Review: Fury Unleashed

Rage Unbridled

I approach roguelikes and their poseur brethren roguelites with a modicum of hesitation. It’s not that I don’t like the gameplay style, it’s just that I’m never sure if I’ll ever complete them. Often times, my enthusiasm for the game runs out long before I manage to reach the end. However, that hesitation doesn’t prevent me from making an attempt on a game that catches my attention, as is the case with Fury Unleashed.

Fury Unleashed (PC, Switch [Reviewed], Xbox One, PS4)
Developer: Awesome Games Studio
Publisher: Awesome Games Studio
Released: May 8, 2020
MSRP: $19.99

Fury Unleashed takes inspiration from games such as Metal Slug and Contra and mixes it with modern roguelites. What you end up with is a run-and-gun that takes you through procedurally created levels, in this case taking the form of comic book panels.

Typical to Rogue’s descendants, a certain amount of repetition is a given as you die frequently and are sent back to the beginning to start over. Preventing things from becoming too daunting is a permanent upgrade system that has you spending the game’s currency, ink, to beef up your Fury.

Make no mistake, Fury Unleashed is a pretty tough game on its default difficulty and can become even more of a challenge once its two other difficulty modes are unlocked. If it’s too much for you, there is an easy mode that allows you to adjust the challenge. However, the game will be sure to let you know how little it thinks of you when you use it by locking leaderboards and certain achievements.

The main story of Fury Unleashed is a simple one. You’re a comic book character tasked with eliminating all chaos from the pages. However, layered on top of this is the story of the comic’s struggling creator, who is dealing with declining sales and criticism from readers and the internet’s lowest form of life: professional critics.

The story is told effectively using the creator’s cellphone set atop short scenes that you walk through. On the phone are the various messages he’s been receiving regarding his comic, and it’s easy to see the weight piling on his shoulders. It’s simple and meager, but it’s told convincingly enough that it provided ample incentive for me to see the end of the game.

The gameplay itself is pretty solid. You shoot with the right thumbstick, and everything of importance is mapped to the shoulder buttons, so you never have to take your thumbs off the action.

The freshest mechanic that Fury Unleashed brings to the table is its combo system. Score kills under a time restriction without taking any damage and you’ll start seeing bigger and bigger rewards. With some upgrading, enemies will even drop health after a certain kill threshold, and eventually, you can also gain shields for every five enemies killed. It’s not difficult to keep your combo going if you can avoid getting hit. Fury Unleashed is generous in extending the combo timer so long as you stay on the aggressive.

However, this factor does little to detract from the inherent repetitiveness of the genre. There are only four level themes across the game and they kind of blur together after a while. The first three are procedurally created in the same format, while the fourth is a little more interesting.

That said, there’s a nice variety of bosses, enemies, and weapons. If you can find them, of course, which isn’t guaranteed. You’ll have better runs where the game provides you with the most powerful weapons and others where you find nothing for large swaths of time. It’s par for the course for the genre, but still worth mentioning.

It also helps that the gameplay allows for a tremendously high skill ceiling. Double-jumping, horizontal dashing, head stomping, grenade flinging, and melee swatting gives you a full toolset to play with. Remembering each ability when the situation calls for it can be very difficult, but if you manage to tie everything together, it can be very satisfying. Bosses and enemies that are trouble while you’re learning the ropes can be easily overcome once everything starts becoming natural.

I found the progression to be somewhat lacking. More grenades, more health, bigger health drops, but nothing that really changes the game. The worst of which was the addition of blink — temporary invulnerability after getting hit — which isn’t a feature by default. You unlock precious milliseconds, or at least that’s what you’re told. I never really noticed any moments of temporary invulnerability, even with the skill maxed, so it was possible to get cut down by a single burst of machine-gun fire at any time.

Nonetheless, every time I returned to Fury Unleashed I found myself enjoying what I played. It’s maybe not something that sucked me in and kept me glued to the screen until the end, but it entertained whenever I gave it a chance. For its price, it’s a worthwhile diversion. I just wouldn’t be surprised if nothing inside you gets unleashed.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}