Bryce, the protagonist of “Neverdead,” has been cursed so he has become immortal and able to regenerate and re-attach any lost parts. Also, he hunts demons, some which have giant swords for heads.
Sounds promising, right? Almost.
by Isaac Newby
The Broadside
Due to a few major issues, this game, which started with a unique promising idea, failed in its execution.
Bryce has the ability to remove body parts at will or, if needed, just pop his whole head off resulting in terrible one-liners about Limp Bizkit, such as when the head moves around, the standard line for this is “keep rollin’, rollin’, rollin’.”
“Neverdead” was the mechanic that seemed like it could have been the game-changer. Unfortunately, it was not executed well. The slightest bump causes limbs to just fall off like some poorly imagined leper. This combined with the sluggish, underpowered guns, ensures over half of any given fight is spent trying to recover lost limbs. The sword is significantly better: it offers auto-aim and is much more powerful, making most fights passably short.
The boss battles are actually a little fun. They are fairly straightforward: attack the glowing orb and you’ll make it.
Your companions, however, make no sense. You are constantly reminded to protect them, advise you don’t need to pay attention to. The companions do most of the fighting since most of the fights are spent trying to avoid having your head eaten. Which brings me to the absolutely most unbelievable, game-breaking mechanic I have seen since playing “Amy.”
Any time your head is removed, it is usually eaten by a smaller enemy, starting a quicktime event that if not executed perfectly causes you to have to restart at the last checkpoint. This would not be so bad if it happened rarely, but it is a constant issue.
This game had some excellent ideas that if executed well, would make for a unique, challenging game. Unfortunately, the developers either were unable to fix this due to budget/time issues, or there was a huge oversight in the process of releasing Neverdead.
If the makers can fix the mechanics in a future release, this could be a genre-changing idea. For Neverdead, however, they employed to make a game that just feels… broken.
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