The seventh generation of video games is the most easily recognizable, loads and loads of shooting/action games were released, all united by their shared lack of identity, NeverDead is one of those many games.
For starters, NeverDead is actually a pretty fun game, at the start. The melee combat is fast and satisfying, guns are a lot less well-designed, as the handguns that you are forced to use for much of the game, feel terrible, every shot just feels like a small “ping” with no force or impact behind them whatsoever, it doesn’t help that they do terrible damage. I only got to one more gun in the game by the time i had to stop playing, an SMG, that felt better, but ammo was so scarce i could only use it on a few enemies per encounter.
The enemies are another huge problem with the game, if you can look past the horribly uninspired designs, you’ll notice that the game just keeps throwing the same 2 enemy types at you, for hours on end. The first enemy just walks towards the player and attacks them, while the second acts identically, it’s just impervious to bullets, so you have to melee them. The later enemy types they introduce only make the situation worse, since they flip the script from boring, to tedious, requiring you to wait until they expose their weakpoints. Every encounter goes exactly the same, because the game has no variation or customization, you encounter enemies, you shoot or stab them until they’re dead, rinse and repeat for 10 hours, that’s NeverDead. It doesn’t help that the generic grunts spawn infinitely, requiring you to locate their spawn point, and destroy it, for practically every single enemy encounter in the game.
The upgrades are just a complete waste of time, on all fronts. They add nothing to gameplay, some of them don’t even work, others are just damage buffs. It doesn’t help that you’re limited to having only a few at a time, so any benefit that you might have gotten from them, goes out the window. Since enemies spawn infinitely, you can just grind out any encounter in the game until you get enough EXP to buy whatever upgrade you want, so there’s not even any reason to have an EXP system in the first place, it’s just a barrier to new abilities, that shouldn’t even exist in the first place, because they add nothing to the game.
The limb mechanic is, of course, the main draw of the game, and it is actually pretty interesting. Hobbling around on one leg, blasting enemies with your dual-pistols still wielded by your dismembered hands, or rolling around as a severed head, it’s a pretty unique experience. The game frequently attempts to shake up it’s monotonous flow, by shoving in severed head platforming puzzles, these puzzles only exist to make you go “Oh that’s kind of neat”, before you immediately sour on them, once you get to feel how terribly the head controls. I still don’t even know how how the health system works, because attacks that i would shrug off sometimes, tore me to pieces at other times.
The story, characters, and setting, are the one part of the game that i’d say is genuinely, unabashedly awful. The main character, and his partner, are such horrifically uncharismatic people, not a single moment with them made me feel any positive emotions. They are terribly generic, with every line of dialogue from them just being overused one-liners and jokes that don’t land. I couldn’t name another character in the game if i tried, even though i remember them annoying me, almost as much the main duo. The game cold opens up with a, frankly bizarre, flashback to a time that would have made for a more interesting setting than the brown and gray contemporary wasteland, that the game is currently stuck in. Visually, this game is so unremarkable, that i don’t even know how to describe it, if you played video games in 2012, you already know what NeverDead looks like.
NeverDead is an extremely subpar game, one that could have been something more, but it was not. The saving grace of the game is that it has a pretty good soundtrack, performed by Megadeath, who released a very nice song named after the title of the game, go listen to that instead of playing this game.
For starters, NeverDead is actually a pretty fun game, at the start. The melee combat is fast and satisfying, guns are a lot less well-designed, as the handguns that you are forced to use for much of the game, feel terrible, every shot just feels like a small “ping” with no force or impact behind them whatsoever, it doesn’t help that they do terrible damage. I only got to one more gun in the game by the time i had to stop playing, an SMG, that felt better, but ammo was so scarce i could only use it on a few enemies per encounter.
The enemies are another huge problem with the game, if you can look past the horribly uninspired designs, you’ll notice that the game just keeps throwing the same 2 enemy types at you, for hours on end. The first enemy just walks towards the player and attacks them, while the second acts identically, it’s just impervious to bullets, so you have to melee them. The later enemy types they introduce only make the situation worse, since they flip the script from boring, to tedious, requiring you to wait until they expose their weakpoints. Every encounter goes exactly the same, because the game has no variation or customization, you encounter enemies, you shoot or stab them until they’re dead, rinse and repeat for 10 hours, that’s NeverDead. It doesn’t help that the generic grunts spawn infinitely, requiring you to locate their spawn point, and destroy it, for practically every single enemy encounter in the game.
The upgrades are just a complete waste of time, on all fronts. They add nothing to gameplay, some of them don’t even work, others are just damage buffs. It doesn’t help that you’re limited to having only a few at a time, so any benefit that you might have gotten from them, goes out the window. Since enemies spawn infinitely, you can just grind out any encounter in the game until you get enough EXP to buy whatever upgrade you want, so there’s not even any reason to have an EXP system in the first place, it’s just a barrier to new abilities, that shouldn’t even exist in the first place, because they add nothing to the game.
The limb mechanic is, of course, the main draw of the game, and it is actually pretty interesting. Hobbling around on one leg, blasting enemies with your dual-pistols still wielded by your dismembered hands, or rolling around as a severed head, it’s a pretty unique experience. The game frequently attempts to shake up it’s monotonous flow, by shoving in severed head platforming puzzles, these puzzles only exist to make you go “Oh that’s kind of neat”, before you immediately sour on them, once you get to feel how terribly the head controls. I still don’t even know how how the health system works, because attacks that i would shrug off sometimes, tore me to pieces at other times.
The story, characters, and setting, are the one part of the game that i’d say is genuinely, unabashedly awful. The main character, and his partner, are such horrifically uncharismatic people, not a single moment with them made me feel any positive emotions. They are terribly generic, with every line of dialogue from them just being overused one-liners and jokes that don’t land. I couldn’t name another character in the game if i tried, even though i remember them annoying me, almost as much the main duo. The game cold opens up with a, frankly bizarre, flashback to a time that would have made for a more interesting setting than the brown and gray contemporary wasteland, that the game is currently stuck in. Visually, this game is so unremarkable, that i don’t even know how to describe it, if you played video games in 2012, you already know what NeverDead looks like.
NeverDead is an extremely subpar game, one that could have been something more, but it was not. The saving grace of the game is that it has a pretty good soundtrack, performed by Megadeath, who released a very nice song named after the title of the game, go listen to that instead of playing this game.