I Never Want To Be Immortal

There are few things more awesome than the ability to not die. In most games you’d have to find cheats to assume such a god-like power, but not in Neverdead. The core gameplay mechanic is it’s biggest letdown, and that’s just the tip of the disappointment iceberg.

I first heard about this game through music. Megadeth hadn’t released anything of note in years and the small sample of new music that accompanied the Neverdead trailer was the first time that I felt a little smidgen of excitement for the new album. This premature excitement was the key conspirator in the clouding of my judgement, forcing me to believe this was going to be a good game.

Four years on, I decided to go back and take another look at the trailer. In retrospect, I have no idea why I had any hope for this generic third person turd. In Neverdead, you play as Bryce Boltzmann, a demon hunter cursed with immortality by Astaroth, the demon king. He works for a demon hunting agency that, you guessed it, hunts demons. That’s about as much story as you’re given in this game as it relies so heavily on its ‘great’ gameplay. The scriptwriters really wanted Bryce to be funny, but instead he’s just annoying and comes across as immature for a 500 year old. As you roll around as a head there are only so many times you can hear him yell

‘Hope this doesn’t mess up my hair!’ and ‘It feels like I’m missing something here!’

No need to do a double take, you read it right. As you can never die, when you are attacked your limbs will come off. They make it an integral part of the game, meaning that to progress and eventually beat the game, you have to lose at least some limbs. There is an entire passage of a level where you only control your head, during this pitiful excuse for fun you roll through vents and go up ramps. It’s similar to playing sonic, only if sonic was a decapitated head and completely unenjoyable. In the very first mission I lost both my arms before a checkpoint, then at the checkpoint a door closed behind me and I couldn’t go back and retrieve my arms. I persevered and tried to effectively ‘party boy’ my demon foes. Needless to say this didn’t work and I ended up switching it off and playing different games worthy of my time & attention.

The combat doesn’t make up for it in the slightest, the aiming is confusing as you have two reticles which you have to line up with the analogue stick to make sure you hit target. This doesn’t make the game challenging, it’s just inconvenient. There are no weapons that excite you when you come across them, the shotgun is underpowered, the pistols can only be dual wielded, causing for unnecessary complications, and the assault rifle is boring and slow. When you’re not using one of the bland, generic guns, you’re left with the butterfly blade, which is even trickier to control. To use it you must hold the left trigger and move either the left analogue stick to attack or the right analogue stick to block. This means that most of the time you are using it, Bryce will just twitch uncontrollably, as if he’s about to keel over. Considering your body parts can be hacked off, blocking should’ve been helpful, but instead the enemies just hit straight through it, causing your arms to fly off into the distance, and rendering your sword useless.

Most modern games attempt to attract your emotional investment in the lead characters; you’re supposed to hate the bad guys, love the good guys and be on the edge of your seat trying to save your companions. I couldn’t care less about the character development in Neverdead because frankly, there isn’t any. It seems that the writers were never on board for the game, and it means the game ends up revolving around a novelty idea that everyone thought was amazing at the pitch but fell a few hundred miles short at execution.

Overall, Neverdead just didn’t feel quite ready for release. It feels unpolished, unenjoyable and unfinished. The cult status this game tried to secure is still a laughing stock. I don’t think I would care if this game spontaneously ceased to exist. I like to find out why these games flew under the radar, I think this one was just so mediocre that nobody cared.

4/10

Conclusion

‘Some games are so bad that they’re good. Neverdead is just bad.’