TGS 2003Gungrave OD Impressions

We tried out a playable version of the follow-up to last year's third-person action game Gungrave. The sequel, called Gungrave OD, was on hand at Sega's Tokyo Game Show booth. The new game is once again a joint effort from Sega and Red Entertainment and will feature a number of new additions over its predecessor.

Although the game will include two new characters--a man named Rocket Billy Red Cadillac who wears a red costume and carries a guitar, and a man named Kabane Juuji who wears a quilted coat over a black costume with a flame burning over his right shoulder and two gun-swords as weapons--the version of the game at TGS let us play only as Grave, the main character from the original game. The early part of the demo was a tutorial that filled us in on the basics. While the core mechanics of the game have remained basically the same as in Gungrave, there have been a number of additions to the gameplay. The most dramatic is the addition of a shield meter for Grave that increases the amount of punishment he can take. In addition, the melee attacks the Grave performs with his coffin, which is once again strapped to his back, can now be chained into a three-hit combo that can be used to hit enemies and clear obstacles out of your way. The melee combo appears to be extremely useful, since the new game has enemies that can block your gunfire.

Gungrave OD's graphics are still coming together, but they look solid so far. Grave has undergone a bit of a makeover that extends all the way to his shiny new coffin. The environments we saw in the game are a bit more modest in terms of size and scale than they were in the previous game, although they do retain a high degree of interactivity, so you can still shoot up everything around you. The new game also uses other special effects, like screen filters, liberally. The only real issue we noticed was an inconsistent frame rate, which seems to slow down when the onscreen action gets especially insane. However, since the game won't be released until next year, we expect that most, if not all, of the frame rate issues will be dealt with. Gungrave OD is shaping up to be a solid improvement over its predecessor. The refined gameplay and the addition of new playable characters should offer a more-substantial experience. Gungrave OD is currently scheduled to ship in 2004 for the PlayStation 2 in Japan; though a US release has not yet been confirmed.