So it turns out my favorite genre does not always work…
Today we are looking at Guns of Fury. Released in February of this year, Guns of Fury is a new metroidvania slapped together by a pair of bros. And these brothers are apparently very good at what they do! But for a refreshing change of pace, unlike many metroidvanias out there, the basic gameplay of Guns of Fury does not significantly borrow from Metroid or Castlevania. You are not slashing a sword or firing an arm cannon; this is guns all the way down. Are you surprised? That a game titled Guns of Fury has a lot of guns? Well then get ready for this revelation: Guns of Fury is much more of a Contra experience than anything else. Run! Gun! Eventually find a Spread Shot! Complete with an introductory level that deliberately obfuscates the search action nature of the title, Guns of Fury could easily be mistaken for the latest Metal Slug (particularly in a world where Metal Slug wants to make tactical games all of a sudden…).
And let it be said that that is unequivocally a good thing. There should be more Contra-likes in this world. Despite having been part of the gaming sphere from practically the beginning (Contra [arcade] was released in 1987, the same year America saw Metroid), the run ‘n gun genre is sorely underrepresented in modern releases. Sure, we’ve got the occasional Super Time Force or Queen Army, but outside of actual Contra games, the genre focuses more on titles like Cuphead. And Cuphead is great! But it follows the Treasure path of predominantly focusing on the bosses to the point that the “stages” feel like vestigial afterthoughts. And, while some Contra titles inspired this kind of game design, the best run ‘n gun titles out there retain their runnin’ with their gunnin’. Remember, the first boss in Contra ever was a friggen’ wall. The final boss was a stationary, inactive organ. The difficulty was getting there. And “getting there” is the main point of a metroidvania. Samus Aran finished a few adventures by fighting an inanimate body part, too! And jar o’ brain could only be discovered after searching out the space porcupine and purple dragon! The run ‘n gun genre longs for its own Zebes.
And Guns of Fury is not only a Zebes, it might be even bigger than that whole planet. Unfortunately, the nature of GoF is that you are exploring a secret lab and its surrounding area, so you will not be reconnoitering anything quite as unconventional as Meridia or Norfair. But what is available is thematically appropriate and diverse in its own way. The Old Battleground looks like something out of WWII (complimentary), while the Cliffside Fort is surprisingly modern. The Abandoned Town has a few interesting/flaming ruins to explore, while the Steel Foundry is stuffed with molten hijinks. Even the sewer level is enjoyable, though with the caveat that that is mostly thanks to the presence of killer robots. And speaking of ersatz terminators, spots like the Research Facility or Underground Lab are just plain entertaining to jump around with conveyer belts and death lasers. Is there anything a death laser can’t make better!? Guns of Fury has a huge map with an equally huge number of challenges and discoveries available. SR-388 should be ashamed of itself.
But bigger is not always better.
Guns of Fury is 100% a metroidvania. After scooting through the prologue, your hero is stripped of his armaments, and must sneak out of a prison cell. His first acquisition is a gun, and said gun is used not only to punish his jailer, but also to activate a nearby switch. From there, you can expect nearly every (compulsory) new weapon to provide some level of additional “puzzle” context. An electric gun can activate appropriately powered doors. A sniper rifle can be used to hit distance buttons. Even hulking mech suits are utilized for destruction and the occasional door-bashing. And it’s not just about annihilation! Even if you eventually acquire your standard Chozian ice beam, you still have a few abilities here and there that have nothing to do with guns (of fury). A double jump is expected, but there is a boot powerup that leads to making the Symphony of the Night jump kick just as effective as a bat transformation. You can get kneepads to make this metroid crawl, and we even have a few defensive powerups that incidentally provide options like water mobility. There are some straight “offensive power” upgrades scattered about (predominantly at shops), but if you find a new item that isn’t a random foodstuff, it means you just acquired a new gameplay feature and a way to “unlock” previously noted inaccessible mysteries. Time to double-back to see what’s the next powerup you can find!
And that’s where the trouble starts.
Every area in Guns of Fury is generally arranged like a “level”. Explore as much as you can explore, reach a logical endpoint of the path, and battle a boss waiting for you. Complete with a defeated boss traditionally leading to a new powerup, this is the basic flow of not only Guns of Fury, but the metroidvania genre as a whole. However, there is a significant change here: each area/level of Guns of Fury is tremendously more “action-based” than your average metroidvania. It’s a Contra-alike! And a game styled after Contra must have interesting and challenging action across its stages. This cannot simply have “monster hallways” like some -vania titles, and if you can just tank every hit, then there is little point in running and/or gunning to the best of your ability. There are literal tanks about! You are patently not one of them! So even as you collect health expansions and gun upgrades, the minute-to-minute of Guns of Fury never stops being action packed. Sure, you can soak a few extra bullets by the time you’ve explored 75% of the map, but you are still beset on all sides by a literal army that wants you dead. You are living a life alone against the world, and this breakneck gameplay reminds you that that life might be short.
But sometimes you just want to get back to that dead end you dimly remember from an hour ago…
There is “fast travel” in Guns of Fury. There are genre-appropriate parking spaces around the map that provide a truck that will ferry you from end of this world to the other. However, there are only… let’s see here… Eight warp points spread across the fifteen different sections. And, just in case you were wondering, those sections each could be a whole “world” onto themselves. Warping quickly to one area is one thing, but actually navigating it again is not only annoying, it is demoralizing. The Machine Factory is such an obstacle course, I never wanted to revisit it ever again. But I did! Because there were “missing” sections of my map in a random corner. And what was my reward for filling in those squares? Well, a slightly improved ammo capacity. I had no foreknowledge that was my “only” reward, though, as other areas that had to be revisited included such mandatory items as a pair of keys that would unlock the final area. And whether you are hunting something optional or required, you must fight through every respawned grunt and robot all over again every time you reenter a room. The challenge of Contra’ing across this world is omnipresent.
Yes, you do get upgrades as you go. Yes, it is often easier to “complete” an area after you have acquired a double jump or a bazooka. And occasionally, you can obtain a mech suit or similar to completely recontextualize the challenge of an area. But, more often than not, it is just the same “level” as you encountered the first time, and you are running through it again just to get some random pickup or map completion. And it is not just about when you “miss” something the first time! There are multiple events across this game where you are in one particular area, are distinctly told to backtrack to another area to acquire some once-missed doohickey, and then backtrack to the original spot for your ultimate reward. Is it possible to obtain the missing item the first time? Dunno! I’m not going to play the game again to find out, because now I feel like I have already played the game over and over again!
And that’s the crux of it. When Contra: Operation Galuga was released last year, I played through that adventure from start to finish multiple times. It was a fun game, it wasn’t that long, and I wanted to see myself “git gud” at blasting Red Falcon into the stratosphere. With Guns of Fury, I feel like I have already “replayed” the adventure, because I had to retread the whole of the map multiple times. I know these enemy configurations like the back of my hand now, because I doubled over the whole world trying to find one stupid gun with enough rapid fire to hit one stupid switch (and, incidentally, the answer was a weapon available at a random shop). It is fun to replay an action stage because you are trying to improve, or are just amused at the available gameplay. But when you must traverse the same damned area for the fourth time because you think you have the exact powerup you need to make progress (but are still likely to find you need another powerup to actually explore a new area), that is just a chore. That is just wasting time. And wasting time is the last thing you want to feel like you are doing in a novelty wannabe Metal Slug. I could be doing anything else with my life! I could be outside! I could be writing essays about videogames for a website! I could be playing Metal Slug!
Guns of Fury is a fun game. The music is appropriate, the graphics are splendid, and the minute-to-minute gameplay is some of the best Contra-like content out there. But is its existence as a metroidvania doing it any favors? Maybe not. This is a unique experience, but as other games have proven, 100% action is not the best fit for a genre where backtracking is emphasized.
Sorry, my favorite genre, but the metroidvania-ness of Guns of Fury reduces it to Guns of Midness.
FGC #697 Guns of Fury
System: Looks like we’ve just got Steam and Nintendo Switch as of this writing. This is another situation where I would not be surprised to see more systems pop up over time.- Number of players: This is the rare metroidvania that could be adapted to a two-player mode. Maybe some kind of time attack for individual sections? Whatever! All we’ve got is single player, though.
- What’s in a name: There may be some overlap with a certain Marvel character, but technically the star of Guns of Fury is titular. Guess the guns are, too.
- My New Suit: The four available mech suits across the world are evocative of Metal Slug, but their sounds and general “feel” seem to hew closer to the Mega Man X series. And that’s great! Because those are some of the best mech rides in the business. Why did that franchise start ignoring mech punching for speeder biking?
- Watch it, Buddy: I first played this with Even Worse Streams, and you can see it for yourself! Get your fury on!
February 18, 2025Join Ample Vigour, Caithness, Jeanie, Cassandralyn, Chromes, and fanboymaster as we fury around and talk about Steve Urkel.
- Level Up: This is a modern metroidvania with no leveling system. Hooray! Now I know if I lose to a boss over and over again, it is not because I am “under leveled” for the area, but because I suck! Double hooray! Collecting money can be used as an excuse to murder opponents, but the weapon upgrades across the shops are more aimed at customizing your loadout than outright buying “best gun”. Except when you get “best gun”, but that is a whole other thing…
- Best Gun: Two shops provide two different game-wide scavenger hunts. The medic and the gunsmith both send you off to find four different ingredients across the world, and you need to figure out exactly where to look to complete those challenges. When you find all the metals for the gunsmith, you acquire a new gun that shoots hot lava in a constant stream. It obliterates practically everything in its path. When you find all the herbs for the medic, you receive a powerup that doubles the power of health powerups. You get health powerups from maybe 10% of drops, and never during a boss fight. One of these quests has a slightly better reward than the other.
An End: There are multiple endings, and it appears the determining factor between them is whether or not you can fish out some power tools. At least you ride off into the sunset on a motorcycle either way. If it was good enough for Kirby, it is good enough for Fury.- Say something mean: An army of different robots and soldiers is pretty cool, but coming off of Blade Chimera, I miss an eclectic bestiary. At least there are brief descriptions of upcoming bosses available on local computer monitors. Oh! And food! It doesn’t get more Castlevania than collecting random food all over the place. Still want to see some mutant soldiers or something, though…
- Did you know? Assuming all of the generic soldiers to be male, there appears to be exactly one woman in this game. Maybe two? They are both optional shopkeepers, and have no real impact on the plot. Other than that, it’s all burly dudes, all the time. I think there are more bionic arms in here than women…
- Would I play again: Probably eventually. There is a new game plus available, and a few silly filters to make things more visually attractive. So there is technically a reason to replay. But, for right now, I feel like I have over explored this world, and my guns need a break.
What’s next? Random ROB has chosen… Solitaire! Oh boy! Cards! Please look forward to it!
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