Only Mostly Dead

NEVERDEAD REVIEW

Your arms come off and you can still use them and decapitation provides excellent scouting possibilities.  You’re cursed with immortality, you cannot die, and you are forced to live with regret over past mistakes and with your flawed self.  Wow, what a great premise for a game.  I want to love it because it seems like such a big win on the mechanics and story front, unfortunately it doesn’t quite deliver on either.

In the game you are Bryce Boltzman, a demon hunter partnered with a snarky, sexy (?) blonde who can only speak to you with disdain.  She is human; you are not, so it would seem the fail situation would be that you allow her to die which could have been interesting if she weren’t such a bitch.  Bryce seems pretty self-loathing himself, so maybe this isn’t a problem that was a game killer.  The combat is frenetic and set in interesting and well-rendered locales all of which are very interactive, you can hurt enemies with architecture you destroy- good idea, and makes sense because in many games you can destroy mountains, but that window or wooden door is impenetrable.  Damage is shown by combats effect on your body, like your leg is torn off, cool, no HUD, easy to read, fine.  Game should be great.

THE PROBLEM WITH THE GAME

If you play it play it on easy.  Combat starts as pretty fun, electrifying yourself, setting fire to yourself, or tearing off your own head to solve puzzles or engage in a battle.  You can use your limbs as bombs or turrets by ripping them off and throwing them strategically.  The fighting doesn’t stay fun, the camera is hard to control, and the fighting is fastpaced and from all over, so I never got time to really play with the mechanics.  By the middle your body is falling apart all the time which wouldn’t be a bad challenge except who knows if one hit is going to ruin you or four, plus there are these grandbabies that roll around trying to ingest your head and if they do then game over.  You can never stop grandbabies from coming; kill one it is immediately replaced, so now not only can you quite see what is going on and you have been neutralized in combat, but you need to find your limbs or wait to regenerate them while these babies try to suck you in- it becomes an exercise in frustration.  While there are many ways to adjust and level up Bryce none of them make you any more cohesive and all of this is made even more strange by the fact you can not seem to hold yourself together after one hit and your abusive, fleshy partner in a short sweater skirt has no problem withstanding multiple demon attacks.  The final boss batte is absolutely no fun.

Neverdead has so much possibility with a few tweaks in every area it could be a great game, clearer combat, more abilities and ability slots (being forced to juice up your guns or your sword is stupid when you area faced simultaneously with enemies immune to one of the other), give a little more depth or a little more camp to the characters, they hover impotently between the two, combat that ends up being button mashing because there is not enough time to process or plan, and less grandbabies.  It seemed like they thought the game was too easy so they made you fall apart all the time and then try to avoid little monsters in the midst of combat.

Neverdead is worth a cheap look and definitely worth a sequel, but it never reaches it’s potential in its first outing.  It is original and smart, but the gameplay can’t keep up with it.  It’s really unfortunate that Neverdead dies about halfway through and it doesn’t seem worth your effort to pick up the pieces.