Fury Unleashed review

I’m not gonna beat about the bush with this one, Fury Unleashed is a super fun, rogue-like, platforming shooter. You play the titular Fury across a series of comic books, each presenting unique environments and enemies including a jungle zone with skeletons and bugs, a Nazi style bunker that’s clearly inspired by Wolfenstein, an alien ship and a sketchbook.

Each book contains three chapters with randomly generated levels so you’ll never see the same layout twice. I’d be lying if I said each “pane” was unique, but you never know what you’ll find every time you move to a new room. The aim of each area is straight forward – find the exit and murder everything in your path. Killing everything isn’t essential, but doing so sees enemies drop ink which is used to level up your character.

Leveling up rewards upgrade points that can then be pumped into character upgrades that will make progress a little easier. I’ll come back to this later but I should point out, this isn’t an easy game, especially on the default difficulty. But what about the gameplay? Well obviously there’s lots and lots of shooting. Each kill adds to a combo counter and the higher the counter the more health and bonuses are dropped by enemies. Keeping this combo meter going is essential to keep health topped up and certain perks that you can unlock will give protective shields.

You can carry two guns, a grenade, you’re equipped with a special skill and every body part has a unique piece of armour. The great thing is, you’re avatars look changes depending on what you’re wearing.

You’ll be given access to machine guns, sniper rifles, bomb and rocket launchers, alien weapons, a ridiculously powerful rail gun…. the list is pretty sizeable! Armour grants damage protection as well as perks and all can be bought with gold from the various portals. With the right combo you will become an unstoppable killing machine.

There’s also a few characters to unlock and completing in-game quests gives you different starter weapons. Characters can be modified with different heads, accessories and colours.

Most of the enemies aren’t a pushover and to further hinder your progress, some rooms will contain mini-bosses which trap you in until you’ve beaten them. At the end of each book, you’re given the chance to face off against a main boss and beating them takes you to the next comic. Overall there’s a nice flow to the game and the challenge in avoiding traps and enemy projectiles whilst dishing out you’re own brand of death is satisfying.

Graphically it looks pretty good. Character and enemy models are chunky and look hand drawn. Each environment presents a different background and enemy variety. Nothing on show is necessarily new or unique to this game but with everything being so clear you never feel lost or overwhelmed by everything that’s going on.

As I said though, it can be quite challenging so it’s not for the faint hearted. Be prepared to die a lot until you’ve sorted out your upgrades. Even then, the randomness of the weapons and armour in each play through presents it’s own challenges. Getting the perfect loadout helps immensely and you’ll eventually find the stuff that compliments your preferred play style. Learning boss attack patterns is also essential but these are pretty telegraphed so recognising them isn’t that difficult. Avoiding their occasional screen filling attacks is often the hardest part.

There is a co-op mode but I didn’t get the chance to try it. Competing the game also unlocks harder difficulty levels. If I get the chance to try co-op I’ll update the review.

The most surprising thing here is that there actually appears to be a coherent story. I won’t spoil it but it was nice to see the team try to add a bit of depth and meaning to what your doing.

Fury Unleashed is an enjoyable little title that kept me coming back for more. Dying often saw me slip into that “one more go” territory. It looks nice, it plays well and it offers a nice challenge. For anyone looking for a shooter with a lot of replayability, you can’t go wrong with Fury Unleashed. Now I’m off to play on a harder difficulty.