NeverDead

Demon hunter Bryce Boltzmann is cursed with immortality. He can’t be killed, and his limbs can be torn off, reattached, and regenerated with ease. Does NeverDead’s dismembered premise bring a welcome twist to the standard action fare, or does it just cause massive headaches?

Cursed 500 years ago, Bryce now finds himself working for NADA, the National Anti-Demon Agency. On assignment with his partner Arcadia, the pair trail an outbreak of demons until they eventually find themselves protecting a pop star named Nikki. Moments from Bryce’s past are scattered between chapters, needlessly drawing out an otherwise simple origin story.

Of all the game’s characters, Bryce is the only one who’s remotely likable. Arcadia’s role is simply to be a stuffed shirt (in more ways than one) while Nikki’s cluelessness gives them room for explaining demon hunting lore. The bad dialogue doesn’t have enough personality to give it that B-movie appeal, and while the story has a handful of twists, it otherwise plows a straightforward line from one predicament to the next.

Your journey against the demon hordes spans nine chapters, lasting roughly an hour each. You’ll fight through a police station, train tunnels, and a collapsing bridge, but the set changes aren’t enough to overcome the tedium of clearing out the same mobs of enemies again and again. Doors are blocked until you’ve killed every last creature in an area, which often entails hacking away at hardy spawn pods with awkwardly placed weak points.

The game also suffers from a lack of clear direction, leaving players without a logical means to connect the dots. One early roadblock has your head rolling by an inscrutable item that isn’t explained until farther in the tutorial. Later on, you’ll have to avoid getting crushed by a building, but the seemingly simple task of lining yourself up with a window is a matter of frustrating guesswork -- and it doesn’t help that the failure dialogue plays even when you do get it right.

Bryce dual-wields by default, and expanding your arsenal to shotguns and assault rifles is as simple as picking them up when you find them. You’ll also earn XP by defeating enemies and following the breadcrumb trails of red shards. These points can be used to buy added abilities ranging from seemingly necessary traits like charged blade attacks and a slow-motion effect to practically useless items like healing bullets to revive your partner. There are a few interesting upgrades like being able to turn your limbs into explosives, but most are minor tweaks that aren’t worth the limited equipment slots.

If you don’t think the campaign is torture enough, you can try to jump into co-op, although we don’t expect the anemic population to stick around very long. The multiplayer challenges come in several variations, but they’re all an absolute mess. Some challenges have you clearing through zones of enemies with rare chances to regenerate and enemies that spawn right behind you. There are quick checkpoint races and Easter egg hunts. Then there are these sad excuses for rescue missions that have you walking longer and longer routes to fetch civilians. Their plodding pace has you constantly stopping to wait for them, and the enemies that are supposedly threatening them aren’t anywhere to be seen. Best of all, players that ignore the goal to hack up enemies on the other side of the map are awarded more points in the end.

There are times when NeverDead’s concepts pay off with a distant spark of undead ingenuity. You can rip off your head and roll it through vents like a Metroid morph ball; you have to throw an arm into one boss’s mouth to shoot it from the inside; and you’ll need to light yourself on fire to see in a darkened hallway.

However, none of this is enough to offset the infuriating mechanic of having your limbs pop off every time an enemy hits you. If you lose one arm or leg, you can get by, but picking them up isn’t as simple as walking near them. You have to actually roll to reattach them, leaving you bouncing around, trying to grab body parts, often recovering them just in time for an enemy knock your head clear across the room. To make matters worse, there are these ever-present round critters ready to devour any stray appendages. If your head happens to get sucked up by one of these pests, you’ll have to succeed in a quick time event to escape. If you fail the mini-game, it’s game over.

After a while, you can push a button to instantly regenerate, but the game is constantly knocking you apart and leaving you disoriented. One scene has you getting batted around by two trains as you attempt to fight enemies in a narrow subway tunnel. Another puts you inside a stomach that rotates like a tumble dryer, constantly knocking you off your footing. If you get lucky, environmental destruction and explosions can take out your enemies, but you and your partner are just as likely to get caught up in the collateral damage.

Of course none of these issues are helped by clumsy controls in every area. Camera movement is stiff. Aiming makes use of dual reticles that spread apart and lose accuracy when you move, and the default handguns feel completely powerless. To swing your sword, you have to waggle the right stick from side to side, and gathering power for a charge swing takes ages. To sum it up, your character simply feels far too sluggish to adequately react to the rushing mobs.

Whether it’s the floaty destruction, the mindboggling villain design, or the sight of Bryce taking a dump with his pants on, NeverDead’s visual presentation is an absolute mess. Performance is consistently poor and choppy, and the view is particularly bad if an enemy pins you into a corner or a boss battle completely breaks. Every character gets a share of the terrible voice acting, but Bryce’s boss in particular sounds like he’s in a coma. And if you happen to think that having a theme song by Megadeth makes the game cool, just wait until you hear the J-pop dance number that plays before it.

Like flowers in a trash dump, the fragrance of NeverDead’s high points is overpowered by the tons of garbage surrounding them. Even the most worthwhile moments are awkwardly handled, and there’s nothing fun or helpful about having your body torn apart over and over again.

Reviewed on Microsoft Xbox 360