Platform: PlayStation 4 (PlayStation VR)

Developer: IGGYMOB

Publisher: XSEED Games

Release Date (NA): December 11, 2018

Genre: Action, Shooter

Rating: 5.5/10

Written by ChronoSloth

Review copy provided by XSEED Games

If you’re a fan of semi-obscure PlayStation 2 games (and who isn’t), you might have heard of the action packed third person shooter Gungrave, and/or its sequel Gungrave: Overdose. Anime fans might also be familiar with the series since the game was adapted into an animated show by Madhouse, and cowboy-hat-wearing, coffin-wielding, main character Grave was designed by Trigun creator, Yasuhiro Nightow. After a fourteen year hiatus, series fans might have thought they’d seen the last of Gungrave, but here we are in 2018, with two new Gungrave titles for PlayStation VR and another title on the horizon: Gungrave G.O.R.E.

With his cowboy-esque clothing, chains, dual pistols, and giant coffin in tow, Gungrave’s undead protagonist Beyond the Grave (Grave for short) has a striking design.

I should start by clarifying what exactly I’m reviewing, since two Gungrave VR games were released on the same day. This review covers Gungrave VR, and not the standalone DLC sequel, Gungrave VR U.N, which is sold separately on the PlayStation Store, or in a bundle with the first VR title physically and digitally in the Loaded Coffin Edition.

Gungrave VR starts with a brief explanation of your character Grave’s mission and sets up why you’re going to be going out to the game’s five stages. A tutorial begins afterwards which explains the controls and mechanics. Despite being a VR game, Gungrave VR plays how you’d imagine it’d work without a headset for everything except the aiming. In third person mode, Grave is controlled with the left analog stick, the X button in conjunction with a direction performs a dodge roll, the circle button is a 360 degree melee attack with your coffin, holding R2 allows for rapid fire from your dual pistols, L2 allows you to slow down time for a brief bit to dodge or aim precisely when it counts, and L1 allows you to vent your pistols as they begin to overheat, which replaces a reload function since you have unlimited ammo.

Gungrave VR’s training room

You also build up special attacks through landing hits without pause, referred to in Gungrave as beats, instead of a combo counter. Your beat count and your special attack information is located downward from center screen, which doesn’t pose much of an issue in third-person when you can see it in your peripheral vision just about always. However in Gungrave VR’s first person sections you’ll actually have to look downward to see the info, which poses an issue when your aiming reticle is controlled with your head. The first-person sections aren’t covered in the tutorial, but luckily, controls and mechanics remain the same with the only difference being that you don’t have to move Grave around, excluding the fourth level. Here in the tutorial, the controls felt good. It seemed like managing your resources (building/storing/using special attacks, cooling down your guns, slowing down time for offence vs defense) while performing the basic actions of shooting, dodging, and aiming the camera with your vision in VR was going to be a blast. Unfortunately, while the mechanics are solid, the levels that you’re given to use them in are unpolished and few.

I much prefer the hub in Gungrave VR to a regular menu, but the only difference here is aesthetic; you can’t move and there’s nothing to find or interact with other than the menu options and talking to Mika.

After the tutorial, you’re placed in a room that serves as the game’s main menu, which you view from a first-person perspective. You look at various objects to select different modes (training, options, character select, mission select) or talk to your friend Mika, who never really has much to say, honestly. Speaking of character select, this, along with the game’s mechanics which begged for an onslaught of enemies to hone and test your mastery of them, gave me false hope of what I was in for with Gungrave VR. “Character select? Just how deep does this go? Are there other weapons and playstyles?” I wondered.  I went to character select just to see what I was working with before I did anything else, even though I expected not to have unlocked anything. There was a single alternate costume for Grave shown with the conditions to unlock it. I was sure that as I progressed that I would be shown more alternate costumes and/or characters with their conditions when I returned to the central hub and checked after missions. I was wrong. This single costume for Grave is the only “character” available in the character select menu after completing the entire game, and the single “unlockable” period.

Gungrave VR’s stages alternate between third-person and first-person gameplay, with the fifth and final stage incorporating both styles as you progress through the level. There’s a fair bit of enemy variety in these levels and they present different challenges with their movesets. You’ll face common thugs who stream bullets at you that you’ll need to dodge, rolling canine enemies that close in on you quickly that are best taken care of with bullet time or melee, flying enemies whose rockets can be shot down before they hit you or even reflected back to their sender with a well timed melee attack, enemies with shields that throw them at Grave from a distance and put up a defensive wall when targeted, and quite a few more. In first-person, you’ll be seeing less of the melee type enemies and more quick flying types and there’s also a focus on shooting down enemy bullets and rockets before they can reach you. Adapting to and overcoming all of the attackers coming at you with Grave’s set of moves is a great time. Unfortunately for Gungrave VR, there are problems with just about everything present in the package here beside the core gameplay.

While the character models for Grave, Mika, and a few of the enemies look nice, and the giant cartoonish “GREAT” that appears when you skillfully slay foes provides stylish flair, the rest of the game isn’t very visually appealing. Levels are empty and plain, which is crazy seeing as how they’re so small with such little room to explore. It certainly doesn’t seem that it would be taxing on the PlayStation 4, even in VR, to dress up these small arenas a bit more. The aesthetic also seems cartoonish, but not anime styled. It looks a little off to me, and is quite odd for a game in a series with an anime, and characters designed by a famous manga writer. Animations in the game are hit-or-miss, with some of Grave’s dodges while firing looking awesome and fluid, while the strange “gun dance” he does when shooting while stationary and the way he abruptly snaps back to an idle animation from running are off putting. The sound design and music isn’t bad, but it doesn’t stand out either.

More harmful to the experience than the presentation are the technical errors and design flaws. While no glitches ever hindered my progress, there were enough there (combined with the game’s length) to make Gungrave VR feel rushed or unfinished. Hit detection on Grave’s melee attack is wonky, there doesn’t seem to be any way of telling you’re taking damage if you aren’t hit with an attack that causes flinching, when the fifth level shifts to first person the special attack cannon appeared along with both of my arms and guns outstretched then abruptly disappeared a few seconds later, the area of effect special ability can never seem to decide whether enemies are hit by it and in the fourth level a giant airship pops in and out of view as you fight it, all against a static background.

One particularly rough spot is in the third stage. After defeating a mini-boss, you’re transported to another area to face the big bad of the level. Strangely, the area is empty, and the music cuts from the boss fight track, back to the song that plays when you’re walking around fighting normal enemies in the city. As you walk forward, a giant samurai boss appears before you. I don’t mean appears as in approaches and challenges you, or teleports into the area veiled in smoke; he literally pops into existence like a mountain on the world map in Final Fantasy VII. With his appearance, the boss fight song cuts back in after having just switched back to the regular level music. Then the fight begins, with the enemy stunlocking you in place with his long-reaching attacks, making manueving Grave a chore as you’re continuously stuck in a state or reeling from attacks or falling down. After doing enough damage to the boss, he plants a flag that changes his attacks and the game directs you destroy this flag. However, there is no visual indication you’re damaging the flag or making any difference at all. As the boss seemed not to hurt me once he’d knocked me down multiple times and pushed further into my character model, I decided to try standing against the front of his legs, and sure enough, he had no options to harm me. I held forward to walk into his knees and mashed square for twenty seconds, meleeing him to death with impunity.

Stage 5 is definitely the roughest and plainest looking level.

Gungrave VR is a very short experience that doesn’t make use of potential its character and mechanics possess. Despite its flaws, there is fun at the game’s core. However, being only around an hour long with only five levels that vary in quality but are similar in layout and challenge, there’s just not much total fun to be had. There would be replay value in attempting to get higher ranks when completing missions, but the scoring system is never explained, the difficulty settings don’t seem to change enemy behavior, there are only 13 trophies (with no platinum), and there’s only a single reward for repeat playthroughs: a costume. I feel like I’d have enjoyed the experience more if my expectations had been managed; calling this a VR experience rather than a full Gungrave game seems more apt. Alas, Gungrave VR is marketed as “the series’ return” and is priced similarly to much more sizable VR offerings. Fans of the series may enjoy seeing Grave and his unique loadout appearing in a project again, but they’ll be disappointed if they’re interested in the lore or story of the franchise; there’s very little featured here. Those fans might be better off waiting on Gungrave G.O.R.E., another title in the Gungrave series set to release in Japan in Q4 2019 which seems to be getting much more care and development time, and will feature a detailed plot. In the meantime give Gungrave VR a shot if you’re looking for an hour-long, fun but janky VR shooter experience or if you love Gungrave to death.