Full Metal Furies Review – Hitting All the Right Targets

Matt Keith January 26, 2018 News, Quick Hit Reviews

Every once in a blue moon a game seems to hit all the right notes, creating a symphony of sound that resonates perfectly with a player. As with every great symphony, one does not necessarily need to love the particular melody or harmony to appreciate the complexity and talent needed to create the music. In the same way some games although not necessarily a players preferred genre or style, can be appreciated for their excellent design and implementation. This is our Full Metal Furies Review.

Over the last week, I have spent some time with Cellar Door Game’s latest entry, Full Metal Furies, and suffice to say I walked away seriously impressed. Cellar Door, the creator of the award-winning Rogue Legacy, have infused their charming pixel art and creative design to produce a delightful side-scrolling team-based brawler that reminds me of a blending of classics like TMNT: Turtles in Time and Castle Crashers. So without further ado let’s jump into our review of Full Metal Furies.

Set in a world where ruthless titans fight in an ongoing war for power, a group of warriors set out to put an end to the titans destructive reign in the hopes of saving humanity. You pick from one of four heroines, each with their own very specific set of skills, and set out to defeat the Titans at any cost. The game is built from the ground up with team play in mind with each hero’s abilities complimenting the others. Even in a solo game you choose up two of the four heroes and can hot swap on the fly between them during battles. The mix of diverse characters and complementary skill sets create some seriously fun moments in Full Metal Furies.

As with Rogue Legacy, Furies offers a fairly robust upgrade system for your characters allowing you focus your energy on one or two characters and really develop a play style that fits you. Using gold collected from missions you invest in new abilities and skills that further power up your character. It’s a simple system to pick up and as Full Metal is a much more forgiving game than Rouge is, it doesn’t hurt too much if you invest in something you don’t end up using later.

Combat and controls are handled best with a controller (which is strongly recommended by the developer). The gameplay is smooth and easy to pick up but as with Cellar Doors previous title, the real challenge is mastering all of the mechanics. Sure it’s easy to shoot, smash and run around on screen but the variety of enemies, each with their own unique style of combat and weaknesses, forces you to think fast and smart as you progress through the levels. It all works together extremely well and offers a fun level of challenge.

The visuals in Full Metal Furies feels very reminiscent Cellar Doors previous work yet still manages to squeeze in its own unique take on the pixel art design. One item to note is that even as a side-scrolling brawler, Cellar made sure to offer some unique perspectives to maps offering different depths of field, a variety of objects that actually become the foreground, as well as few other little touches that really show the attention to detail the developer has put into their title.

The inclusion of full couch and online co-op is what really helps Full Metal Furies stand out as a retro side-scrolling brawler. As mentioned, the game really reminds me a lot of TMNT: Turtles in Time and Castle Crashers and as such is most enjoyable when played with others. With its easy setup and synergistic gameplay, Furies is a great co-op romp for those that enjoy a fun gaming night with friends. Throw in added cross-play support between Xbox and Windows 10 players and it really does open up the playing field and flexibility for groups to get going on this indie title.

Full Metal Furies is high-quality side-scrolling brawler that understands its roots while still managing to both pushes the genre forward with its inclusion of some great RPG elements as well as add its own unique style to the genre. Furies offers many hours of single-player fun and shines exceptionally well when played to its full potential as a co-op experience. I highly recommend picking this title up if you’re looking for something new and charming.