Gungrave G.O.R.E feels…like an early 2000s game if we’re being perfectly honest. The main theme of the game is to go from room to room blasting enemies away and somehow surviving hundreds of bullets peppering your skin, then move on to a new room and repeat the process again. Eventually, you reach a boss room, and guess what…you shoot that boss with millions of bullets too. With new-age games being so sophisticated, old-school gamers might be taken aback by how simple Gungrave G.O.R.E is but that is ironically where this game succeeds. Mindless shooting with only occasional thought needed when you fight bosses is kind of relaxing. Grave is armed with his usual two giant guns, the powerful demolition coffin, and various other special attacks he can perform. All you will be doing is shooting…shooting and occasionally dodging to shoot more. There are some QTE events too which are very easy but it makes Gungrave G.O.R.E feel so old-school and we kind of loved that.

Where Gungrave G.O.R.E seems lacking is the visuals. Do they look super dated as the game feels? Sometimes, but often we just felt they lacked that next-gen polish we have been pushed into thinking all games should look like. We also noticed in the preview build a tremendous amount of lag/slowdown even when the game was running at low visuals. We turned V-Sync off and noticed that improved the issue but even then it was still noticeable when the action became extremely intense. Gungrave G.O.R.E visually looks old but again that isn’t a bad thing entirely. Though we do hope that the lag issue is sorted out in the final build.

When you are blasting enemies into a meat pulp, you’re going to need to level up Grave to get him stronger via points you earn for your performance per stage. You can go to the LAB and upgrade Grave’s abilities to give him more attack damage, more abilities, and even unlock special arts that can be performed once your gauge is full. This might seem trivial but it pushes the player to do their best during each stage. You want to try to beat levels fast, without losing your main health and rack up combos by literally unleashing hell all around you!

As much as we love Gungrave—and we really do love the franchise—we have to admit Gungrave G.O.R.E won’t please everyone and that is very noticeable. This is a game that harkens to fans and while it has a history mode—to let you see the past story for newcomers—and isn’t unplayable if you’re new to the series, there’s just too much here that doesn’t feel made for everyone. Grave’s story is something fans will care about. Most newcomer anime watchers have probably never even seen Gungrave as it’s always been a niche title that came out and didn’t really WOW the world. If you love Gungrave then you know Gungrave G.O.R.E will be a game you’ll buy the minute it launches. Newcomers…you might be harder to convince and we can understand why.