Review: Never Dead

Pros: Interesting take on the action game with a character that can’t be killed.

Cons: Predictable plot and game play that starts off strong but lacks variety.

Final Judgement: If you’re a fan of Japanese Action games then it’s worth the investment, but there are far better titles available that will scratch this genres itch.

www.konami.com/officalsites/neverdead

Available for: PS3, XBox

God bless Japanese Action games. So predictable, so black and white, so completely fuck off bat shit insane you can’t help but smile. They’re like that socially awkward friend of yours that always ends up making statements that can only be described as the verbal equivalent of a loud fart in a quiet room.  You play Japanese Action games because they’re fun, campy and over the top.  Unfortunately, they’re also the personification of the developer's sexual frustrations as evidenced by over sexualized women flashing their ta-ta’s around while you awkwardly try to explain to your wife that you’re playing for the game play and not the booty. God fucking damnit, I hate you Bayonetta.

The worst part is, the game play in Bayonetta is actually very, very good

Never Dead, is a gong show of a Japanese Action game, brought to us by Rebellion and Konami, which fits the stereo type very well. Never Dead incorporates the tried and true Japanese Action Game formula of doing battle with various horrors from the beyond while engaged in retina detaching gun battles and sword fights. The game then attempts to spice it up with a fairly nut bar game mechanic in which  you get to give Monty Python’s Black Knight a run for his money. In Never Dead you don’t take damage you just get your  limbs lopped off and continue fighting on until your reduced to just your noodle, rolling about,  chasing down  your various bits which are now strewn willy-nilly about the room.   While this dismemberment wonderland of a game starts off enjoyable and original, the shiny new penny luster of Never Dead quickly fades and the game turns into a death march of one generic monster encounter to the next. In addition Never Dead also features one of the most awkward melee control systems I’ve ever encountered. Well get to all that in due course but first I want to bring you up to speed on the Shakespeare quality plot line of this diddy of a game.

"What ho! Have at thee! En gaurd! Truth and Justice! Pip-Pip, tea and crumpets!"

In Never Dead you play as Demon Hunter / Tortured Alcoholic / Adventure in Alliteration Bryce Boltzman. Heir Boltzman is a 500 year old career douche bag who started out as a total ponce, the type that would make Snow from Final Fantasy proud. Bryce tried to take down the “Demon King” Astaroth with his wife Cypher who had the ability to make demons vulnerable to injury and death – which kinda made her big deal. During the battle Boltzman more or less fucks the dogs and crafts soliloquies about truth and justice instead of laying boot to Demon ass, as a result Cypher ends up getting a discount chest piercing courtesy of the demon king. To add insult to injury Bryce is “cursed” by the demon king to be immortal, and unable to die. Now I say “cursed” with quotation marks, because I think the Demon King requires instruction on what a curse consists of as normally getting cursed sucks balls, kinda like being forced to eternally relive the disappointment at the end of Mass Effect 3, that is a curse, but being made immortal? That actually sounds awesome, so maybe the demon king is an ok dude. 

Bryce post immortal eye ball implantation... significantly less metro.

The game begins five hundred years after the death of Cypher and Bryce has evolved from a ponse douche to a surly bastard who doesn’t care about much beyond the bottom of his drink. Bryce now works for The National Anti-Demon Agency or NADA (tee-hee) with his partner Arcadia Maximille, a responsible mortal and sexual tension provider. Boltzman and Maximille have a love hate relationship, where Boltzman leers at Maximille and she shoots him in the face.  Now I get that he can’t die but simmer down already, maybe if you wore proper business attire you would get more respect.  Then again for a woman in a Japanese action game she more or less dressed like a nun.

If you don't think this is appropriate work atire for hunting Demons, google Ada Wong from Resident Evil.

The game follows the two as they investigate an increase in Demon Activity which unsurprisingly results in a second show down between Bryce and the Demon King who is attempting to get himself resurrected. You know the demon king, who we were led to believe was immortal and who wasn’t actually killed or even badly wounded by Boltzman 500 years ago? You may be asking  “If Bryce never killed him, why does he need to be resurrected?” to which the game replies, “Don’t worry about it ok? He just does, why you gotta ask so many questions?” 

Plot hole that you can drive a burning fertilizer truck through aside; the story of Never Dead is cookie cutter, the ‘plot twists’ are seen coming from a mile away and the story is incredibly linear. If you’ve played Devil May Cry or Gungrave then you’ve more or less experienced what the story of Never Dead has to offer. It’s instantly forgettable, however, as a saving grace the game doesn’t take its self too seriously.  It spices itself up with decently delivered slapstick and dialogue based humor which helps to smooth over the rough edges of the “story by the numbers” plot.
Where Never Dead attempts to set its self apart is in the game mechanics department.  The game has essentially two unique game play mechanics, the first is an analog stick based melee attack system the second is the aforementioned dismemberment system.

The analog stick attack system breaks down like this: To swing Bryce’s sword and attack you have to hold the attack button and move the analog stick in the direction you want Bryce to swing. You must then move the stick in the opposite direction to swing it again doing this in a deliberate manner allowed you to chain attacks together and make each swing more powerful. Sounds simple enough, but I found this very awkward in practice and I had a lot of trouble chaining attacks together. I found that busting out the blade always made for a frantic analog stick swirling episode as I tried to fend off a mob. I would have preferred to see a much simpler attack system.

Swing! SWING DAMN YOU!

The second mechanic, the dismemberment system comes to us by the way of Bryce being immortal. In the game this translates into Bryce not losing life points or health when damaged but instead losing limbs. Interestingly enough you can lose any combination of limbs and still be able to fight fairly well, even when you’re reduced to a severed head bouncing and rolling around the environment you still have a charge up attack that you can use to defend yourself. I gotta say, this is pretty cool, even as a head you can still fuck shit up and ruin a demons day.

...Or you can use it to shoot a few hoops.

Aside from being dismembered from battle damage, you can also choose to rip yourself limb from limb which can then be used to bait enemies or complete puzzles, for example throwing your arm into a fuse box to complete a circuit. As an added challenge as you lose limbs and your head, a particular enemy known as a Grand Baby will continually spawn and lurk around gobbling up your errant limbs and attempting to devour your vulnerable head.

"EAT ARM FLAVORED JUSTICE!"

Overall the dismemberment game mechanic is novel and unique enough to keep you interested for the lion’s share of the games relatively short play time. I will say though, that dismemberment is relied upon so heavily in the game that by the last two or three stages, it had worn its self out and this is where I have the biggest beef with Never Dead.

There is no real variation to game play; every encounter revolves around you destroying waves of demons while protecting Arcadia who can be killed and keeping track of your limbs that repeatedly fly off in random directions. Every encounter starts off fairly straight forward and adds different demon types until you`re just a head getting soccer kicked about the room. Eventually you land away from the mob and you have a small window to regroup and turn the tide.

This especially becomes an exercise in aggravation in the final battle where Bryce’s limbs appear to be held on by wet noodles as he constantly flies apart at the drop of a hat. The battles only challenge is trying to get yourself back together in time to do a sliver of damage during the Demon Kings short vulnerable phase. The only reason I stuck the game out is because I could feel that I was basically at the end of the game, there is really only so many times you can do the same thing in slightly different settings before you stop caring.

Yeah, yeah... shoot demons, protect Arcadia, pick up severed legs... fuck, whatever.

If you judge Never Dead solely on its value as an action game, it’s not the worst game you’ll ever play by far, aside from the awkward melee attack system the controls are tight and the dismemberment system is original and an interesting change of pace. However the cookie cutter story line and noted lack of variation in level design and battles really hurts the games over all enjoyment. I wouldn’t recommend this game for the casual gamer given the far better titles available in this genre such as Devil May Cry, but for those who are looking for a different experience, all be it one that is repeated ad nauseum, Never Dead isn’t a bad option.