Games Xtreme brushes off their comic book skills, indulges in a little Fury Unleashed for the Xbox One
Fury Unleashed
There are only a few rogue-like or rogue-lite platform-puzzle games that have caught my attention in the past. Hollow Knight, Shovel Knight, Rogue Legacy and the infamously good: Dead Cells. Up until the release of Fury Unleashed these have been the only ones that have given me the feeling I always look for from this genre of game.
Fury Unleashed is one of the better ones, with a high degree of polish and a slew of solid gameplay elements that combine to ensure the runs you do are never frustrating or irritating. What's more, there are features in Fury Unleashed which mean that even the least hardcore player can enjoy the experience without having to be truly badass at the game. Yes, some of the achievements are blocked off if you play on the Easy Mode, but this allows someone to enjoy the game and further customise it with Easy Mode settings in the options.
These settings allow you to tweak values like healing, damage, enemy damage and health etc, even the game speed if things are going too fast. Don't worry though, there is a Normal Mode and some unlockable difficulty modes after you beat the game if you think it's too easy or you're worried about having accessibility options for games somehow diluting your 'hardcore' experience.
Fury Unleashed casts in the role of Fury, a comic-character badass who has a creator who suffers a crisis of faith. Why, I'll leave you to find out for yourselves since it's all part of the journey!
You can pick a male or female incarnation of Fury, unlock new appearances as you dive through the comic-book style chapters to uncover the truth and send a whole-lot of enemies to the pits of oblivion with various tools of mayhem and destruction.
How's it play?
The big question...
It plays well, smooth, and the shooting/melee/jumping-puzzle action are pixel perfect. The levels are designed as comic panels inside a comic-book chapter. They are randomly put together and no two runs are the same. Some feature an absolutely fiendish array of enemies, special encounters, hidden traps, and devious navigational hazards. On the harder difficulties Fury Unleashed is no cake-walk.
You have two weapons, a primary and secondary. Then you have a melee weapon, these are default and can be modified from a list of collected weapons once you have unlocked them for good by completing a challenge or two.
Throughout the levels you can open chests and gain more loot. Loot has rarity, and Legendary weapons/items have special abilities and bonus perks. You know the drill, it's a system that works well and doesn't need much in the way of explanation since we've seen it time and time again in games like Diablo 3.
There are also various characters who pop up, you can trade with. You collect currency from enemies and various pots around the level. This is ink, black and gold. Gold ink gives you the ability to purchase new equipment from folks like the Gun Lord, or the Ink Master.
You keep these things as long as you are alive in your run.
By killing enemies is quick succession and not taking damage, you'll accrue combo, and combo makes you move faster, hit harder, and enemies can drop red healing ink as well as more ink of various types. The bigger the combo, the bigger the reward.
Take too much damage though and your combo will reset to 1. Take too long, the same applies, you'll lose combo over time if you're not killing enemies fast enough.
There are other secrets, special moments, events and more, but I'm not going to tell you what they are, you can find those out within the pages of the various comics. Of which there are 3 main ones, and a sketch book you can unlock as well. The sketch book is pretty hard and you'll need to be powered up significantly before you hit it.
How do you advance though?
Well, when you die, your ink is tallied and you earn skill points. You gain persistence with Fury in this way and can carry over power to the next run. There are a lot of skills to unlock and many of them have a direct effect on your next run, allowing your combo to last longer, give you more ink per defeated enemy. These skills also have levels, so you can buy multiple of them to craft the Fury you want.
The longer the run, the more ink you'll get when you die.
The controls are simple to learn, and easy to remember. You can shoot with auto-shoot off the right stick in twin-stick fashion, or have it so RT shoots. You can dash, lob grenades, and jump around to clear the various panels. There's even a fast travel (limited) which lets you get back to panels you've already cleared and move around the comic much faster.
The objective is to get to end of each comic through the panels, moving on until you face the main boss. Of which there are three per comic run. You won't get all the main bosses in one clear of the game either, and when you finish off all 3 bosses per comic you unlock that comic as a start for Fury's next run rather than going back to the beginning of the first comic.
Play with a Buddy
The game has couch co-op and that's it. No online and it's two players.
Quality Art
Fury Unleashed is made using a highly detailed comic-book art style, bold and bright with a larger-than-life feel. The animations are spot on, and the fluidity of character movement shines throughout the whole game. The enemies and the backgrounds are excellent, and whilst the enemies themselves have a bunch of variants, the comics actually do a good job of introducing new types with new power sets that Fury must learn to avoid or counter.
BLAM BLAM KAPOW
There's a great sound suite to the game. Solid and meaty sound effects combine with excellent audio, and thumping music. The music rises to a harsher style as you build your combo and the tracks get the blood pumping the better you do.
Fury or Flat?
Fury Unleashed is a short game, but has replay value. The addition of couch co-op is good, and the game itself is well polished. The jumping and combat systems are excellent with quality navigation throughout the whole experience. The game does not fall flat or fail to deliver an exciting rogue-like action experience with random weapons/gear/levels.
Well worth grabbing if you're a fan of this style of game.
