NecroVisioN

The Good
Games like Necrovision are really a dying breed. Professional reviewers often say the same of people who love such games.

Myself one of these ‘dinosaurs’ I always feel there is going to be a place in the gaming world spectrum for run-n-gun monster blasting frag-fests. Variety is the spice of any life. Some days you just want to check your brain at the door & let loose at some demonic beasties with a rocket launcher. Ah, let the good times roll I say.

I have to admit. I set my hopes really high on Necrovision. Being made by the remaining members of People Can Fly, after the acquisition of some of the team by Epic for the PC port of GoW. I don’t have to profess my Painkiller fandom, but this game was at the top of my want list for months. I really wanted to love this game completely & utterly, be able to recommend it to all of you etc. But now I have finished it, the dust has well and truly settled, so what do I think about it? Short answer: I like it. It’s definitely not a bad game. Long answer: I like it. But . . Maybe we should start at the beginning.

The crux of the plot for Necrovision takes place in a kind of alternate fantasy-unreality WW1 setting where the war is different - the gates of Hell have been opened up for all kinds of demonic nasties to put there own spin on the war which already rages on. The player takes on the role of the protagonist Simon Bunker, an American allied troop who finds himself literally caught smack dab in the middle of the battle between good & evil, and . . . yes the story is very unoriginal. This isn’t really at the pinnacle of importance as far as a game such as this is concerned, mind. However, the story presented isn’t entirely throwaway - I was actually surprised with just how many big chunks of text & spoken dialogue there was in the game. Amicably, this does at least bring forward some extra points of interest to the proceedings.

So, what of the action, I hear your inner mind beckoning? Well, I suppose the difficulty in reviewing a game like Necrovision is describing what is different about it in contrast to what came before it. The WW1 theme has been done before, though of course not exactly like this. The French-developed shooter Iron Storm took on the alternate reality approach to how WW1 played out, but with a more sci-fi flavour & serious tone. Necrovision doesn’t take itself too seriously, which completely works for how it plays - Simon is always cracking jokes amongst the mayhem, & there is even a button assigned for kicking soldiers in the pants. Okay, so it is not quite Grunt-O-Matic-Duke 3D, but of course the long in retirement Dukester comes straight to mind when you play.

The beginning of the game sees you traversing a great deal of burnt out terrain liberally strewn with barbed wire fences, negotiates numerous bunkers (sometimes gas-filled coughs), war-torn buildings to investigate - all the time slugging it out with countless soldiers - both living and undead, hulking vampire-demon things, floating apparitions and what have you. As you move forward collecting an arsenal of authentic WW1 weapons as you proceed, from a rifle, Remington shotgun, various pistols & grenades, Sniper Rifle etc. It all looks the business, & the reloading animations are realistic & well done.

The zombie soldiers are quite amusing in the game, they stagger around and throw shovels and stuff at you. Sometimes if one was armed with a handgun, he would mutter “ I am shooting at you”. It is quite funny sometimes. I suppose the most inventive aspect of the game is the dual wielding weapons & combo system. You can combine various single-handed weapons like a knife & pistol or dynamite-bundle and pistol. There is nothing more satisfying the throwing some dynamite into a gaggle of zombies for a massive explosion of smoke, debris & gib chunks. The combo system works by stringing together a bunch of kills of the head shot or melee attack variety. When you really get going with the body count, it initiates a kind of slow-mo bullet time effect where you move faster than the enemy. This also builds up mana which lets you use this power at will. If you really pile up the corpses, electricity bolts will even start shooting out around you. When you dispatch enemies it will usually flash a word on the screen like if you chop some nasties head off with a shovel it will say “Angry Farmer” or if you registered a lot of head shots it would say “The Bruce Willis” etc. There are of course the traditional secret places to discover, but they aren’t nearly as clever or hard to get as the ones in Painkiller, but it is still fun exploring the environments & discovering them. At times you will also find notes left behind by soldiers which can elaborate on some of the story.

The visuals of the game are definitely one of the strong aspects of the game. The artistic style is well imagined, and the level of detail put into some of the big outdoor scenes is often a real treat to behold. The enemy character models look great with slick & detailed animations, and there are projected shadows. The limb-loss feature in the game is really cool - bits & pieces fly off in relation to where you shoot at the baddies. It really consolidates the graphics beyond what you would expect to see.


The Bad
Well, I wont bother griping about the technical issues since the 1.1 patch surfaced a few days ago.

The cut scenes in this game suck. Except for the prelude movie which is pre-rendered and reasonably cool. But the rest is like static images fading in and out like in Painkiller Overdose. These are NOT compelling to watch.

The chief qualm I have with Necrovision is simple. The action doesn’t feel quite right. There are some things distinctly lacking. The weapons in the game look nice enough, but there isn’t really anything all that outlandish of interesting to wield. In addition, you have to reload weapons which are sacrilegious for a game like this. When your facing off against some behemoth, you don’t want to be caught stuffing shells into your gun. This isn’t really such a big deal, but it is one element that feels off. There is also a distinct lack of variety of enemies, which makes your interest wane some. The level design is the next thing which is an issue - Plodding through trenches gets, well, frankly dull. Fast. Things get much more interesting late in the game, but by when it is nearly all but over. The game kind of takes way too long to really get going properly.

The Bottom Line
Necrovision is a valiant attempt that unfortunately doesn’t quite have all the ingredients for a great shooter - as a result the game never really finds it zen. I believe in all fairness The Farm 51 was working with one hand tied behind their back with this first venture without the talented map designers from the original PcF team. Don’t get me wrong, Necrovision definitely has its moments, but they are just a bit too few and far between for my liking. There is some cool stuff which I neglected to mention earlier like stomping around in an iron mech-thing & some interesting ideas like being able to resurrect fallen enemies to fight for your side. There is definitely some fun to be had here, just not as much as there could and should have been.