It might be my decaying brain, but I am sure that games are becoming increasingly over-complicated these days. Take, for example, my LAN-fest on Supreme Commander against Jay last week. He was already reasonably competent at the thing and I hadn’t played a proper real-time strategy game for a dozen or so years so I knew I was in slight trouble, but it took me fully 3 proper length games and a total of approaching 5 hours to actually even get used to playing the thing. Thankfully my end-of-the-week patience mindset had autorun in my brain or I would probably have just given up and sulked.

As I walked home on the evening of our last match, I thought to myself how wonderful it would be if I could just sit down in front of a game for a while which required precisely no thought whatsoever. Something I could just sit in front of, press a few buttons and progress through without too much noodle use. Instantly, Gungrave sprung to mind.

Thing is, Gungrave is a pretty simple game. Beautifully presented and rather satisfying, but simple. You play the part of Beyond the Grave, a strangely named fellow who wields two enormously powerful handguns. Setting off on a mission to bring down the corrupted corporation he once formed an integral part of, you control Grave through six manic levels of gun firing, gun firing and… er… gun firing. Possibly a little jumping too. Oh, and some running. Enemies and bosses will flail in your mighty wake as you proceed to explode pretty much everything in your way.

Playing Gungrave is little more than a matter of running through the linear levels and rapidly shooting at anything and everything. Often you will end up getting ambushed by a dozen or so enemies, leaving you no option but to run around spraying bullets left, right and centre. Hitting more things in a chain builds up a score, and the higher the score the more your Demolition Shot metre fills. Upon clocking up a full metre you are given a powerful shot to use in order to clean up an area with the touch of a button.

With each stage taking approximately ten minutes, it’s pretty obvious that things are not going to last too long. This brings up the issue of value for money, and although the developers have added the incentive of allowing the player to carry over unlocked moves into his new game it is highly unlikely most will be that bothered about running through the levels again once they’ve been wiped clean. Sure, being able to play through with a Max Payne slowdown mode or a few extra Demolition Shots is cool to an extent, but the novelty wears thin pretty quickly.

Which is something that most certainly can’t be levelled at the visual side of the game, which is utterly wonderful. With character design being handled by two veteran anime stalwarts it was pretty likely that a host of memorable protagonists would spring forth, and this is the case. Grave himself lurches around with a huge coffin on his back, never saying a word. Enemies come in all shapes and forms, from standard cannon fodder in garish suits to the bosses, all devilishly menacing and unique.

This is all dipped in classic anime styling. The cut scenes that are scattered infrequently throughout the action are as impressive as any full-length feature that I’ve seen recently, whilst the visuals during gameplay are a crisp, colourful cel-shaded affair. It’s a unique, memorable appearance that goes a long way to making up for the rather lacking gameplay. Having watched the accompanying television series, it all seems to fit very well indeed.

At full price, Gungrave will only really be worth it for fans of the anime series that want to see how the story continues. Okay, the game might be good, simple blasting fun, but seeing it come to an end after a couple of hours without much difficulty is rather disappointing. The visual side of the game does a great job and with a little bit of padding you feel that the game could have been something rather special, but as it is the whole thing is rather akin to a Faberge egg: beautifully designed, but rather hollow beneath the surface.