Full Metal Furies Review

Jan 17, 2018  Defend the free world from tyrannical titans in Full Metal Furies - a team-based brawler where cooperation is the key to victory. In multiplayer, everyone picks one hero and you must work.

After the death of Prometheus, the king of the gods, the titans waged war on each other to seize control of the world. The first great war left the world in ashes and the titans withdrew to re-build their forces. This world cannot withstand any more; someone must end the second great war before it starts. Enter the furies: Triss the tank, Alex the fighter, Meg the sniper, and Erin the engineer. Together they will drive back the titans, save the world, and make a lot of really corny jokes.

Cellar Door Games, the creators of the hit game Rogue Legacy based out of Toronto, are teaming up with Microsoft to create a co-op brawler experience called Full Metal Furies. The game takes the classic brawlers of our childhood like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games and re-imagines them into the world of action RPGs. Full Metal Furies features an all-female cast of quirky characters with a variety of skills and playstyles, skill trees and equipment that can modify a character to fit any player’s preferences, and hidden puzzle elements that bring in a deeper level of lore and even change gameplay.

Full Metal Furies can be played single player, or up to four player. When we play tested the game, the more was definitely the merrier. Solo gameplay was still very enjoyable, but much more dynamic and fun with four players. Some elements in the game only really show themselves with multiple players. For instance, when the enemies come into the screen they occasionally have a certain color barrier around them that corresponds to one of the four furies who must “break” (i.e. deal enough damage so that the shield goes away) that shield with the corresponding color. Once the barrier has been broken, that enemy can be damaged by any player. This dynamic forces all of the players to work together and coordinate with each other to progress through each level.

Each titan has its own personality, army of unique minions, environment/terrain, and even set of dumb jokes and/or puns. As players move through the world to defeat the titans, they will have to learn and re-learn how to combat these changing circumstances. If you’re expecting Full Metal Furies to be the stereotypical button-masher that this type of game often turns into, prepare to be surprised. Blind button-mashing rarely works in this game, the enemies are to smart and the game mechanics rely on players to make smart, intentional moves to defeat the minions that come on screen. BE WARNED: The bosses in this game are no slouches, they are very difficult and will change as you fight them. Players may find themselves very frustrated with the game (and each other) while trying to defeat the bosses, but players will certainly feel an enormous sense of accomplishment when they are finally able to defeat the bosses.

One of the most surprising elements in Full Metal Furies was the significance of the skill tree and equipment system. For this genre of gaming, these elements at first felt out of place. With further gameplay, each player was taking advantage of the skill tree and equipment to enhance the “role” that they played on the team. This unique addition to the game added a level of strategic entertainment for the gamer.

Realistic physics. Play snake online full screen. Many interesting levels. Handy system of controls.

Equipment can be found throughout the game, granting totally different functions for the characters move sets, allowing characters to customize to their own playstyle. However, each piece of equipment has character bonuses to unlock when the character achieves “mastery” with that piece through extended use. This means that though every player may find their favorite pieces of equipment, they may have to use other pieces for a while to acquire the character bonuses that are so helpful throughout the game. The skill trees also provide a wide range of character customization, allowing characters to be modified for offence, defense, support, protection, explosives, etc. It would be extremely wise to play consistently with the same four players (a “squad” if you will) so that they can maximize the effectiveness of these customizations.

The new title from Cellar Door Games will be available for $19.99 USD on Steam, Windows 10 Store, and Xbox One with full cross play abilities. Full Metal Furies is an incredibly enjoyable party game to play locally or online. It is more than worth a $20 investment for the estimated 15-20 hours of gameplay to finish the story your first time through.

*Full Metal Furies was provided to the reviewer by the publishing company but this fact did not alter the reviewer’s opinion*

Somewhere around the middle of its second world, the brawler veneer to Full Metal Furies begins to peel away. Underneath, you find something rather surprising. The familiar action loop that interrupts the ubiquitous screen-scrolling is not just a chance to mash buttons and eliminate foes, but a new configuration of recognizable patterns and enemy behaviors that feels designed to test your ability to quickly solve an ever-shifting jigsaw puzzle. It is beautiful, it is unique, and it is mad. It is also a glimpse into what these types of games could be.

At its outset, Cellar Door Games’ Full Metal Furies feels like the kind of side-scrolling beat ‘em up that we’ve seen make a resurgence since Castle Crashers struck it big on the Xbox Live Arcade back in 2008. There are four characters from which to choose (Triss the Sentinel, Alex the Fighter, Erin the Engineer, and Meg the Sniper) and each of the four Furies has her own unique set of attacks (e.g., Alex is melee-focused while Meg shoots a sniper rifle). If you’re playing the game alone, then you’ll select two of the Furies and can freely switch between them, and if you’re playing with friends then each player chooses the Fury they like best (no repeating characters, unfortunately). Once you get into the first level, things appear pretty standard. You’ll move across a screen until you reach its edge and transition to the next one, and enemies appear in little groups that are easily dispatched by mashing the attack button. Then, a new concept is introduced.

Every Fury has her own dodge mechanic to help her evade or escape enemy attacks, but it’s not something you can spam endlessly like your primary attack. There’s a cooldown attached to it, which means you have to think carefully about when you use it and how. Every Fury also has a special move (Triss, for instance, has a shout that hits all enemies within a radius around her) that similarly has a cooldown attached to it, and can also be used in clutch moments to get you out of a jam.

Immediately after that idea begins to take root, Cellar Door tosses another new mechanic into the mix: Fury-specific shields. Each Fury has a color associated with her (Triss is blue, Erin is green, Meg is yellow, and Alex is red) and enemies can spawn with shields around them of the same color. In order to break the shield and leave the enemy vulnerable to all Furies, you have to attack the enemy using the appropriate character - red to red, blue to blue, etc. Fortunately, enemies will only have shields that can be broken by the Furies you have in your group, i.e., if you’re playing with Erin and Meg, green and yellow, respectively, an enemy won’t have a red (Alex) shield as you’d have no way of breaking it.

From a gameplay perspective, this has some interesting results. In single-player, this mechanic forces you to switch back and forth between the two Furies you’ve selected, while in co-op it forces players to focus their efforts on specific enemies so their friends can damage those foes as well. These are the overt responses to the shield mechanic. Subtly, though, it’s forcing the player to make choices about which enemies are priority targets and which can be ignored (for now). None of these mechanics are exactly new to the brawler space, though they are more frequently encountered in shoot ‘em ups, and if that was all Full Metal Furies decided to do, then it probably would remain firmly within the realm of side-scrolling brawlers. But then, Cellar Door Games decides to take a sharp left turn.

Destruction derby. Jump into your car and take on one of four single-player modes: Wreckin' Racing has the player go through five divisions trying to score points by finishing with the leaders and causing major wrecks; Stock Car racing places more emphasis on finishing first, but slamming an opponent into the wall still makes for a great winning tactic; in the Destruction Derby, your only goal is to be the last car running. About Genre Racing Rating Rated 'E' for No Descriptors Summary Can you handle all of the action in Destruction Derby?

When enemies are knocked into the air, they can be hit again to inflict extra damage and keep them airborne a little longer (and, thus, not attacking you). What’s more, enemies will bounce off the borders/sides of the screen, meaning they’ll never be out of reach. The catch is that every Fury combos and juggles in a different way. Triss, the Tank, can knock enemies into the air with her basic attack, but she can only juggle them by using her dodge or her special attack. Both of those have cooldowns attached to them so you can’t just keep using them over and over again. If you’re playing the game in single-player, then you could switch to your secondary Fury and use one of her attacks/abilities to “Air Crit” the foes. In co-op, you can call out to your buddies in a fashion that’s reminiscent of Babe Ruth calling his home runs. You knock ‘em up, and your buddies knock ‘em down.