Gungrave introduces every level with the smash-header "Kick their asses." Gungrave is about one thing, kicking ass. Or more succinctly, shooting ass. You hardly aim, you don't reload, you hardly move. You mash a button and in response things either die or explode. Grave walks in a straight path, blazing everything in his way and taking every bullet wordlessly and painlessly as a combo builds in the corner of the screen. Get too close and he lifts a coffin from his back and swings it, insta-killing almost anything in its trajectory. The gunfire blows out the music and audio quality, and the gorgeous hard-black cel-shading lights up with muzzle flares as the screams gradient into the wailing jazz in the background. Gungrave is as primal as a video game can be without losing its status as pure, true art.

Cool game, but that kinda goes without saying, this game is oozing with style and pizazz. I dunno why I held out on playing it for so long, I didn't realize how short it was. It was fun, but it's a little bittersweet, as cool as Grave and his world are, I would've much preferred to have that Trigun game RED was also making.

To have a Trigun game with this kind of crazy balls-off-the-wall shootout style cel shaded type beat would've been the tits, but it just wasn't meant to be. Hopefully we'll get a beta build someday, or maybe we'll get a shitty Bamco game with the new TikTok fuckboy Vash...

Here Comes The Rain....

Here's a game that I find to be quite underrated when it comes to the PS2's anime library. Gungrave is short and simple, with a good art style and decent visuals. The player takes control of Grave, a guy who was killed, and then resurrected to get revenge on those who wronged him. You'll see yourself playing through 6 stages and fighting 8 bosses, all within the length of about 1 hour and 30 minutes to 2 hours. While the gameplay isn't in-depth by any means, it gets the job done and can offer you some fun to be had.

When it comes to combat, Grave can:
- Dodge in 4 different directions (and shoot while doing so)
- Rapidly fire all around him (by rapidly pressing Square)
- Sling his coffin around his body (by pressing R1)
- Fire a Demolition Shot (by pressing Triangle)

As you progress through the game and complete the stages, Grave unlocks new Demolition Shots to use in battle. To use Demolition Shots, you must create a combo by rapidly firing your guns at everything, be it boxes, enemies, barrels, tables, or anything else that can be gunned down. A blue orb will then enter your Demolition Gauge and you'll be able to use a Demolition Shot once it's filled. You can store up to 4 total Shots, which you can then unleash, or if you're low on health, you can trade 1 Shot for half of your health bar back, which allows some slight strategy as you can choose between a room-clearing Shot, or more health to survive. The game has no upgrade system, so the only new moves you'll get on this journey are the Demolition Shots.

The music isn't anything special, but it works well enough for the areas that the tracks are used in. There were only a handful of songs that I enjoyed enough to listen to outside of the game, but that doesn't mean the OST is awful. Once your adventure is over, you unlock Extras where you can view the character models from each stage, which is pretty neat to look at. In the end, Gungrave is a good game that stands out on its own as a niche little PS2 gem.

Gungrave is exactly what it promises, a nice fun action romp with some really cool style. Gameplay's fairly simple, Grave aims on his own so all you have to do is fire (I recommend turning on the autofire option, unless carpal tunnel syndrome is your cup of tea) and watch enemies and the environment blow up. There's just enough strategy to Gungrave for it to not feel completely mindless, but still quite easy to breeze through: Grave is very sluggish normally but you have a few movement options like a dodge roll, and a mode, normally activated by clicking in a stick but that I recommend you remap via emulator to a free shoulder button, that lets him run a bit faster, plus a score system that grants you some consumable super attacks/heals throughout the stages and a rating at the end of them.

On the presentation front, yeah this game goes pretty hard, especially for a small scope PS2 game. Beyond the Grave is a really stylish protagonist (Incredibly smart of Nightow to design him from the back first, since that's what the player would be looking at most of the time), but honestly what I really liked were the stages- some are less interesting than others but on average the atmosphere is quite great. I especially loved how the last one looked but unfortunately that's the only one that seemed very unpolished and not fun at all as a result. Still this is a very low-commitment super neat game, highly recommend it.