Introduction

[Thanks to my good friend AbstractCactus for the banner image!]

Gungrave is a 2002 third-person shooter game for Playstation 2. It’s most notable for having character designs by Yasuhiro Nightow (creator of Trigun and Blood Blockade Battlefront) and mechanical designs by Kosuke Fujishima (creator of You’re Under Arrest and Ah! My Goddess, character designer for the Sakura Wars series and the Tales series), which helped to give the game its distinct art style. It was prominent enough to receive both a 26-episode anime adaptation and a sequel game, Gungrave: Overdose.

Gungrave is about a reanimated mercenary named Beyond the Grave, who is contracted to take down the Millennion Organization, also known as the Syndicate. The city is overrun with crime, in part thanks to Millennion and its spread of a drug known as Seed. However, cleaning up the streets isn’t the only goal Grave has in mind while blasting his way through the Syndicate’s bigwigs…

The game is a little odd because it plays more like a character action game than a shooter. The focus isn’t really on precise shooting and slower progression as much as it’s about racking up sweet combos in crazy firefights before setting off ridiculous super moves for high scores. It definitely feels clunkier than some of the higher profile games of the era, but it has a lot of style and a couple of nice features that help to keep the experience fresh and exciting.





I’m ChorpSaway and I’m not very good at video games, but I will do my best to show off competent gameplay for this weird but interesting series. Plus I have been revived into a blood pact with FutureFriend that requires me to do this. Running and gunning along with me are TheJayOfSpade, Hobotron, and FutureFriend. Together we’ll mow down everyone in our path and do our best to have a bit of fun as we take down drug culture and big business.

I will be playing through both Gungrave and Gungrave: Overdose on the Hard difficulty because I’m not nearly enough of a badass for Kick-Ass difficulty, but just enough of a badass to not play on Normal. I also have plans for covering the anime and its exclusive material.