Fury Unleashed

A combo-driven roguelite action platformer with a comic theme. Upon reading the description we thought: "alright, we'll have a pop at that!" And we're glad we did because Fury Unleashed is a fun platformer that provided us with a fair few hours of entertainment. Here's exactly what we thought.

You take control of a fully customisable character - you can change gender, look, and even face paint. Along the way, you can open up new starting weapons that you can choose from and then off you pop, into the fun-fest that is Fury Unleashed.

Your powers include the ability to run, quick dash, double jump, throw grenades, stomp, and there are special powers/abilities such as the ability to freeze enemies around you (actually it slows them right down) or others such as a drone or a sentry gun that you can purchase during your run. One novel thing we really liked was how if you go the wrong way, you can effectively teleport back to somewhere you've already been to on the map, so if you go the wrong way you can easily backtrack.

The game is divided into three comic books (plus a bonus one that looks like a sketchbook). Each book is divided into three chapters, all of which are procedurally generated. The level is divided into a series of rooms that actually look like a page from a comic, and we have to say that we loved this style!

Your aim is to run, killing and jumping as you go, from the top left to the bottom right exit. Along the way, you'll face a variety of different baddies such as exploding spiders, aliens, traps and several boss fights including giant spiders and later on, helicopters. You can shoot, duck and melee attack this variety of enemies, who shoot back and explode, all while you're trying to build up as big a combo as you can.

As we've already mentioned there are three different comic books. The first is set in the Amazon jungle with baddies such as Aztec skeleton warriors and giant mosquitoes. The second level sees you up against Nazis or Neo-Nazis, and the third is a full-scale alien invasion. When you finish these varied and interesting levels you get to head to a sketch world, where you finally fight against the jaded author.

Each of the comics is created using the same formula, with three chapters leading to a massive final boss fight. When you defeat the boss you can move on to the next comic. However, once you die you have to return to the first one. You can only start on the second or third comics once you've successfully gone through and defeated three final bosses in the previous one. The bosses are super cool, though, so you won't mind! Some of them look like giant Aztec gods, dragging trains as you dodge desperately from side to side, trying to avoid missiles and fire attacks.

These are different from the bosses during the chapters - while they are a challenge, these bad-boys (and girls) can really cause damage and it takes time to learn how to get around their attack patterns and defeat them.

As we've mentioned before this is a combo-driven game. When you kill an enemy they drop gold and black ink, which you must then collect. Gold ink can be used during your run to purchase new weapons and blessings such as increased gun strength. The more enemies you kill without getting hit (you can get shields after upgrading your character) the more they drop. They even start to give you HP. It is possible, but bloody tricky, to complete the game in one combo.

You collect the black ink, on the other hand, to get points to upgrade your character - more grenades, health and improvement of stomp abilities, for example - that carry on over between attempts. This gives you a sense of progression and gives each failed attempt a bit of purpose.

Visually, Fury Unleashed looks superb, like it was torn straight out of a comic book, and the colours are vivid and vibrant. Particularly vibrant was the gunplay and the visual effects associated with it. You're able to battle enemies with lightning bolts from tesla-guns, alien rocket launchers, or slap-up your opponents using frying pans and swords. It looks great and it's a lot of fun, with pumping tunes that seemed to become more energised as your combo got bigger. If there's any criticism we could levy at it, it's that it's a bit too short, but being procedurally generated it's got an extended lifespan, which helps alleviate that concern to an extent. It also does nothing new, but then again, what it does it does well.

The one thing we have to say is that while you can make the game as easy as you like, it's best played on hard as it's a great challenge and it will take you much longer. Playing on 'hard' is how the game is supposed to be played and we must say that we had so much more fun when we put it on that setting - don't be afraid to test yourself on this one.

All in all, it may not offer anything particularly inventive, nor is it massively long - but Fury Unleash is still bags of fun and a game that we would happily recommend to any platformer fan, especially one with a friend to hand as we really liked the addition of the local co-op mode.