Furi is one of this year’s BIGGEST surprises (PS4 review)

One sword. One gun. Multiple guardians with one goal: to stop you from breaking out of prison. This is the concept of Furi, a game centered around the tension of boss fights, before and during.

You play as an unnamed protagonist who is trapped in an intergalactic prison for reasons not explained. Suddenly, a mysterious man with a deranged-looking bunny hat breaks him out and tells him to escape. He serves as the storytelling mechanic throughout the game, reminding the silent protagonist of the events that occurred leading up to his imprisonment. What follows after his escape is the one of the most epic tutorials I have ever seen.

The first boss (pictured above) serves as a tutorial to guide you through the basic controls, but it doesn’t teach you everything. Each boss has a certain number of phases (represented by orange boxes on the top right) and they will occasionally have two segments to go with each. The first one requires you to mainly use your gun against them by using the right control stick, but you can use your saber if you get close enough, as it is more effective.

If there is a second segment to the boss, it will be close quarters, acting as a duel where parrying at the right time is necessary. If you parry at the last possible second, this will cause the boss to be stunned, allowing you to deliver a series of brutally slick attacks that cut down their health significantly. Parrying has never felt so good. Pressing X or R2 will enable a warp ability that you can use at any time, which will come in handy when dealing with projectiles, and there will be plenty of those to go around, trust me! Going to the pause menu will allow you to learn techniques that aren’t taught at the beginning, such as charge attacks and longer warps.

There are obviously so many movesets in Furi, and yet it controls astoundingly well. I never felt like I was cheated with an unresponsive button press; if I died in battle, I was the one responsible. One of the hardest parts of the game is remembering your foe’s attack pattern. Much like remembering a beat, the first two attacks may be faster than the last two, but either way the pattern won’t change on you suddenly. The only thing that will change is if they stop at the second attack or even the first. The third boss was especially difficult when it came to this. I discovered that the longer I fight a certain boss, the better I get at defeating them. Even though there aren’t many bosses, some could take about 15 minutes, others could take an hour.

All of these great gameplay elements are held together by a sensational, cel-shaded artstyle with visually-compelling characters designed by Afro Samurai creator Takashi Okazaki, all of whom are aided by remarkable voice acting. The only graphical problems I noticed on PS4 is that some cutscenes and one level in particular, suffer from minor screen-tearing as well as the framerate taking a dip if there are too many projectiles on screen. Fortunately, none of this takes away from the fun experience.

Furi‘s music was composed by various electro musicians consisting of Carpenter Brut, Danger, Waveshaper, The Toxic Avenger, etc.. All of these tracks bring a retro feel to the game, and are especially great during the atmospheric parts where you’re walking a path between bosses as the deranged bunny-man is filling you in on the story.

Final Reaction

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a sleeper hit on our hands. Not only is Furi aesthetically pleasing, but the boss-fight focused combat is pulled off extremely well to the point where it is, dare I say it, addicting! During my times away from this game, I would often think about how I was going to handle the boss I was currently on at the time and became completely satisfied once I beat them. The talented developers at The Game Bakers should be proud of their masterpiece and I can not wait to see what future games are in store for them.

By the way, if you own a PS4 and have a PlayStation Plus account, you have no reason to not pick up this game on July 5th as it is being sold for the affordable price of FREE! If you have a PC, Furi will be up on Steam the same day for $24.99, same price on the PlayStation Store if you don’t have a Plus account. No shame in waiting for a price drop, but if you like to support indie developers, this one is worth every penny.

Rating: 5/5 Atoms