You had better prepare yourself for ample amounts of crazy before you play NeverDead, the latest IP developed by Rebellion studios and published by Konami appears to be equal parts Devil May Cry and Shadows of the Damned. Now if that doesn’t get you interested to play the game I honestly have no idea what will. Players take on the roll of Bryce, an immortal demon hunter that is on a quest for vengeance and is hell bent on killing the lord of the underworld (sounds familiar eh?). Five hundred years ago, Bryce challenged the aforementioned king of demons and got his wife murdered in the process. As punishment, he was cursed with immortality. The story seems like your usual “guy gets pissed off, guy gets revenge” plot, but for the type of game this appears to be, it’s pretty much what you would expect.
He could just hold the lighter in his other arm, ah never mind
By far the most intriguing thing about NeverDead is the emphasis on your characters immortality, no matter what horrible, mutilating injury you might suffer, seemingly nothing can stop you. There’s footage that shows the player being able to use this to his advantage, like tearing off his own arm to use as bait and then crushing an entire horde of demons with the environment. Now I’m a fan of spectacular, over the top violence as much as the next person, but this emphasis on being literally un-stoppable does make me wonder how this will balance out in regards to gameplay.
If you are unable to die in the game, then it will be interesting to see how they handle ensuring the player is challenged. There definitely seems to be a severe penalty attached when limbs are lost (no pun intended), as seen in many trailers of the game you lose a lot of mobility, which makes perfect sense of course. I was actually quite shocked when I first saw the footage of you hopping on one foot and still managing to lay waste to hordes of monsters. It all seems gratuitously over the top, but a lot of care appears to have put into keeping the gameplay exciting, even if that does mean you end up as two hands attached to a head shooting machine guns.
Don't worry, I do this all the time, it totally works for me
While the core gameplay in NeverDead has been described as a third person shooter, there definitely seems to be an element of melee combat present as well. Whether or not this will work in conjunction with the shooting or in place of it is unknown at this point, as is the level of importance it has. It hasn’t been seen much in trailers or gameplay demos but Bryce is always handling what I can only guess is his signature sword. But who knows, maybe you’ll unlock an ability to tie one of your arms to your legs and use them as a set of nunchaku? Actually, that sounds pretty great, but even for a game where you can remove your own head, that sounds a little extreme. NeverDead has also some pretty impressive environmental destruction, this seems to be an extremely effective way of dealing with some of the most threatening enemies and more importantly appears to be dynamic and something that the player can control.
Bryce definitely seems to be star of NeverDead, but there is another character that certainly warrants a mention and that is Alex. Rumoured to be immortal as well, he favours knives which is clearly shown by the fact that he has several constantly embedded in his arms and back. I for one am hoping you get to play as him, as he would no doubt offer a very different play style than that of Bryce, but so far his only appearance has been in cut scenes. I’m eagerly waiting to get my hands on this game, it’s always great to see new IP look so promising before release and it definitely seems to be putting its own spin on the third person shooter genre. NeverDead will release on the 31st of January for both PS3 and Xbox360 in the US and 2nd of February in Europe