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I had been looking forward to Neverdead since it was first announced back in 2010. The premise of a wise-cracking 500 year old immortal who could crumble to pieces and reassemble himself, seemed like it could be fun. I was a fan of UK developer Rebellion's Alien vs. Predator games and with Konami publishing, I had high hopes. In 2011, they announced one of my favorite bands, Megadeth, would be including music in the title and the new trailer showed a bit of the main character, Bryce's backstory. Sadly, that backstory is cut into pieces in the final game and anyone who has seen that trailer knows the history that is teased a tiny bit after each level.
The final game has a few moments of brilliance mixed in with ultimately frustrating and unrealized gameplay. All the weapons Bryce seems to use, from handguns, machine pistols, assault rifle's, to his trusty sword, seem pretty unpowered. The damage factor could use some upping in my humble opinion since each "standard" enemy takes a ridiculous amount of hits to kill and you are often flooded by them onscreen. You also have some sort of charge timer on your sword, where the first few swings do slivers of damage, but then after that you do no damage for quite some time leading to your character having to run around or switch weapons.
After each level you can also spend points earned on new upgrades for Bryce. Sadly a lot of these don't make sense (Things like melee impulse increase?) or have little effect on your gameplay. It seems like the designers should have started Bryce with most of these upgrades and then worked up from there rather than making him pretty powerless with low damage and have to spend the entire game upgrading to hold his own.
The biggest flaw and frustration is the fact that Bryce falls apart at the seams with the slightest hit, and it takes the player 15-30 seconds to reassemble him back into a whole to be effective. Enemies are generally already attacking you as you reform, so it is not uncommon for you to spend 20-30 seconds reassembling, being knocked apart instantly, spending 20-30 seconds reassembling, being knocked apart instantly, etc. The game really could have used 5-10 seconds of limited invincibility to get you out of harm's way before Bryce goes to pieces again. ...and if your body's neck is unreachable by your head, you are stuck waiting for the better part of a minute so that you can click and hold the left analog stick and "regrow" yourself. Trying to hop up to your neck over and over, only to fail and have to wait feels like a punishment to the player.
Once you are separated into various body parts you can also be swallowed by an enemy that digests you and earns you a game over if you miss a frustrating quick time event. You can usually hit these events 3 out of 4 times, but when you've spent a good amount of time whittling a boss down several of his life bars over 10 minutes, only to die on a quick time event and have to start over, it can be immensely frustrating.
You are accompanied by a snobby female AI character through most of the game who often gets cut down by monsters and you need to revive. This isn't bad for the most part, but add it into the the above problem of being blown apart over and over as you watch her revive timer count down and her death can lead to game over screens often.
The enemies you encounter are pretty generic: there are monster generators that must be stopped to qwell the spawning of 5 types of main demons. Puppies are like dogs full of teeth that shred you and then chase your limbs around, Spoon's are walking blades that can only be killed with sword strokes, another winged demon type flies around the level using red lasers to target you with sniper fire, a fourth is a monster that flips through the air with blades, and the final is a demon with a mask on that you have to wait for him to lift up before you can damage his core. There are a few additional monsters for the boss fights; one of which is fairly creative requiring you to rip off your arms and throw them into his mouth to damage him from the inside.
It is these moments along with Bryce's quips and humorous actions that make you REALLY want to try and stick around to see what the game has to offer, but falling apart over and over just isn't fun and the amount of time you spend trying to reassemble yourself like a katamari is almost equivalent to the time you spend in combat.
The puzzles in the game generally involve you launching your head through air ducts, basketball hoops, or other targets. Some of these can be funny, but by the time you've done it four or five times, the chuckles fade.
I fought my way to the final boss on the final stage (about 6 hours of total playtime) and gave up at that point due to frustration. My character was in pieces 90% of the time and after missing one quick time event too many, I decided I did not have the time or patience for the game.
There are also additional co-op and competitive co-op modes over Xbox Live, but after spending 2 hours searching for other people playing, I found 2 games in 2 hours...which doesn't bode well when your game hasn't even been out for a week. Whether the matchmaking code wasn't working right or if people just weren't playing I don't know. But hosting a game myself or trying a quickmatch yielded no results beyond two 5-10 minute games.
Overall, I REALLY wanted to like this title, but feel that the game is immensely flawed for $60. Even at $30 it would be iffy with how frustrating it can be.
I sincerely hope Konami and Rebellion can fix this game via title update by adding some invincibility after respawning your body, upping the weapon damage, and removing/reducing the quick time event deaths. The game would be much more fun with these simple tweaks and fixes. It's bad when people want to experience your stories and world, but some frustrating design and accessibility decisions keep them from that.
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NeverDead is a curious beast. One of the main attractions of the game is the (hilarious in a good way) immortal nature of the main character. You can never die. Your limbs will be (frequently) dismembered, which lead in to you having to track them down to put yourself back together. The only problem is this is the games most frustrating element as well. It is fun the first ten or twelve times, then it gets old... fast. It seems like for ever good thing about NeverDead, there are two things that needed improvement.The plot for this game is simple. The player controls a wisecracking human demon hunter named Bryce, who was cursed with immortality five hundred years ago by the demon king Astaroth. Now in modern times, he hunts demons for money and revenge with a female private investigator name Arcadia in order to stop a demonic invasion that has nearly destroyed the city, which is lead by Astaroth.
The graphics for NeverDead have a comic book feel to them, which works strongly in the games favor. This leads to some graphical glitches and slow downs that left me sighing and waiting for them to pass. It really detracts from the immersion when this occurred.
Bryce is capable of wielding dual firearms or a two-handed sword to dispatch his foes. There is a wide variety of weapons to play with. You are able to wield a different gun in each hand, which makes close quarter combat a lot of fun. Ranged enemies can take a dose of lead from the assault rifle whilst stragglers and hopeful ambushers are blown away by a shotgun blast. There's rarely need to zoom in and pick out targets, a spray and pray approach is encouraged as the enemies are thrown at you thick and fast. Enemies rarely provide any variation in attack, and this makes for a repetitive combat system. There is also no way to fluidly change between gun and sword, and no combos either. This is where NeverDead's flaw in combat is. It gets to be extremely repetitive.
There's quite a few puzzles, but they are simple in nature and rarely require much in depth thinking.
When you lose enough health, this leads you to be dismembered and having to track down your body parts. As I said before, it's fun the first few times, but gets old fast.
The voice acting is serviceable and the script comes off as wooden. The banter between Bryce and Arcadia could've been more. Astaroth, the antagonist of the series, has some truly awful lines. Stuff that you wouldn't even expect from the cheesiest monster films from the 80s and 90s.
Overall this game could've have been a fun and unique blast. Alas it is simply what could have been. Repetitive gameplay and a wooden script left me ultimately disappointed. Two and a half stars out of five.
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always wanted this game since release but didn't wanna spend 60, waited til it was cheaper and cant beat 7 bucks!! the graphics are glitchy but still a fun game, thanks!Honest reviews on NeverDead - Xbox 360
I really wanted to like this game, but the control scheme is a mess and being reduced to just your head is the most annoying thing ever. Also the perk or powers system is awfull, first they are expensive, second you have limited slots so you can't even use all your hard earned powers at the same time.Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for NeverDead - Xbox 360
The idea of detaching your body seems pretty novel.... but it becomes such an annoyance if it happens the 700th time!!!! You explode in the slightest hit....Bad voice acting
Uninteresting characters and story
Bad gunplay
Dumb ending (even after credits...)
Generic environments
Joke boss battles
the only good things i liked were:
Sword control
The puzzles
Certain songs of the soundtrack (most of it is generic and loops through each enemy encounter...)
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