Sword of the Berserk: Guts’ Rage Review

I’ll start off by saying that I did not think I would like this game. When I first played it, I noticed the mediocre graphics and what seemed like a boring story. It starts with a wagon going down a trail and they are attacked by natives of the area. It still somehow seems boring, until you realize it isn’t one of those stupid games they try to get kids to buy. This is an M rated game for language, blood, and gore. You play as a tough-guy who doesn’t talk much.

You get thrown into gameplay and have to fend off the natives – probably about twenty. This may seem tough for a second, until you realize the HUGE SWORD on your back. I’m talking about bigger than Final Fantasy 7 Cloud’s sword.

This is a third-person fighting game. With the four main Dreamcast buttons, you can do different slashes with the sword; spilling huge amounts of blood everywhere as their bodies collapse; it’s actually quite cool. Another cool feature about this game is the “Rage Gauge�. It’s a red bar at the top that fills up slowly every time you slash. Once it fills completely up, you change into a mode in which me and my pals call “Mad mode�, which means the screen tints red, you are a little bit faster, and you are invincible for a short amount of time. If you press R, you can switch to another mode in which you can shoot from a cross-bow, but it isn’t very powerful.

I expected a shallow story with such a great gameplay engine, but I wasn’t very disappointed. The story is about a small town, in which a disease slowly is spreading. In this disease, people can randomly go “berserk�. Their body parts swell, and they turn into monsters. This is where most of the bosses in this game come from. Not only is this disease spreading…you are slowly being infected, and you must find the man responsible for creating this virus, which leads you into many levels with huge amounts of infected people, promising a good fight.

Some things that really add spunk to this game are, for instance, a little girl that is always cussing at a little mischievous fairy, and the exciting music. This is definitely one of those games that is a must-play for Dreamcast owners. The only downsides I could come up with were too many cutscenes (although they were very well done) and the graphics, which weren’t necessarily bad, but they definitely could have been better.