More and more increasingly, games are having to bring a unique twist, a stand out feature of sorts to set themselves apart from what is becoming a rather crowded marketplace. Gone are the days of a few big hitters each year, with almost all playable games receiving at least some sense of a market share. It’s not uncommon now to see two or three triple-A titles releasing in what is usually considered a quiet period. Thus, it’s more important now than ever for a game to have a clear unique selling point. Perfectly on cue, in walks NeverDead – a third-person action game from Konami. The core gameplay mechanic is enough to entice anyone; you play as an immortal who can survive severed limbs, even decapitation, who can pull himself back together, eliminating the frustration of death paramount in the current crop of titles on the shelves. Foes will try to chop you up, but to no avail as you are immortal.

It’s a gameplay technique that actually works very well. You lose limbs by either a direct hit to that region by a sharp object – be that a slicing attack or a bite, but perform a combat roll over them and they’ll reattach; or wait for a complete body regeneration which recharges to keep the variety fresh. It’s not just in combat that it’s used either, there’s the occasional puzzle element that requires you to either detach your head or an arm to throw through a gap or hole to unlock a previously unreachable location. This makes for a momentarily interesting sidestep of what is otherwise a game sure to invoke frustration, boredom and anger in equal measures.

Whilst NeverDead does manage to bring a quite brilliant component to the table, it falters at just about every other hurdle to the degree that playing it was painfully dull. Enemies are given ridiculous names like “puppy”, “spoon”, “birdy”, and “squash”, alluring to the not so ridiculous notion that the developers allowed a selection of children to name the demonic foe. Each require a different attack approach, yet, due to the incredible ineffectiveness of almost all of the guns, you end up in a hack’n’slash battle that becomes monotonous and repetitive with greater hast than the jerking plot (but I’ll come back to that).

“Whilst NeverDead does manage to bring a quite brilliant component to the table, it falters at just about every other hurdle to the degree that playing it was painfully dull.”

However, the crown of most infuriating aspect of NeverDead goes to the “grandbaby” demons. Their sole purpose is to scurry about at all times, waiting to gobble up a stray limb or, if they’re exceptionally lucky, a tasty immortal head to ingest. A limb isn’t too much of a hindrance to you, as you simply grow another one, but your head, oh, your head is an entirely different story. Find your cranium rolling around without a body attached and the demonic pests will circle like vultures, hoovering you up like a possessed Henry. What follows is one of the most crippling design choices I’ve ever experienced. Using a power bar you must correctly time your button press or face protagonist Bryce’s head being swallowed for good; thus spending eternity in the digestive tract of a creature no larger than a beach ball.

Why in a game that eliminates the constant loading and relocating of death with such an innovative concept, would you then enforce a mechanic as archaic and rage-inducing as a power bar to inflict the punishment of restarting at the last checkpoint?

Now that I’ve mentioned him by name, it’s time to discuss the incoherent and weak portion that is the plot. You control smart-ass demon hunter Bryce Boltzmann, who having been cursed with immortality five hundred year earlier, must now stop a demonic invasion with female partner Arcadia Maximille. Neither are particularly likable characters, nor is their dialogue, which, along with a thoroughly uninspiring storyline, completes a trio of despair.

Gameplay, whilst seemingly attempting to recreate the stellar performances of the Devil May Cry series, is slow and clunky in comparison, and although the freedom of slashing with the sword is welcome, movement is sluggish, gun-play pointless and the lack of combos is apparent. Power-ups feel worthless due to the limited usage and throw in an ample amount of bugs – primarily getting stuck in or behind scenery, and it becomes more and more disappointing by the minute.

“Unfortunately, the game is utterly ruined by the ridiculously designed final boss battles.”

Visuals aren’t half bad, with a nice art style and a solid framerate, but it’s rarely anything to write home about; whilst the soundtrack is rather rousing to begin with, the repetitiveness sets in once more. Meanwhile: level design is a bag of mediocrity, areas become an onslaught of kill rooms with only fleeting puzzle elements, and although the multiplayer challenges are potentially worthwhile, any sort of connection at all was unsuccessful.

The first half of the game meanders along at a dull pace, never really exciting, however, once you hit the second half – and ultimately unlock the assault rifle – levels become slightly more interesting, enemy variety is expanded and there are some enjoyable battles. Taking on an ogre like creature called a Panda Bear utilises the game’s gun mechanics well, but only if you have the assault rifle to do any real damage; run out of ammo and it’ll become one long slog.

Unfortunately, the game is utterly ruined by the ridiculously designed final boss battles. There’s a platforming section thrown into a game that has awful jump control, a constantly regenerating enemy, and a distinct lack of ammo for all of your good weapons. Add on top of that a poorly designed sequence of attacks that has you attempting to pull yourself back together, only to be blasted apart again an instance later.

Expectations were never staggeringly high for NeverDead, but the primary concept showed real promise and it’s therefore deeply disheartening that is underwhelmed so greatly. There’s a lack of quality on almost all aspects of the game’s foundation, and there came a point whereby I wanted to lay down the controller out of sheer protest of the idiocy of the final bosses. Any game that actively infuriates is never going to be a pleasant one and unfortunately for NeverDead, is just doesn’t do enough right, let alone well.