NeverDead Review

NeverDead is almost a parody of the gaming industry in its current state. There are some bastions of home, but we've entered into an era where like it or not, games are becoming a lot easier to complete. Some even offer you infinite lives – it's literally impossible to fail. NeverDead pokes fun at this by allowing you to play as an immortal man who, and here's the kicker, can't ever die. Well, except you kind of can, but the premise is that no matter what the game throws at you, there's always the chance that you can keep on trucking. Is it a great concept? Yes. Has it been done justice? Well, to a degree. You can certainly rip your head off, throw it at people and kill people with your severed arms, but when you aren't doing that, the game may well provide you with a fair few frustrations.

Bryce Boltzmann is your weapon of choice as you navigate through NeverDead's story. You see, many years ago, Mr. Boltzmann was a rather successful demon hunter. That was, until he came up against the demon king Astaroth who killed his wife and cursed him to be an immortal demon. With plenty of time to think about what happened, Bryce now spends his time hunting demons for money and revenge with the help of Arcadia, a rather spunky female investigator.

As the game progresses, you'll learn more about Bryce's past, but quite a lot of it is rather incidental – the plot is rather basic. The relationship between Bryan and Arcadia does develop somewhat, but the game's story can only be interpreted as filler – there's no deep meaning here, what you see is what you get. To its credit, there is a nice slice of humour thrown in there and you won't be wanting to skip it in order to get to the next gameplay segment. Still, you're unlikely to be gripped to your seat either.

Due to the whole immortality mechanic, you'll learn very quickly that NeverDead is a rather mental game. Half of the time you'll be running around trying to pick up your limbs and the other half, you'll be trying to throw them at stuff – it's rather unique. In short, Bryce can have his head, arms and legs chopped off or exploded off. Should this happen, then you're able to control his head, which you then need to roll around in order to re-attach different body parts. This can be a little frustrating sometimes, but this is counteracted by a regeneration timer, which allows your body to grow out from your head – rather neat.

Quite a lot of the time, losing a few limbs doesn't make you any less combat effective. You're either able to use two guns at the same time, with each firing independently and with different guns, or a massive sword. If you lose an arm, you can still fire both guns – albeit with the ability to only aim one of them – and you can still swing your sword. The same applies to losing an arm too, Bryce will just hop around. Losing both your arms and both your legs poses a problem though and this is where things start to get interesting.