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Posted July 6, 2011 by Derek Vicente in Gaming
 
 

NeverDead: Where Failing to Protect Someone Makes You Mortal


NeverDead is a third-person shooter that utilizes the element of immortality for its lead character, Bryce Boltzmann. Immortality – the word itself speaks of power and unyielding resolve to continue and walk the planes of Earth for eternity without succumbing to wrinkles.

More so, the ability of Bryce to disassemble his body parts and hurl them as tools for destruction is a creative diversion to the shooter genre, which is currently running out of idea in the weapon’s department. NeverDead has the potential to become this year’s more intriguing shooter, just for one problem.

Bryce isn’t exactly immortal. Initially paired with a female investigator named Arcadia, players need to protect her against a swarm of demons with scythes for a head. Game over is achieved when Arcadia dies, so players need to carefully monitor her movement because she can be as dumb as an AI should be. This is the pitfall of the game. IGN playfully calls the game as an “escort mission,” that doesn’t really stretch the concept of immortality to its maximum potential. All throughout the game, Bryce will serve as a human shield, keeping Arcadia out of harm’s way with his ability to stay alive “in most scenarios.”

Most scenarios?

Bryce isn’t exactly God-like immortal; he can be annihilated by small demons called Grandbaby, wherein in the case Bryce is reduced to a head, those creatures can pick up the pieces and devour him clean of his shoulders.

NeverDead is a misleading title, which interferes with possible satisfaction of shooting anything in sight without certain repercussions of death. NeverDead incoherently uses immortality to highlight the game’s strong and pivotal points; however, possible lack of objectives and fragmented execution may hinder to NeverDead’s attempt to freshen up the third-person shooter genre. NeverDead is actually halfway the finish line, but it doesn’t quite deliver and intensify the setting of Bryce being an immortal bounty hunter purging the land of evil and malevolence.

Achieve partial immortality as NeverDead becomes available this September for both the PS3 and Xbox 360.


Derek Vicente

 
Derek has been with Flipgeeks for almost three years. His first video game was Sonic the Hedgehog for the Sega Saturn and after blowing their television set after playing too much Rambo, he has set on a journey to play some of the best (and worst) role-playing games ever spawned. He recently completed Wild Arms 2 without any cheat codes.