Great games often spring from a single brilliant idea, like a protagonist that can pull himself back together after being blown apart. Unfortunately this is also the case for many really crappy games. Where does NeverDeadâs mangled pile of people parts fall?
If youâre any good at reading charts, you probably have already sussed the answer to that particular brain teaser. If youâve been following NeverDeadâs marketing pre-launch marketing push (or lack thereof) you might have seen this coming. Despite starring a former demon turned demo hunter that really knows how to get it together, this was a game fated for mediocrity.
And thatâs exactly where the assembled video game critics placed it, on average at least. Their individual opinions are a bit more scattered.
You can tell a lot about a game by the stuff it asks you to pick up. Take Uncharted, for example, which squirrels away unique archaeological treasures off the beaten track, a conceit entirely in keeping with the seriesâ fiction. Super Mario 3D Landâs medals tease you into tricky tests of platforming skill or inquisitive probing. Batman: Arkham City, meanwhile, has the Riddler trophies, each an entertaining environmental puzzle to solve. In NeverDead, collectibles hide in plain sight, happily giving off a bright yellow glow. In NeverDead, collectibles are called âcollectiblesâ.
Collectable âcollectiblesâ just about sums up the lack of inspiration in NeverDead, and thatâs doubly disappointing given a genuinely decent idea at its core. 500-year-old demon hunter Bryce Boltzman is immortal, you see, which means he responds rather differently to serious injury than you or I.
When youâre making a game with a lead character who canât die, youâre left with a serious jeopardy deficit. NeverDeadâs problem was always going to be generating tension. Your partner, Arcadia, can die, triggering a game over, but itâs unlikely. And her death would be desirable anyway â the banter between her and hero Bryce is cyclical, bottom-of-the-barrel sass.
Immortal you may be, but your arms and legs eject with indecent regularity, and your head falls off at the drop of a hat. When youâre rolling around as a head, youâre likely to be eaten by a Grandbaby. If it gets you, thereâs a live or die QTE. Your head gets knocked off a lot, and Grandbabies respawn infinitely, so this happens far too often. Unfortunately, death by QTE is one of the less obnoxious decisions in the game.
âŚthe demon hunter thing is not NeverDeadâs main selling point. Thatâs reserved for Bryceâs ability to be torn limb-from-limb and not die. Not only that, but he can reattach his limbs simply by rolling over them.
Itâs a crazy premise and a crazy game. The sheer volume of wackiness on offer acts as an incredibly strong force in making you want to like it. I really want to like this game. Unfortunately, try as I might, the execution of the gameplay makes liking it an incredibly difficult job. Itâs almost as if the dev team at Rebellion have tried to create an action game in the Japanese style of over-the-top action and constant challenge, but have failed to balance the ideas with the interaction.
The environments are barren, the sound is glitchy during cut-scenes and the camera is awkward to shunt around. Worst of all, NeverDead gets repetitive really quickly. The combat can probably take most of the blame for this. With little in the way of set-pieces or palate-cleansers, NeverDeadâs first few hours tend to dump you into a series of muddled interiors before barring the exits after you move through each doorway, trapping you in rooms filled with monsters. In order to proceed, you have to take out a selection of demon spawn points while they burp a tasting menu of otherworldly horrors into your face. Once theyâre destroyed, the exits open up again, you advance, and the whole thing repeats itself.
Occasionally thereâs a very simple puzzle to tackle in between bursts of violence, but it doesnât save you from the relentless application of an uninspiring formula â and NeverDeadâs moment-to-moment demon slaughtering isnât quite entertaining enough to cope with such a bare-bones approach to design.
The whole shtick of having your body dismembered as damage can be very frustrating too, especially with the dodgy hit-detection and inherent randomness over which limb will be lost. Rather than being the challenge that it was intended to be, it just becomes annoying after a while. Enemy variety is quite poor too, with about half a dozen minor cronies at most, while bosses from early in the game end up becoming sub-bosses later on. It feels like a real dearth of creative input. And the game design compounds this by failing in any proper inspiration. It really does devolve to you moving from room to room, where the path only opens up once youâve defeated all the enemy waves.
As mentioned, there are some exciting action sequences and these have some good variety to them. Unfortunately, the memory of these is sullied through the repetition of rinse-repeat sequences of trudging through each enemy wave. Disappointingly, the developers didnât make use of the dismemberment abilities for more puzzles, as there are a couple in the game that leave you wanting more. Arcadia, Bryceâs sidekick is a complete waste of space in terms of gameplay. She can hold her own in battle reasonably well, and you rarely have to look after her or really do anything with here. She seems to be purely there for the story as opposed to gameplay. Finally, there is a minor but disappointing lack of consistency in the controls, occasionally leaving you frustrated at a lack of response.
Rolling credits neednât mark the end of your explosive shenanigans, as you can hook up with a few friends online for four kinds of timed multiplayer. âOnslaughtâ unleashes unyielding waves thatâll torture any fewer than four players, but it takes only two to enjoy a race through the infested checkpoint courses of âFragile Alliance.â Shepherding dopey civilians through âSearch and Rescueâ missions and gathering golden treasures in âEgg Huntâ matches couldâve been just as enjoyable if the maps werenât such an unreadable maze of corridors â a simple mini-map wouldâve made these modes much better.
Still, even if NeverDead isnât quite the quirky prize it might have been, itâs certainly an idiosyncratic (and often one-legged) dance through entertainingly outlandish territory.
Looks like this one doesnât have much of a leg to stand on. Thank you, Iâll be here all week.
