NeverDead Review

NeverDead introduces you to a demon hunter named Bryce, oh yea and he’s a *currently* 500 year old immortal. Years ago he tried to kill the super evil demon king named [something evil] but his wife got iced and he was given immortality because that’s way worse than death. Oh yea, spoilers: His wife died.

NeverDead
Developer: Rebellion
Price: $60
Platform: PS3 (reviewed) and 360

She was a special wizard who could cast wizard stuff so that Bryce could harm the demons since without her spells a demon can’t be killed. Also, there hasn’t been a wizard for 500 years (spoilers, you find another in a completely coincidental incident because destiny and cliche). I figured this was a plot hole since you spend most of the game killing demons but apparently the writers realized this and added in that Bryce can kill those hundreds of other demons ‘because he’s special’ for some unspecified reason yet demons with actual names (e.g., the big bad and his minion) need wizard shit for Bryce to hurt them.

It’s pretty weak, but I suppose the writers didn’t really give much a fuck when they introduced Alex (another immortal demon hunter who’s not really immortal for some reason because bullshit) who SCREAMS “I’m evil” with his opening line being “lol, I ‘accidentally’ killed my partner, oh yea and he was the third one this week or something. Mind if I flip my ‘so goth’ hair and show off my black/red uniform while you check out the knives I leave stabbed into my body just because I’m edgy like that?”. They also throw in your boss/CEO character who is apparently the head of the demon hunting organization with a voice so evil that the moment you hear him talk in the first level you know he’s going to betray you. Which he and Alex totally do and the game tries so hard to make it seem like it was a surprise that it was actually kind of cute. The best part of this story is Bryce’s banter whenever he loses a limb. I was still chuckling at his puns (such as when you’re playing as his decapitated head and he shouts “ROLLIN ROLLIN ROLLIN” or “Man I really got a head of myself there”) but I’ll chalk that up to me being a huge sucker for puns.

“But Diego, surely a game with the idea that you play as an immortal must make up for its flat plot with fun gameplay right?” AHAHAHA, no. The combat in this game feels just as lousy as its story. This isn’t Shadows of the Damned that had a fully intentional silly plot with solid gameplay; this is NeverDead with a pretty serious plot (if it was every supposed to be ‘wacky’ the writers did a damn good job fooling me) with gameplay as terrible as this years Grammy nominations for AOTY (yes I’m still bitter about that). First of all you have a set of guns that are completely useless against enemies besides the shotgun and the game has a serious case of the “I’m going to shove as much ammo for your pistols instead of something useful like your shotgun”. In the time it takes for you to kill something with your pistols (oh yea, you can dual wield any of the weapons together) you could’ve instead done it in the 2 seconds it takes with the sword. Bryce rolls around with a massive sword that you pull out and with the L1/left bumper you ready the sword and swing the right stick to attack while holding R1/right bumper you can block (but why would you ever need to when everything dies with 3 swipes?) incoming attacks. It really feels like the guns were thrown in just to give the game some sort of variety but the developers forgot to either balance the guns to match the strength of the sword or never realized that the sword is so strong that it makes the guns utterly useless. The gun play also feels really loose (not in a good way) and the combat roll that’s intended for dodging is so slow I wondered if they just threw it in there for laughs. NeverDead does feature a TON of destructibility in its environments; not like Battlefield where you level entire buildings, but almost everything in a room can be smashed apart. The game actually puts an emphasis on using the environment to kill enemies since things that are destroyed tend to burst outward like you hit a grenade hiding within it which works surprisingly well against enemies standing next to certain bits of the environment. You could sit around arguing why things explode upon touch in this game, but I suppose you could be questioning why you’re playing this game instead. Fun Fact: That was my actual response to an actual question my friend asked me in the beginning of this paragraph.

NeverDead features an XP system where you’ll gain points from killing enemies, picking up red ‘minor’ collectibles, snagging golden ‘major’ collectibles, and finishing levels. You’ll use these points to purchase abilities that you can then equip, assuming you have enough space since they all take up a certain amount of slots with a total of 16 available. These skills vary from increased sword/gun damage, reduced reticule wobble, speed boost when missing limbs, XP boosts and a few others. I got the trophy for purchasing 50% of them and after counting how many I had it’s safe to say that there’s well over 70 abilities to acquire with some not available to you until after you beat the game. Most of these are completely useless besides the increased speed while decapitated and I suppose the sword power increase to become even more of a killing machine.

The main gimmick of NeverDead is that you simply cannot die. Instead of losing health you’ll simply lose one of your limbs if you’re hit enough. This leads to humorous situations when you’re hobbling around on a single leg while fighting enemies and Bryce seems more concerned with locating his missing leg then he does fighting the monsters. The game uses this in various puzzles that involve using your head to navigate a straightforward vent then regenerate your body on the other side to press the button and one moment where you need to use an arm to connect two circuits. You can purchase an ability that lets you turn your thrown arms into grenades, but ultimately the sword is once again still the best choice for combat. Eventually the game introduces an enemy called the Grandbaby. This thing is tiny and nonlethal; until you lose your head and get sucked into it. These little bastards will roll around the area waiting for the moment that you lose an arm and a leg and run off with them, eventually digesting it which is no big deal since you can just regenerate any lost limbs after a bit. They get infuriating once you realize that each battle tosses 3-5 of them in the room, they will infinitely respawn until you kill the other enemies, and that you can actually ‘die’ from them. Once they get your head in their suction you’ll be prompted to perform an annoying QTE that requires you to time a button press exactly on a moving target; hit the target and you get spit out, miss and it’s Game Over. The Grandbabies weren’t too bad in the beginning, but once you hit the sewer level the enemies suddenly begin steroid use and can shatter you with a single hit leaving you rolling around looking for your body before a Grandbaby can find you first. I think I spent more time rolling around evading Grandbabies in the two final bosses (and any fight with a Panda Bear, no it’s not an actual panda just a shit boss) than actually fighting them. The final fights were incredibly infuriating since Alex can quickly slice you apart and [insert evil name] the Demon King has a shockwave attack (I thought we agreed that wasn’t good game design guys) that will instantly throw your limbs all over the arena. The other issue is that, besides the place being FULL of Grandbabies, the floor is uneven so it makes traversal clumsy. It blows my mind why any competent game designer would ruin such a novel idea of playing as an immortal character by including this enemy. The game would honestly be much more tolerable if they had removed the little fucks.

You’ll usually roll around with Arcadia who isn’t as lucky as Bryce. Thankfully she has quite a bit of health and most of the times I had to revive her where my faults from shooting nearby explosive barrels; the ‘hold to revive’ option is also instant so the only reason she should ever die on you is if you’re too stupid to get over to her before she bleeds out.

NeverDead’s protagonist Bryce might be immortal but it’s a shame that the online component didn’t get the same treatment. For a whole week I would log on 3 times a day (in the morning, afternoon, and night) and I could only ever find one or two games to join with my highest being three. There are around a dozen challenges with the following game modes: Arena Onslaught, Onslaught, Search and Rescue, Fragile Alliance, & Egg Hunt. Arena Onslaught is your typical horde mode with various weapons scattered throughout the stage and stronger enemies getting thrown in; Onslaught on the other hand is the same thing except that you have to move from area to area to find the enemy waves you’re supposed to kill. Search and Rescue is exactly what it sounds like with you escorting idiotic NPC’s. Fragile Alliance tasks you with reaching as many checkpoints as possible before your opponent, each area must be cleared of enemies before you can reach the next checkpoint. Egg Hunt has you running around collecting eggs, person with the most wins. These modes are not fun. You can select from a Bryce, young Bryce, & Alex skin but I wasn’t really sure how the game decided which one you played as since I didn’t see any option to set which skin you wanted. You can also play as Arcadia, but the fact that she can die doesn’t make up for the unlimited ammo in her shit rifle. The one redeeming feature is that any XP gained while playing online can be used to unlock abilities for single player and vice versa, but I honestly don’t know why you would want to replay the campaign or slug through the vacant online matches.

Nobody is going to be praising NeverDead for the way it looks, but man will they talk about how quickly the game went from ‘interesting locals’ to ‘sewer/destroyed building level #352’. The first stage threw you into a mental asylum overgrown with vegetation that introduced the neat monster design with a wicked cool looking boss. The second level brought us to a museum that allowed us to fully smash the place apart and while it reused the same enemies from before I forgave it since it was just the second level and the boss fight at the end was pretty cool with a neat looking monster. I find it fitting that the next place the game takes you is a dreadful sewer level and it’s here when the game reveals that it’s only going to get worse from here with the same 3 enemies, dreadful level design, and bosses that feel like such a chore your mother will threaten you with playing this game if you don’t take the trash out. I will say that the Hippo boss was a really cool design, but I would hardly call it a boss fight since all you do is shoot (really weak) ‘bugs’ until the shields on the hippo lowers and you can hit its weak point while it lazily floats around the place doing nothing. The music is also filled with your typical heavy metal guitar riffs that feel really uninspired.

The Final Word
NeverDead’s protagonist Bryce might be immortal but that didn’t stop Rebellion from killing off a neat idea and stopping any sort of fun this game had. I honestly don’t see why anyone should buy this, at least at full price, with its barely 6 hour campaign and an online community a ghost town would be jealous of. It really is a shame because the first 2 levels were fantastic, but after that all it is are the same 3 enemies with *very* slight variations, a boss used three times with the infuriating miniboss repeated more, dull levels, and two final bosses that will have you yelling “COME ON” at your screen.

Did you see how I used the same joke twice? Would you say it was a bit repetitive, perhaps a bit like NeverDead? Ok I’ll stop with the jokes or someone might lose their head. I just realized I only threw in one half-assed pun, I’m actually pretty disappointed in myself.

– MonsterVine Rating: 2.5 out of 5 – Mediocre