram, it shouldn't be struggling to run this much with how it looks. Games that are more demanding don't run as choppy. But that could be user error so who knows i guess.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend this thing on sale, because it will throw you back to a time when you'd rent something like this for a weekend. Now though? It's just so...antiquated. But i respect that it is, it didn't try to modernize itself, it just is a ps2 game. I love it, but i can't really say I like it. Kick Their Ass indeed, Gungrave G.O.R.E.

Gungrave gore è stato il mio primo gungrave e quando l'ho giocato mi era piaciuto ma a malapena
Dopo aver giocato il primo, Overdose e la seconda run su GORE, quest'ultimo l'ho rivalutato perché Overdose faceva davvero schifo, a parte il movimento che era reso meso legnoso del primo
Non è assolutamente un gioco per tutti, però se vi piacciono i giochi "arcade", è un titolo da tenere sott'occhio
Non posso dargli più di 3 stelle e mezzo perché questo gioco è davvero una merda per certe cose, come il comparto audio (inascoltabile) e la rozzaggine che trasuda il design di ogni cosa, ma credo che sia voluta come cosa

Gungrave G.O.R.E is a fascinating oddity of a game that feels like something that would have come out early in the 7th generation of consoles. The story is poor, the English voice acting is mostly terrible, and the gameplay is very standard. The characters and world of Gungrave all seem pretty cool, but they are barely explored and ultimately don't amount to much outside of a few cool cinematics. That said, there was something about this game that just made me keep playing and finish all 31 stages and 2 bonus levels.

The gameplay of Gungrave G.O.R.E. is extremely simple but effective, tasking you with shooting your way through hundreds of enemies and trying to keep your hit counter going by destroying random objects in the environment. You automatically lock on to enemies and objects and the lock on is extremely responsive. There's a few special moves you can do and some genuinely horrible melee combat that thankfully isn't a huge part of the game, but otherwise it's very straightforward.

I think the fun comes from the varied locations, plethora of enemies and variations of them, and the thrill of moving through a shooting gallery while being careful to position yourself and dodge incoming attacks the best you can. It's simple but extremely effective, and it makes this the perfect example of a 6/10 game. It's solid and works well, but the production value is inconsistent and the game is too simple for a modern full priced release. I had my fun with it thanks to Game Pass, but I would have felt burned if I spent more than 20 bucks on it.

Al principio se habló muy mal de Gungrave Gore porque, según la mayoría, no evolucionaba en nada respecto a las dos entregas de PS2 y porque tenía problemas de diseño y bugs. Pero actualmente es un buen juego, muy enganchante y ya no hay que preocuparse por el par de secciones que antes frenaban tanto el ritmo rápido de los niveles. Además las habilidades y personajes que fueron agregando aportaron un poco a la rejugabilidad ya que hay que completar la historia un par de veces para conseguir todo y creo que los niveles de dificultad ahora están bien ajustados.

En cuanto a lo técnico solo falla en las cinemáticas y doblajes. El juego se ve bastante bien, buenos diseños y ciudades llenas de neón. Pero las cinemáticas hechas con los modelos del juego son muy malas, rígidas y aburridas (las que son CGI en cambio son muy buenas pero son pocas). El doblaje en inglés es muy difícil de escuchar por las pocas ganas de actuar que le puso esa gente, y el japonés si bien tiene a algunos actores conocidos como Akio Otsuka y Fumihiko Tachiki tampoco es ninguna maravilla y además las cinemáticas solo están sincronizadas con el doblaje inglés.

En fin, es divertido y se lo recomiendo a quienes no sean tan exigentes ni esperan algún tipo de revolución "videojueguil".

This is the purest action game you could ever play, there is no exploration, no collectibles, no puzzles, no pick ups, and the story might as well not exist. You are literally dropped into a linear corrdor with the only inent and purpose being to shoot shit up. On paper it sounds amazing but somehow the game still falls short for me, i can see the developers put a lot of love into this but even then theres a certain level of jank you'll have to overlook. Even on the hardest difficulty this isnt a game you need to turn your brain on for, its a fun time for a short time

Checked this one out cause it's on PS Plus and I saw some third person dual wielding dive shooting ala Max Payne so I got real excited. Unfortunately doing that move in this game is both pointless and clunky as hell. Your character is a guy who shoots bullets and doesn't need to ever stop, your enemies are hordes of bloodbags and levels are walk here, kill, repeat. Someone else on here said it's like a walking turret section, which nails it on the head.

Actually enjoyed myself the first couple levels due to how brainless and stupid it is, wacky ridiculous shit that I didn't pay attention to plot-wise (I actually skipped every cutscene I could in this game which I NEVER do). Eventually a few hours in enemies became bullet sponges and the clunk got worse, and I wasn't having an ounce of fun anymore. There's stuff to love here, but for myself, only for about an hour or two.