Fury Unleashed

Genre: Action-Platformer / 2-Stick Shooter / Roguelike

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Fury Unleashed is an Action-Platformer with 2-Stick Shooter mechanics and Roguelike elements released on multiple platforms in 2020. This game has you playing as a musclebound gun-toting character fighting tribal enemies and wild animals in a fourth wall-breaking comic book.

The game’s art style mimics this comic book style, with decently-detailed hand-drawn 2D characters and players even move from one “panel” to another. The game uses a decent rock-inspired soundtrack, but by default its volume seems oddly quiet, putting a focus on the gun blasts you’ll be firing off. Overall, it works, but doesn’t do anything impressive, at least not until it decides to do one of its fourth wall breaks, where the “real world” breaks into the action, which can make things interesting.

While moments like these are interesting, it’s the mix of gameplay elements here that is something truly special. Players progress through levels in a non-linear fashion, trying to explore their way through the comic panels to get to the exit. Along the way, they’ll be blasting away enemies with one of two guns, collecting gold and “ink” along the way. In addition, they will occasionally encounter chests with a gun that can be traded out with one they’re currently carrying, a piece of equipment to upgrade one of your character’s stats, or a merchant to trade one of their resources for bonuses. These upgrades make for a fair amount of variety and character customization. What’s more, in true “Roguelite” fashion,in-between deaths players can spend skill points to upgrade a skill tree, making for easier runs in the future.

These Roguelike mechanics work together with the game’s excellent Platformer / Two-Stick Shooter controls to create a fantastic Action-Platformer experience that’s an absolute delight, and the skill tree upgrades and randomized level designs and random character upgrades strewn throughout the game’s levels do a great job of pushing that “just one more run” urge that every great Roguelike has. On top of this, 2-Player co-op works exceptionally well here, and this game is just as fun to play with a buddy as it is to take it on solo.

When it comes to complaints, there are two that come to mind here. Firstly, the game’s level design feels overly-cramped. It would have been nice to not constantly feel like I was bumping my head against the top of corridors. And secondly, the character design for the second player character is so similar to the first that it became easy to confuse the two when things got hot and heavy.

Still, while Fury Unleashed has a few flaws, it is overall a fantastic action-packed experience, one that mixes its various elements well, and one that is extremely fun to play in co-op. If a combination of testosterone-infused action and Roguelike game design sounds fun to you, definitely give this game a shot.

tl;dr – Fury Unleashed combines Action-Platformer, 2-Stick Shooter and Roguelike elements into one great co-op package, with an added fourth-wall breaking “comic book” presentation. If a joyfully action-packed blend of testosterone and Roguelike sounds good to you, this game will not disappoint.

Grade: B+

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