Neverdead Review | Video Games News, Reviews, Release Dates

As a reviewer, I don?t like to be harsh on games. I realize how?many?people and man hours?it takes to craft a video game, so I figured I?d start this review off with something nice before I completely bash it; Neverdead tried.?It tried to be a good third person action game in the same style as the Devil May Cry games and while it ultimately failed due to its biggest selling point, not being able to die, it at least tried something new.?

In Neverdead, you take control of Bryce, a mercenary who works for a company that hunts demons. You have a partner named Arcadia who accompanies you throughout the entire game and yes, she is an NPC?who can die and yes, you do have to revive her or else it is game over.?Through a series of flashback cut scenes, you are treated to the origin story of how Bryce became immortal. You see, 500 years ago he was a very tough demon hunter who, with the aid of his wife Cypher,?went and tried to kill the strongest demon in the world, Astaroth. After a little bit of cheesy dialogue, Cypher dies and?because of this Bryce can no longer kill demons and is beaten by Astaroth. Instead of killing him though, Astaroth?makes Bryce immortal. It seems weird but you do find out later on that there was a purpose to it.?

While there are those cut scenes scattered throughout the game, you will only get to control Bryce in the present day and there is where the entire game takes place.?In the first mission, you travel with Arcadia to an abandoned mental asylum to defeat a demon that has been running amok. In order to get to the demon though, you must first traverse the asylum and defeat wave after wave of demons that stand in your way, and this is where the game falls apart.?

The combat in Neverdead is focused entirely on killing demons with your constantly duel wielded guns, or your sword. The gun-play tries to be a mix of Devil May Cry and Gears of War but due to the overall lack of accuracy, it ends up being much worse than either of those games. The reticule is just too big, meaning that even if you aim right at an enemy, you won?t even hit them half the time. The game does use power-ups that allow you to fix the accuracy problems, or even power your weapons up, but why should good aiming be an unlockable?

As for the sword in the game, it is much more useful because certain enemies cannot be killed by bullets, but every demon can be killed by the sword. So, you?ll pull your sword out and begin to cut down enemies. It works quite well, but it also leaves you more vulnerable to attacks and before long, you will be attacked and you experience the worst part of the game.

Once you are hit by an enemy, your limbs begin to fall off. Since you are an immortal and cannot die, your body parts will lay on the ground, waiting for you to re-attach them all. This mechanic was fun at first, but it happened to me about 300 ? 400 times throughout the 7 hour campaign and it really slows the game down. Honestly, if they had completely removed the fact that your limbs fall off and just incorporated a health system, Neverdead could have been a semi-decent third person game. Unfortunately, your limbs do fall off and when they do, even more problems pop up in the game.

Being that the game employs fully destructive environments to help you hurt enemies, it means a lot of debris will be left on the ground. So, say you are in the middle of your 500th straight corridor with the same two enemies attacking you, you destroy a column, and the debris hits you, knocking your head off to the other side of the room. Well, not only do you have to traverse the enemy filled area with a demon that eats your head (and is actually the only way you can ?die?), you have to hope that your body didn?t land neck down on a wall. This is because you need to perfectly line up your head with your neck to be re-attached. If for some reason you can?t, you have to wait about 15 ? 20 seconds for the regeneration bar to fill up, so you are able to re-grow your limbs. This will happen quite often, so a lot of time in the game will just be spent rolling on the ground, avoiding enemies.

Despite all the problems with the game, some good boss fights could have really turned it around. Well, they are just as bad as the rest of the game. Sure, they do create some big bosses to fight, but you are always in cramped areas and the bosses like to charge at you.?Being that your combat roll is terrible, you will get hit a lot and?a single attack from those bosses will knock your head off, meaning you have to fight through all the debris, get back to your body, shoot the boss a few times, then repeat the whole process over and over again.

The worst offender of this is easily the final boss fight. You are stuck on a platform, with a boss circling around you. He of course has giant arms that slam the ground and if you don?t jump at the perfect time, your head will fly off and almost certainly be eaten. If you manage to hurt the boss enough, you then have to do some platforming on a very poorly designed staircase, shoot perfectly through awkwardly placed circles, cut an arm off, and repeat the same process a few times. Throw in the fact that you have to dodge those head-eating enemies every time your head falls off and you have one of the most frustrating final bosses in a long time.

Neverdead truly was disappointing. It seemed like a good game with an interesting idea, but ended up being a repetitive third person action game with a predictable story, terrible voice acting, and poor mechanics. Ironically though, the worst point of the game was its biggest selling point. If they had just?removed the ?never dying?, it would?ve been a little better, but as it is, this is definitely one to avoid.

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Neverdead was reviewed with a copy rented through GameAccess.ca.

VN:F [1.9.11_1134]

Source: http://trendygamers.com/2012/02/07/neverdead-review/

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