I want to preface this review by formally stating that I love my son. He’s one of my favorite people in this world; I would do anything for him, and gaming with him is generally a fun time. The thing is, like every human being, he can be kind of a dick at times. There are times where, like any fair to mediocre graded parent, I have to play games with him that I really would rather shove hot needles into my eyes than even consider booting up (i.e. Minecraft), and then games I just really hate playing with him – Fury Unleashed is the latter.

My first mistake was letting him customize his character before I perused the options, since character customization is a thing, and both players can look identical with only your shirt color signifying who is who, but why is there only one kickass option in the form of the hockey mask? I was dead set on not losing myself on screen, so I settled for making my avatar look as much like Kratos as possible and moved on, only slightly perturbed at the little guy.

Once we moved into the game, I was prompted with two options, hard mode and easy mode, with the one major difference being that easy mode negates the ability to unlock most achievements. There was some other handy text information found here, but my button happy partner decided we would start off on hard mode before I could make my way through it. So, we can go ahead and call that strike two.

As you can probably gather from the screenshots and trailer, Fury Unleashed is a roguelite action platformer that looks and feels like a randomized version of Metal Slug with some interesting little visual and narrative bits that call back to Comix Zone. At first, your new runs are limited to the initial chapter, with 2.5 bonus chapters being unlockable as you progress, the prerequisite requiring you to beat three major bosses from each issue. Even when taking on the easy mode, this is no easy task from start to finish, until the upgrades start rolling in.

There is one noticeable change to the typical roguelite genre – your goal is always in the same spot on the lower right-hand corner of the two-page comic layout. Whether you choose to make a beeline through the panels to your goal or explore the map looking for upgrades, perks, and buffs is entirely up to you…. or in my case, my co-pilot who seems to want to rush through every game like he’s getting paid to play (if you’re keeping count, this is strike three, but this is a shoot ‘em up platformer, not baseball… unfortunately).

Needless to say, our first few runs didn’t go as planned, mostly due to the fact my little nightmare decided to run in headfirst, ignoring every enemy and hazard on the way to the mystery item and decide singlehandedly whether we needed an item or not, usually taking all of the items of interest and cashing in what he didn’t want (without reading the description) for ink blobs, or the game’s version of XP. While I did appreciate the huge XP bumps this method provided, it left me sorely under-powered against every boss encounter, which would just lead to defeat after defeat (these would be strikes four through fifty-two) and eventually caused my son to lose interest… and at the risk of sounding like a jerk yet again, is where the game really kicked into gear.

Since the game only offers local co-op, I moved on to playing the game solo, which is where it really shined for me. Begrudgingly, I dropped the difficulty down to easy mode and started a fresh run with a few minor upgrades to my character under my belt. This was a downright game changer, as I was breezing through encounters that previously gave me tons of grief, and this only became more accessible as I found the sliders on the easy mode allowing you to really adjust everything from your damage output to the health of the enemies on a sliding scale that allowed me to find a perfect balance between my skill and what the game threw at me. Overall, the biggest difference between the modes is the damage you give and take; however, there is a pretty significant buff to your earned XP compared to the hard mode, which seems a bit counterproductive, but it allowed me to max out the most important skills in literally no time at all.

The comic book themes featured touch every aspect of the game, some of which play out in surprising ways, such as the touching meta-story following the fictitious creator of the comic book tucked within the expected narrative following the adventures of Fury. From time to time, you’ll be visited by Mr. Doodle, who brings some contrasting black and white moments that really stand out as high points of the game. These excel visually and game play-wise, often leaving behind permanent upgrades and unlocks, as well as being part of a big thread that weaves the two stories together. Circling back to my former button-mashing compatriot, this made strike two even more frustrating since he skipped over one of the initial story bits that don’t repeat as you progress, since it works to tie the repeated nature of the game together.

Once loneliness set in, I asked my previously banished partner to rejoin the fray, at a time where I had seen pretty much everything the game had to offer. Having fully upgraded Fury and unlocking most of the hidden bells and whistles made the experience much more enjoyable. The place where frustration once lived was rolled over by a duo of overpowered superheroes that mowed down every zombie, alien, and Nazi in their way with little to no effort, zipping and weaving through enemy fire, and *gasp* not arguing or throwing up foul cards like we were in some game of sports ball.

With three (and a half?) chapters, each with their own unique setting, enemies, bosses, and set of environmental hazards, there really is a lot to see and do here that makes Fury Unleashed a decent value for the price. However, when you look at the amount of content compared to similar games that are both personal favorites, such as Dead Cells or The Binding of Issac, it’s a little light on modifiers and the additional bells and whistles that makes these games infinitely replayable. I’ve completed the game around 10 times now from start to finish, and unlike the other games, I’ve kind of lost interest and really don’t think I’ll revisit it without any meaningful expansions being offered. I’m not saying it isn’t a great game, because it is; the carrot just gets dropped from the stick entirely too early.

Fury Unleashed is an excellent roguelite that suffers in the long game due to a smaller number of bosses and the like we generally see from this type of release. The inclusion of co-operative play is a blessing and a curse, which will impact your experience greatly depending on who your partner is.

8 out of 10

Pros

• Comic Book Inspired, Hand Drawn Visuals Look Great
• Loads of Difficulty Options
• Varied Boss Battles
• Interesting Narratives That Intertwine

Cons

• Lacks the Amount of Content Found in Similar Games
• Co-op Made Me Hate My Kid (Only a Little)

Fury Unleashed was developed and published by Awesome Games Studio. It was released on NS, PC, PS4, and X1 on May 8th, 2020. The game was provided to us for review on X1. If you’d like to see more of Fury Unleashed, check out the official page.

 

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