Quick Points
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Modern-day media centered around zombies have become quite a trend in recent years in both film & television and now the trend has carried over into the video game realm. Mowing down zombies can be quite pleasing. What hasn't been done yet is having the ability to play a game through the perspective of a gun-toting, wise-cracking zombie. That's where NeverDead steps in, but was it properly executed? NeverDead has attempted to turn the tides on this new craving of zombie action by having players play as Bryce, an immortal monster hunter who manages to find himself in any possibly lethal dose of shenanigans. Five hundred years ago through a supernatural event, Bryce, an ordinary man, was enfused with the power of immortality. Now of course, all the people around him who he's loved are now long gone. In your journey, you'll be stabbed, shot, crushed, electrocuted, you name it, but you NeverDie. Bryce's speciality of immortality is the driving point to NeverDead. No matter the situation, Bryce's goal is to slice 'n' dice and/or shoot his way through waves of evil demons even if they manage to, quite literally, rip him apart limb from limb. Your head has been removed from your body, are you dead now? Head removal is usually a sure-fire way to know that something is dead, but that's simply not the case in NeverDead. Even if you are nothing but just a head, you can roll around and pick up your other limbs to carry on, or if you take long enough, your limbs will just regenerate as time passes. It's an authentic, yet comical mechanic that would usually be seen in a game under the creative control of Suda 51. An even more comical mechanic is the fact that you can intentionally pull your head of to roll around and reach unreachable areas, such as air ducts or other tight spaces. Unfortunately, as the game goes on, you'll find that you'll be doing this so often, you'll just want the game to end already. The realization that you are indeed completely immortal, the game just isn't very fun anymore. I don't understand how online hackers can get joy out of immortality in video games. It's just not very fun. What makes the situation in NeverDead even more frustrating is the fact that it's almost as if the enemies in the game are intentionally designed to send your limbs flying all over the place. In the middle of an attack, an enemy can hit you and send your head flying away, cancelling out the attack and making you defenseless as you try to roll your head back into your headless body. This is so frustrating, it's almost deemed this game entirely worthless. Fortunately, there are some redeeming qualities to this game. Gun combat isn't very engaging and in fact, it controls quite awfully. How is that a redeeming quality? Because of that, the melee combat is much more fun. In fact, it should be your preferred method of demon slaying. The guns don't really mow them down the way you'd probably like. Even with the weapon upgrades, firearms are still severely weak. In part with the idea of knowing an enemy may charge you and take your head off in one hit, you should just charge them instead with a beautiful sword. Melee combat is controlled via the right stick, consequently having Bryce swing his blade in the direction you flick the stick. You can also lock onto enemies using the left trigger to keep a better eye on your enemies. It's much more fun to just swing the sword around. Another mechanic built into NeverDead is the fully destructible environments The destructible environments is another method of fighting off the demons in itself. Strike a pillar or shoot up a piece of wall to have the building come crumbling down on your enemies. There's a downside to the destructible environments that takes away the fun in it all. Your enemies can also destroy the environments too. And something's just not as fun if you aren't the only one who can do it. I know, it's selfish, but it really takes away some of the fun. Especially if enemies can destroy the environment and kill themselves, or anyone around them. Sometimes they'll destroy an entire area, only to kill themselves and the other enemies surrounding them. You'll walk into an area and not even have to swing your sword because of this design flaw. Using the environments as a weapon is always nice, but it's execution is rather lacklustre in the realm of NeverDead. The above flaws are also assisted by the simple notion that combat always manages to play out the same exact way. Always! You'll walk into a new area, the exit behind you and the clear-as-day exit opposite of you is now blockaded and there's no way out, enemies spawn, and you must kill them all in order to continue your quest. This same old-school design is found in Capcom's Devil May Cry series, but there's something about its execution in the Devil May Cry series that makes it work. NeverDead is like the poor man's Devil May Cry in a sense. In fact, I think that's a brilliant way to put it. What probably plays a big part in this is the simple fact that you can do so much as Dante combat-wise. As I've mentioned above, there's nothing smooth or seamless about gun combat as Bryce. It's clunky, it's slow, it's powerless. Although the sword combat works, it's not as twitch-inducing or combo-packed as Devil May Cry's combat. In Devil May Cry, you can string up quite a bit of the pain on your enemies. In NeverDead, not so much. As Bryce, you'll just slay a few demons, destroy their little spawn holes so no more can arise, and possibly fight a miniboss. You'll encounter the same enemies throughout the entire game over and over again, and you'll even encounter the same minibosses multiple times. There's far too much familiarity in NeverDead. You'll acquire some new abilities, but after encountering the same enemies over and over again, what's the use? You may have noticed that through this entire time, I didn't even talk about a story. That's because the story is very generic. Your goal is pretty much to stop the resurrection of the leader of these demons that you've been slaying for the entire game. As you play through, you kind of forget the goal you are striving for. And that's the case for all of these kind of games. The writing for the game is almost like the writing for the comic turned television series, The Walking Dead. It's almost like the writer WANT you to hate every character you encounter. As the story goes on and the awful dialogue continues, you can't help but feel hate towards every character you encounter. Especially since the characters you encounter, and are forced to work with, are the one and only way you can see a "Game Over" screen in this game. That's right, YOU can't die, but your mortal tag-alongs can. And Bryce is as flat as Paris Hilton's chest. So flat, you'll just want to say "Oh, shut up" as soon as he tries his take on "sarcasm" and "wit." It's obvious people who are 500 years old aren't very funny. Just ask Shakespeare. If you look at NeverDead as an old school throwback kind of title, the game is half-decent, but if you want to look at it as an enriching action adventure title, you're looking in the wrong place. NeverDead is definitely a "bargain binner" if you're one of those people, like me, who love weird over-the-top games where one of the bosses has three heads one of which is a rabbit, a panther, and an alligator connected to the body of a cockroach. Although Suda 51 had nothing to do with this game, for analogical reasons, NeverDead is like Suda 51's cheap creative knock-off of Devil May Cry that just wasn't executed properly. At face value, NeverDead is a decent game that could have been so much more than what it was. It just needed much better gameplay design choices. Through the grand picture, it's frustrating, it's slow, and just needed a little more work. NeverDead could have managed to be so much more, it had a very interesting concept, but execution hindered the final product. |
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