FURI REVIEW

Even though Furi stars the Stranger, a sci-fi samurai, busting out of a celestial prison with the aid of an omnipresent angry man dressed as a purple rabbit, I never felt like I was playing a ridiculous game. Furi counters its ludicrous premise, strenuous combat, loud neon synth jams, and saturated color palette with a surprising amount of restraint. It’s simply a series of top-down bullet hell, hack-and-slash boss fights that aren’t infinite anime escalations of power, but fair and challenging one-on-one encounters. You have as much power at the beginning as you do in the end—it’s only your skill that changes. But getting good can be quite the test of patience. Rare bugs and a few poorly telegraphed boss phases will be Furi’s Achilles’ heel for some, no matter how meditative and satisfying the combat is. Furi’s combat is shallow, and I mean that as a compliment. All you can do is observe, react, and punish. It’s advanced Bop-It, a lighting quick series of rock-paper-scissors, the Grand Finals in fly-swatting—Furi exercises the hell out of a very small set of abilities until they feel like they were always there. Flock of Samurai You can slash, parry, shoot, and dash from the first minute, and holding each action’s button charges that move (parry is the only exception), which makes them more powerful at the cost of slower movement. It’s a fun combat system that rewards taking risks and encourages close study of the enemy’s offense in order to perfect timing. The soundtrack is lovely company for all the hard work I put in, a moody, synth-heavy score that spells intrigue and excitement in John Carpenter’s language. Every boss is a remix of similar challenges that test your mastery of these controls and consist of several phases, marked by depleting a block of the boss’s health bar. Phase one will always be the easiest, introducing the boss’s combat leaning—some focus on bullet hell attacks, others on swordplay, stealth, and so on.