Official_Xbox_Magazine_USA_Issue_202_July_2017

Preview
The title is a reference to Greek mythology, in which Furies were goddesses of vengeance
Full Metal Furies
the fast, the furious and the fully
featured fisticuffs
James Nouch
Publisher cellar Door games DeveloPer cellar Door games
Format xbox one eta July 2017
FRESH AIR
land a blow on a
midair enemy and
you’ll score an ‘aircrit’
for additional
damage. that may
sound simple, but the
system paves the way
for some chaotic cooperative
juggling, as
player one launches a
troublesome grunt into
the air for player two
to ruthlessly clobber.
you can even score aircrits
in single-player,
thanks to your ability
to instantly swap
between characters.
you might use the
sentinel’s shout to
launch a beastie, pull
the right trigger to
instantly switch to the
sniper, and shoot that
schmuck right out
of the sky.
Believe it or not, side-scrolling beat-
’em-ups were once big business. Older
gamers will no doubt remember these
days: You’d clock off from the factory
after a hard day spent making
grandfather clocks and rotary
telephones, stumble into some sleazy
penny arcade, and spend your
paycheck on Double Dragon and Final
Fight credits. Hungry and defeated,
you’d walk home, kicking trashcans
along the way to extract the pristine
roast turkeys hidden therein.
But while Full Metal Furies is
certainly a jaunty callback to those
halcyon days, it’s not just a nostalgic
retread. This is a side-scrolling brawler
built for the present day, and it’s been
in development for more than three
years over at Cellar Door Games, the
studio responsible for the superbly
streamlined roguelike Rogue Legacy.
“Three years is a really long time to
make a brawler,” says co-founder
Teddy Lee, but this is because Cellar
Door wants to do nothing less than
rejuvenate the entire genre.
Which is why it comes as some
surprise to discover that neither Teddy
nor sibling co-founder Kenny actually
like brawlers all that much. “Our goal
was to modernize the brawler because
we felt the genre was stagnant,”
“Our goal was to modernize
the brawler because we felt
the genre was stagnant”
Kenny explains. The inclusion of four
playable character classes—Sentinel,
Sniper, Engineer, and Fighter—is key
to that ambition. So if you’re playing
as a beefy tank, you’ll have a different
moveset from the long-range
gunsmith or grinning greasemonkey.
Furious four
All of these abilities can be chained
together to create complex combos,
and Full Metal Furies is challenging
enough to ensure that slapping at
your controller’s face buttons won’t
reap rewards in-game. “Virtually every
single brawler out there is buttonmashing,”
Kenny tells us. “If players go
into this expecting that, they’re not
going to get very far. And hopefully
they’ll understand that’s the purpose
of the game, as opposed to saying
‘this game just sucks’. It’s a bit risky.”
So, once you hop into a co-op
game, you’ll be expected to support
your teammates and work together to
succeed. An example: Many foes are
equipped with colored barriers that
resist damage. To pop protective
shields, the character class of the
corresponding color will have to zero
in that foe and dole out damage. Fail
to prioritize properly, and you can
expect a swift pummelling.
That’s great for multiplayer, but
what about single-player? “We wanted
to make sure single-player was just as
much fun as multiplayer,” says Teddy.
“So instead of adding in a bot, which
is never actually that fun to play with,
we made it so you can quick-switch
your characters. So, in single-player
you actually choose two champions,
and then pressing right-trigger
immediately swaps your character. It’s
instant—there’s no delay.”In practice,
this means that you’re able to perform
lengthy character-switching combos
even if you happen to be brawling on
your lonesome, switching between
heroes to juggle foes on the fly.
“We made Rogue Legacy because
we didn’t really like roguelikes,” Teddy
concludes, causing us to nearly faint
in astonishment. “So then we made
Full Metal Furies because there
weren’t any brawlers that we really
liked.” So, whether you happen to be a
connoisseur of the genre or strictly
brawler-phobic, Cellar Door’s latest
might just surprise you. n
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