Niche Gamer Plays is an ongoing video preview series where our staff take an in-depth and yet concise look at classic, current, and upcoming games across all current gaming platforms.
Gungrave, originally launched in 2005 on the PlayStation 2, is getting two new games launching on PlayStation VR and PlayStation 4.
Gungrave VR launched last December in Japan and will be coming west sometime in autumn. Gungrave G.O.R.E. has been announced and is in development at this time. My hands-on VR demo at this year’s E3 was for the VR spinoff.
During our hands on preview of the western localization of Gungrave VR, we were able to try the on the rails shooter stage that culminated in a fight against a giant scorpion mech.
The controls were pretty simplistic. R2 fired your weapon and L1 cooled off your weapon (which basically acted as reloading). There was no movement by the player, as everything was on rails for this stage. Players will be able to move about on their own, especially in the 3rd person aspected stages.
Aiming was done simply by moving your head and looking at what you wanted to shoot. The melee attack acted as both an attack if enemies got too close and as a defensive maneuver, where a well time melee attack could deflect back certain projectiles at the enemy that fired them at you.
One of more interesting aspects of the trailer was the inclusion of a time dilation type of attack. The player could press L2 and slow down time for a short period, allowing for more precision when attempting to defect back projectiles.
The only issue I had here was the fact that the game would quickly move from the 1st person perspective to the 3rd person when using the melee attack. It caused a bit of disorientation moving from the different perspectives rather quickly.
The final attack was called a “chaos bullet”, where after every 100 bullets fired, the player would receive 1 round of this attack.
It was basically touted as “the boss killer”, but with one downside. You are completely vulnerable as you prepare to fire and as you fire the bullet, leaving yourself open to attacks which could disrupt your attack.
Gungrave VR is set to release in America and Europe sometime this fall.
