Fury Unleashed is the best indie title that this reviewer has ever played! Awesome Games has created a wonderful experience that is both difficult, fun and mesmerising. This game, which is akin to old school Contra, Metal Slug and a bit of Remnant: From the Ashes, is a great little mash up of entertaining frenetic gunplay, great story arc, excellent strategy and a detailed skill tree to make the character Fury a delight to play.
Throughout the game, players will go through a total of three comics, but will need good luck getting through the first one without at least 3+ hours play under the player’s belt and a good bit of levelling to the character skill tree. Each comic has three chapters and each are setup for players to traverse through, killing enemies and bosses while trying to move quickly enough to keep a combo streak going. The combo streak is critical for regaining health, as the health drops do not happen without multiple combo streaks active. The final boss for each comic requires as much health and pickups as possible to manage to defeat them. The player must also bring their ‘A’ game, but that still may not be enough.
The pickups in this game are broken into a few categories. There are guns, lots of guns! And over time, players will get four different selectable starting weapons and a ton of different gun types to unlock such as pistols, rifles, acid launchers, rocket launchers, lasers, storm generators and many more. These guns are unlocked as the player progresses, unlocking them with different collectable blueprints earned from completing hard quests that must be brought to the Inkmaster. When the player dies and starts a new run the Inkmaster will present a new gun for the run. Some of these gun types are amazing to use and particularly the acid weapons were a favourite of this reviewer, along with the Rail gun. The weapons of Fury Unleashed all have unlimited ammo but need to be reloaded often. The player also has the option to use melee weapons and grenades, along with a special weapon like the ability to freeze all of the enemies on screen for a time. As you level up the skill tree and find new weapons, the fun increases. Players can also find different types of armour and grenades. These are both extremely useful when facing the many bosses of each comic.
As players go through the levels, they will earn ink and golden ink. The golden ink can be used to buy upgrades from the many different portal vendors in each chapter, including the all-important Inkmaster, who is the key to unlocking new weapons after finding blueprints in the levels. The amount of ink collected during a run will go towards levelling up Fury and expanding his skill tree with upgrade points. The player will need to play several runs to gain enough ink to reach level 35 so they can access the full skill tree for the most advanced upgrades. Persistence is worth it though as the game, while frustrating, is built around the player dying and then going to upgrade Fury and run it all over again to see what has changed. The maps are never the same as the game uses a random level generator at the beginning of each chapter. This makes for a unique experience with every playthrough and keeps it fresh for the player.
Bosses are also never in the same place or time and each one requires a different strategy to beat. At the end of each comic, the final bosses take time, effort and strategy to overcome. The mini bosses in the chapters are decently hard as well and with each of them being random spawns, the player will never face the same boss twice. This randomness for fights makes players think about what items they will need to hold onto, and which ones are good to win battles and absorb ink.
Fury is a great game with a ton of great gameplay and is a unique experience. Children can experience the fun as well with a Bloodless Mode that can be turned on in the menus. Although, avoid playing with young children, as it is still has mature themes and can be a scary experience. The game allows for solo and two-player local gameplay through the campaign. No online multiplayer is a big miss as this would be great with one to three friends to run through and complete.
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Rob for One More Game
The publisher Awesome Games provided a review code for Fury Unleashed. This game was reviewed on an Xbox One and it is also available on PlayStation 4 and PC. Our thoughts on this title are ours and ours alone.