Game Reviewed: Never Dead
Developer: Rebellion
Publisher: Konami
Platform: [Reviewed: Xbox 360], Playstation 3
Genre: Third Person Shooter, Action
Price: $60
Rated: M for Mature
Never Dead is a third-person shooter and action game developed by Rebellion and published by Konami. The one twist Never Dead has up its sleeve is that your character is immortal. When you get hit pieces of your body come off and you must go pick them back up. The only way to “die” is to get sucked up by an enemy. When this happens you will be forced to restart at the nearest checkpoint.
You play as Bryce who is a demon hunter that was cursed with immortality by the king of hell after he had killed Bryce’s medium (wife). He has a job as a mercenary working with the NADA corporation. The story in Never Dead is not the focus; to be honest I am not really sure what they focused on. Bryce must kill the demons that are starting to take over the city. It turns out that the king of hell is trying to be resurrected. The whole story is kind of stupid and does not make much sense. In reality the combat is the main portion of the game and is possibly the worst combat in any game I have ever played.
You would think that a third-person shooter would have a decent choice of weapons. You would be wrong because the weapons are atrocious. The reason is probably a combination of how insanely weak they are and how horrible the aiming is. Because of this I choose to use my secondary weapon, the blade, throughout the majority of the game. To use the blade you bust hold ‘LT’ to lock on and then swing it with the left stick. Not only is the lock-on horrible using the stick to swing the sword feels bad. They could have easily used a button to swing the blade and it would have made it a bit more enjoyable.
By killing enemies or picking up the red glowing things you will earn XP which in turn you can use to purchase abilities. These abilities are said to increase your guns’ powers and accuracy as well as power up your blade and give you a charge attack. Each ability takes up a certain amount of slots depending on its power, and gaining more slots is also something you can unlock with XP. I said “these abilities are said to…” because while using them I found no change in my weapons. I just found myself not buying any abilities because I really did not care about them and during most of the game I had no less than 100 thousand XP.
You would think if a game does not play well or have a good story that it would at least look damn good, right? Wrong again, the character models of the human characters look decent at most and all the levels look basically the same. There are only about five different normal enemies which range from basic ground units to air units. With the guns being as bad as they are, taking down the air units was frustrating beyond belief. Now there were some enemies that you could consider mid-bosses, and they are the absolute worst! The first is what they call “Panda Bear” and it is like a goliath and when you get its health down enough it will just regenerate to a certain point. The next is called a “Hippo” and as it hurls explosives at you you must shoot its sacks underneath it to kill it as it has a shield surrounding it. This isn’t the half of it. There are more bosses that are even more frustrating and annoying that are difficult to fight and are constantly regenerating health.
Never Dead was developed by a veteran team and throughout my playthrough I was wondering if they thought that this was a quality product. I cannot see anyone finding any aspect of this game enjoyable and I honestly think that Never Dead should never have existed. It is 2012 and games like Never Dead should be obsolete. There is no way that someone should charge full price for this broken, horrible excuse for a game. I do not recommend any of you go out and buy it, or even play it. I received this copy of Never Dead for review from Konami for free and I feel like I should get some money for having played it.
Posted below is my first play through of the first part of Never Dead.
The Scores
Gameplay: 1/5
Visuals: 1/5
Audio: 2/5
Controls: 1/5
Value: 1/5
Overall Rating: 1/5
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