NeverDead Hands-on

Developer: Rebellion / Publisher: Konami / Played on: PS3 / ESRB: Mature [Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language] / Release Date: February 2012

HEADS ARE GONNA ROLL

Never let it be said that publisher Konami takes itself too seriously—at least not anytime soon after this.

Query: What would happen if you took a jaded, Bruce Campbell-type, seen-every-kind-of-supernatural-weirdness action hero, sort of smushed him together with a weary, wisecracking, Bruce Willis-type contemporary action hero and a stoic, been-there-killed-that Jason Statham-type action hero, gave him a broadsword and some guns, made him a Badass Mo-Fo to such an extent that he could survive having his head and all his limbs ripped off and flung and/or blown to different corners of the room and sent him on a modern-day, Government-sanctioned demon-hunting killing spree? Oh, and then threw in an unimpressed, sexy British female sidekick named Arcadia (who mostly didn’t give 3/16ths of a rat’s ass what happened to him one way or the other, as long as he got the job done)?

Why then, friends and neighbors, you’d have the aptly-named NeverDead.

Demon-killing protagonist Bryce (it’s already almost Bruce, innit?) has 500 years worth of accumulated Don’t Give A Shit in his head, a dead wife to mourn, can’t per-se die…and is very good at his job. To its cheery, gory credit, NeverDead doesn’t even bother trying to isolate you within a justifiable yet surreal other-space in the vein of a game like Silent Hill. There are demons abroad to be killed, and they’re going to be killed, and that’s pretty much that; sometimes they’re found in the oppressively atmospheric remains of a crumbling sanitarium….and sometimes, they’re apparently just sort of hanging about in the lobby of what looks like a modern day Financial District bank—all clean, austere columns and friendly potted plants, until you start blowing the structural bejeezus out of the joint.

Bryce can pack ranged full-auto or explosive weaponry—shotguns, machine-pistols, rocket launchers and the like—but he’ll spend much of his time simply flailing about with his trusty broadsword (good for hacking away at large, stationary monster-spawning abominations, cleaving more mobile, medium-sized demons in twain, and Babe Ruthing other, still smaller ones across the courtyard or into the nearest wall).

When Bryce’s monstrous enemies do manage to close the distance and deal serious damage, and they will, he stands an excellent chance of being torn (or blasted) to pieces—arms, legs, head everywhere. In many other videogames, that might well be time to restart the level, but NeverDead embraces that tough-guy mantra of ‘walk it off’. It turns out that, even after being violently separated from the rest of his corporeal form, Bryce’s head can still operate independently, rolling about under your control like something you might see if Clive Barker made Katamari Damacy.

One useful function of this extracorporeal mobility is that, if the head can roll around the environs and collect the other severed limbs, Bryce will quickly re-assume his usual bipedal form and battle on—and even in less-dire situations where Bryce loses, say, ‘only’ a leg, he can actually hop around and fight until such time as he’s able to ‘pull it together,’ as it were. Another quickly-apparent benefit to this beheaded state is that the head can assume the duties that in another videogame might be assumed by a remotely piloted drone or a psychically linked animal familiar, such as rolling up ramps and into the entrances to cramped air-ducts and the like, which makes for a weird extrusion into the puzzle-solving sphere (and yes—the head still retains Bryce’s ability to ‘jump’, to some extent).

The detached head also represents one of your only serious chances to be royally and truly screwed. Obviously, an immortal protagonist who can be blown to bits and continue to function doesn’t have to worry about traditional ‘death’…but if said rolling head is snatched up by one of the game’s many rolling, faceless, toad-tongued abominations (called, horribly, Grandbabies) and actually swallowed, you’re immediately treated to the funny/nightmarish spectacle of a close-up screen depicting Bryce’s head, alive and in distress, being sloshed about inside the monster’s stomach. There’s a one-shot mini-game here which, if timed right, will allow the head to somehow wrench and thrash its hapless way out of the creature’s innards; if that fails, Bryce’s immortal-yet-still-sentient head is assumed to reside in terror inside the creature’s belly…for what remains of eternity. Nice. So, yeah: Don’t let that happen.

The other way to lose the game is to allow Arcadia—who is, in the end, just a regular chick with a gun and tights after all—to die, so…well, don’t do that, either; if she’s really getting wailed on while you’re on the opposite end of the room, you have a certain amount of time to reach and revive her…but you don’t want to push your luck—or more to the point, hers.

Beyond weaponry and sheer attitude (and the neat ability to collapse the odd wall or supporting-strut with explosives to crush unsuspecting enemies), Bryce can equip and upgrade over 60 special abilities. Perks involving everything from upped melee strength to increased ammo capacity to the ability to rip off your own limbs and use them as grenades are some of the options. Some of the odder ones we saw the developers wouldn’t or couldn’t explain (‘Seduction’ comes to mind).

All the while, the game offers the oddest fusion of wisecracking, macho follow-cam action and creepy, what-the-hell-is-THAT-thing creature design; it’s as if a whole slew of animate wrongnesses that didn’t quite make the Silent Hill cut came gibbering and flopping en masse for the NeverDead casting-call.

What else? Beyond being driven throughout by a growling hard-rock score (at least in the sections we played), NeverDead also offers a competitive co-op mode, a four-player point-grab killing spree based on time (not waves); to wit, you’re still offing creatures as opposed to other players—but yes, there is still serious Competition going on. You still have to worry about being brought back to the realm of the living if you’reArcadia; you still don’t want to be that Swallowed Head Guy.

NeverDead is a weird beast, no question about it, and definitely has that horror-punk sensibility being driven at by certain other games out there (here’s looking at you, Goichi Suda); it’s still got some dents that need to be hammered out (the camera freak-out when you’re frantically rolling around as a head, trying to find limbs and not get eaten comes vividly to mind); it’s also funny and raw in the most complimentary sense of the term. NeverDead is ‘headed’ your way in February 2012, just in time for Valentine’s Day—if you’re into that kind of thing.

Chris Hudak

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