NOT WOKE SHOWS: Gun Grave: G.O.R.E.

June Pell

+12 clout

Sep 23, 2026

I boot this thing up expecting another try-hard modern shooter and instead I get a coffin-wearing corpse boy who just walks forward like the floor is lava if you stand still. Grave does not duck. Grave does not peek. Grave turns every hallway into a red confetti machine and the camera is always slightly too proud of him for it. (I say that like I didn't spend the first hour grinning like an idiot every time the dual pistols and the back-mounted death furniture started humming.) There is a plot. Something about resurrection and old sins and loyalty and a woman he still somehow carries around in the wreckage of himself. I followed it the way you follow a radio drama while doing the dishes—bits of it stick, the rest is atmosphere. The cutscenes have that stiff Unreal sheen that makes everyone look slightly plastic, and the dialogue keeps explaining things Grave can already see, which is funny because the man is supposedly a force of nature and still needs the boss lady to point out the shield guys. I rewound one early boss sequence three times just to watch the coffin unfold into that ridiculous anti-air missile setup. Not because I died. Because it looked stupid and gorgeous at the same time and I wanted the stupid-gorgeous again. Combat is the whole meal. You string combos, you bank demolition points, you decide whether to keep the multiplier going or cash out for the big flashy finish. It is shallow in the best arcade way and then suddenly has just enough depth that you start caring about which upgrade you pick before a long stretch of hallway. I caught myself muttering little plans under my breath—"save the Art for the rocket guys, dump the storm on the cluster"—like I was managing a pinball table instead of a massacre. The levels themselves go on too long. You feel it in the thumbs. You feel it when the same corridor geometry shows up again with a different paint job and you think, okay, I get it, there are more of them. But the second the numbers start climbing and the screen turns into that frantic ballet of muzzle flashes and flying limbs, the length complaint kind of evaporates. For a while. I kept thinking about how cleanly it refuses to apologize for itself. No lecture about the guns. The guns are the point. Grave is a walking weapon who comes back from the dead specifically so he can keep using them. Traditional tough-guy stoicism is just the weather here; nobody on the writing staff seems interested in teaching him a softer lesson. The whole vibe is late-night anime that got mixed with a Harley and left in the sun too long—loud colors, loyalty oaths, ridiculous body count, zero interest in telling you how to vote. I liked that more than I expected to. (Maybe I just needed something that didn't want me to feel improved.) Technical side is messy. The engine hiccups, some environments look like they were rushed out of a 2015 asset pack, and the 100-percent grind is apparently pure punishment if you care about trophies. I didn't. I played through once on the easiest path that still let me feel powerful, then went back to a couple of stages to chase higher scores because the scoring loop is sticky like that. It never becomes a smart game. It stays a "brain mostly off, thumbs very on" game. That is a legitimate category and this one lives right in the middle of it—fun enough that I finished it, flawed enough that I will never pay full price again and will absolutely buy it for a friend on sale so we can laugh at the same coffin missile. There is one stretch near the middle where the enemies start layering in a way that finally forces you to use the full kit instead of just holding fire. I got stuck there in the good sense. Kept dying, kept adjusting the loadout, kept coming back because the fantasy of being an unkillable stylish bastard is still strong when the choreography clicks. Then the game remembers it has thirty-one stages to fill and stretches the leftover ideas thin again. Classic. I closed it feeling like I had eaten a whole bag of spicy chips—satisfied, a little greasy, not proud, already thinking about when the next bag might be on discount. If you grew up on the old PS2 Gungrave discs or just want an evening of forward-only gun poetry without any homework, this delivers the junk-food version. It knows what it is. It does not pretend the coffin is a metaphor for anything heavier than "look how many people I can erase with furniture." Sometimes that is exactly the right temperature.

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June Pell
+12 clout
Sep 23, 2026
I boot this thing up expecting another try-hard modern shooter and instead I get a coffin-wearing corpse boy who just walks forward like the floor is lava if you stand still. Grave does not duck. Grave does not peek. Grave turns every hallway into a red confetti machine and the camera is always slightly too proud of him for it. (I say that like I didn't spend the first hour grinning like an idiot every time the dual pistols and the back-mounted death furniture started humming.) There is a plot. Something about resurrection and old sins and loyalty and a woman he still somehow carries around in the wreckage of himself. I followed it the way you follow a radio drama while doing the dishes—bits of it stick, the rest is atmosphere. The cutscenes have that stiff Unreal sheen that makes everyone look slightly plastic, and the dialogue keeps explaining things Grave can already see, which is funny because the man is supposedly a force of nature and still needs the boss lady to point out the shield guys. I rewound one early boss sequence three times just to watch the coffin unfold into that ridiculous anti-air missile setup. Not because I died. Because it looked stupid and gorgeous at the same time and I wanted the stupid-gorgeous again. Combat is the whole meal. You string combos, you bank demolition points, you decide whether to keep the multiplier going or cash out for the big flashy finish. It is shallow in the best arcade way and then suddenly has just enough depth that you start caring about which upgrade you pick before a long stretch of hallway. I caught myself muttering little plans under my breath—"save the Art for the rocket guys, dump the storm on the cluster"—like I was managing a pinball table instead of a massacre. The levels themselves go on too long. You feel it in the thumbs. You feel it when the same corridor geometry shows up again with a different paint job and you think, okay, I get it, there are more of them. But the second the numbers start climbing and the screen turns into that frantic ballet of muzzle flashes and flying limbs, the length complaint kind of evaporates. For a while. I kept thinking about how cleanly it refuses to apologize for itself. No lecture about the guns. The guns are the point. Grave is a walking weapon who comes back from the dead specifically so he can keep using them. Traditional tough-guy stoicism is just the weather here; nobody on the writing staff seems interested in teaching him a softer lesson. The whole vibe is late-night anime that got mixed with a Harley and left in the sun too long—loud colors, loyalty oaths, ridiculous body count, zero interest in telling you how to vote. I liked that more than I expected to. (Maybe I just needed something that didn't want me to feel improved.) Technical side is messy. The engine hiccups, some environments look like they were rushed out of a 2015 asset pack, and the 100-percent grind is apparently pure punishment if you care about trophies. I didn't. I played through once on the easiest path that still let me feel powerful, then went back to a couple of stages to chase higher scores because the scoring loop is sticky like that. It never becomes a smart game. It stays a "brain mostly off, thumbs very on" game. That is a legitimate category and this one lives right in the middle of it—fun enough that I finished it, flawed enough that I will never pay full price again and will absolutely buy it for a friend on sale so we can laugh at the same coffin missile. There is one stretch near the middle where the enemies start layering in a way that finally forces you to use the full kit instead of just holding fire. I got stuck there in the good sense. Kept dying, kept adjusting the loadout, kept coming back because the fantasy of being an unkillable stylish bastard is still strong when the choreography clicks. Then the game remembers it has thirty-one stages to fill and stretches the leftover ideas thin again. Classic. I closed it feeling like I had eaten a whole bag of spicy chips—satisfied, a little greasy, not proud, already thinking about when the next bag might be on discount. If you grew up on the old PS2 Gungrave discs or just want an evening of forward-only gun poetry without any homework, this delivers the junk-food version. It knows what it is. It does not pretend the coffin is a metaphor for anything heavier than "look how many people I can erase with furniture." Sometimes that is exactly the right temperature.
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Gun Grave: G.O.R.E.

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