NeverDead? Never fear!

Recently I picked up a second hand title for the X-Box 360 called Neverdead. It had caused a bit of a buzz at the time of it's release due to it's primary mechanic. That being that Bryce Boltzmann (the player character) can never die.

He can be dismembered, decapitated, disarmed, broken, battered, burned, exploded, crushed, eaten, sure. But die? Pshh, whatever.

The usual disconnect between the story and the game was thrown to one side. The game took advantage of the recurring element of super hard demon hunters taking hits that would knock a building down and played it tongue in cheek. Of course he can take those hit! He's immortal! Then again hits like that do have a habit of making all of Bryce's limbs fly off as though the demons are playing Fallout 3 and just went into V.A.T.S mode.

So, how do you loose a game when you can never die? That's easy, there are two methods of 'loosing'. The first is to introduce an allied NPC to follow you around that you need to keep alive instead! The game replaced the health bar with an escort quest and then toted it as a feature.

It some respects it's actually kinda funny, the NPC is actually better at taking hits than Bryce is. Leading to points where I've had my head knocked off by the slightest of breezes, and Miss NPC is tanking hits like Superman while I attempt to find my torso.

The second method is that there is a enemy type which doesn't nothing and re-spawns infinitely while a fight is going on. But once you loose a limb or your head they rocket over and eat them. Giving you a limited amount of time to destroy them and reclaim your limb. If it's your head then it's a matter of completing a QTE or getting sent back to the last checkpoint. It feels pretty pointless and doesn't really have any consequences beyond making you redo a fight from the start again.

If your limbs do get consumed (which is likely, given how distracting the fights can be. More often than not I didn't notice I'd lost anything until the limb was already gone.) Then you can regenerate by clicking the Left Analogue stick. Unfortunately this is on a cooldown timer that activates once the limb/head is lost. Some skills can reduce the cooldown time but there's always a little waiting required. Which of course carries the risk of getting your head eaten.

With this in place the game has to make it's best attempts to mess you up. Which unfortunately it does by dropping as many enemies on you as possible with spawn points. Which it never lets up with throughout the entire run. Combined with the lack of enemy variety this can make some fights stale quickly. Although the developers have been smart enough to add a few environmental switch ups. Both in the form of destructible scenery to do large chunks to Deamons caught in the blast zone, and environmental dangers such as subway trains. Even so removing the spawn points ASAP can make things a lot more manageable.

The game also offers a large selection of skills to buy with XP gained from killing Deamons and grabbing collectibles. They unlock as you complete levels and can be changed and bought at any time in level. I like this system, it gives the canny player the chance to switch up their skills as the situation calls for it. Providing both passive and active bonuses to a variety of things. With the best skill stopping your limbs from detaching. True immortality. Unfortunately to get that you have to buy all the other skills first and then gathering the 10,000,000 EX required to buy it. Which would mean 16-17 total playthroughts of the game. Still, it gives you something to aim for.

So with the major selling points of the game explained, let's move onto the narrative stuff.

I'll say this much. The games story is pretty piss poor. It's focus is on the relationship between Bryce and Archadia (the allied NPC). They can play pretty well off of one another in some cases. But it's not enough to carry the story on it's own. Especially when they introduce the other main character, Nikki. Who is very. Very. Annoying. I cannot express how irritating she is at the start, and only becomes less annoying because she says less towards the end. She also wears the most ridiculous costume. Which is hand waved because she's a 'popstar'.

The story can be summed up as: Drunk cocky arsehole with tragic backstory kills deamons to get revenge for dead wife. There's not much more to it then that. There is a couple of twists, but nothing that really breaks the mold. It's the usual stock 'oh by the way I'm actually evil, surprise!' stuff which is never really all that shocking.

Nothing much is actually explained, so don't expect to have many answers by the end of it. The lack of explanation almost feels like there should be some kind of supporting material. Like a comic book or some kind of in game info files. Which there aren't any, so it's kinda strange really.

But weak plot aside, the gameplay is quite fun. It's fast and can be very hectic at times. The destructible scenery adds some nice flavour to the set peaces and the skills can change up your playstyle on the fly.

I wouldn't recommend buying it full price, but picking it up second hand might make for a nice distraction over the weekend.