Fury Unleashed

Interesting plot, controls a little like Abuse (not horror sci-fi like that game, though): mouse aim + keyboard movement. Gameplay is focused on combos. If you kill quickly enough without taking damage, you increase your combo counter: at 3 enemies killed, they start to drop health, at every 5 enemies killed (and the right perk) you get a "shield" so your combo counter doesn't reset if you get hit. It isn't difficult, no Devil May Cry SSS requirements here, but it does (for better or worse) force the player to keep moving and shooting instead of taking a breather and planning how to take out a room for more than 5 seconds. You can always go "screw the combo counter" and take your time, but if you EVER want to heal then you will need to use the combo counter up to 3. Not too bad. Weapons are largely quite interesting, but gameplay is a little repetitive. Each room feels really small to me and can be cleared in under 30 seconds (even some Boss rooms with the right perks and equipment on lower difficulty). HOWEVER, I am docking one star for an absolutely UNFORGIVABLE design choice along the lines of "it's a feature, not a bug!" You can visit 3 separate worlds, which are "comic books". You are playing a character created by a comic book writer, and the gist of the story is that he is thinking of retiring and you must convince him not to by having him "recall" your adventures over the years by playing the game. If you get lucky or good and complete the first 3 levels, you become locked into a fourth "world". It is absolutely a kick in the teeth with no experience or real way to level up, so you're pretty much screwed without warning. You are allowed to visit ONE comic book, but must start a new game, load the end world, then load the comic book. No breezing through all three books again for max XP runs with your toys. At the end of that comic you are forced to play the final realm or restart again, resetting your acquired items. Totally pointless.

I really enjoyed this game. I love Metal Slug, Rogue Legacy, Comix Zones, and Devil May Cry, as well as Soldat and many scrolling shooters. This seemed right up my alley. At first, Fury Unleashed kicked my but. I was worried it was going to be too much bullet hell, which I'm just not into, because I'm not up for it beyond a certain point. Each new stage made me question whether the increase in enemy difficulty was too much, but I was happy to find that it is really more of an issue of approaching each stage with a different type of caution. I'm now at the final section of the game, and I feel that I really grew with it. Not every run has an interesting or fair setup, IMO, but the game stays under the autistic Korean twitch streamer level of difficulty and is fair to the average gamer if they stay on point. The item pool is varied enough to keep the game a little interesting, but tight enough that you don't end up with many crap runs. As a rogue-lite, a big part of the game is bringing down the difficulty with persistent upgrades. Like Rogue Legacy, this can only be accomplished by clearing the XP score for the next level, in one run. I felt this was fair, and the game was actually balanced better for this than Rogue Legacy. I also found the story interesting and entertaining, despite have zero emotional connections to the characters. In a way, my response felt like a reflection of the comic aesthetic and how it takes itself too seriously. It's a game about how comics are stupid but we love them anyway, and what that means for the people who create and use them. Very quaint and well rounded. The comic aesthetic overall is killer. The best comic game since Comix Zone. The fast pace encouraging combo system is very well rounded and encourages you to dive in and kick butt non-stop. Once you've got some persistent upgrades it opens up your play-style even more. Overall, I will never call this my favorite game, but it does so much right and is worth it.

I don't think I've ever played a shooter/platformer/roguelike before, and I liked it. Items don't really change your build, like a, say, Ring of Pain or Isaac, where you make a build around an OP item. I didn't have it on my radar, but said, what the hell, I'll give it a go; this was good fun, and well worth it at 75p off. As another poster mentioned, the epilogue is a lot incongruous with the first 3 comics, and dumps your items, which is blah. The save file is just XML/text, so you can readily edit it to circumvent the grind (add levels/skill points). You can also force a blueprint item to spawn at the start of your next run via setting its status to 3. BP.Status.30 to 3. This will spawn an ice repeater at beginning of a run.

Everything feels natural, intuitive, challenging, & fun. It's difficult but in a really enjoyable way. It deserves to be a lot more popular. It's not even really my type of genre, but even i'll make an exception for this. There's also so many settings to tailor your experience to how you want it to be.

Fury Unleashed is a good shooter platformer that may be short to beat, but it's shortness is due to the right decision to avoid any kind of filler or fluff. Read the full review here: https://mr-skeltals-thoughts-deposit.blogspot.com/2022/01/fury-unleashed-review-when-chilling-out.html