NecroVision: Lost Company Review

Right off the bat I was looking forward to reviewing this game, it was everything I loved, first-person shooter, Germans, zombies and dragons. What was there not to like? Unfortunately this is where the games promise ended.

Before I go into the main issues with the game, a bit of background on the game. Lost Company is the prequel to the original Necrovision, but played from the perspective of the German army in World War I. It focuses on an evil force unleashed by the war and the fight to defeat that force. The game has lots of new levels, new weapons and lots of new characters.

The game sticks quite rigidly to the given FPS rules of, Go here, kill them, rescue this, blow up that. Nothing new or innovative, nothing that hasn't been seen in games several times over and done much better, in my opinion. There are highlights, not many, but they are there, if you look hard enough. Sometimes you feel you are playing a version of, say Quake or Hexen, which has just been badly re-skinned for the modern age. Well, that's exactly how I felt anyway.

To say this game is ugly is doing a disservice to all things ugly. The developers have clearly not taken the time out to have a look at games available at the current time. I found myself drifting back in time to when games were brown and green with a few hints of colour here and there. The model detail leaves something to be desired, very few of them are convincing, and if anything downright amateurish.

The air combat and tank combat sections feel a little contrived at time, almost tacked on to give it something extra. Personally I wouldn't have missed them if they were not there. I will however give the game its dues when it comes to the dragons, they looked almost impressive, almost, I have seen them done better before, but never in an FPS.

The level design however is where the game really goes to town on idiocy, I felt like I was playing a maze designed by a four year old. Sometimes it's too easy to navigate the level, other times it's almost impossible to find the correct route. Other games of this type also fall foul of this issue, but not on quite the same scale.

As for performance, this is one of the games saving graces, its hugely scalable, in fact I didn't notice that when I was playing it at first I was only running at 1024x768, when I cranked the resolution up and turned in all the bells and whistles it still ran very well, albeit with not much visual difference from my first run of the game. I would say the game will happily run on an older system with little problems. This in the days of game making you upgrade is a saving grace.

Storywise it's a great idea, a fantastic idea in fact, but the implementation of the idea has fallen foul of bad graphics, bad level design and, quite possibly, some of the worst gameplay in an FPS in the last 5 years. When you consider the leaps and bounds of games like Far cry, Doom 4 and Fallout 3 this game falls a long way short of being a must own title. Much like Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, this game could have been a contender, but is actually a bum.