Necrovision Review

Necrovision, where do I begin with this little mixed bag of emotions? Well at the beginning would be the logical point, so for those who aren't aware I shall try to briefly enlighten you with some foundation details.

Ok so some bods from People Can Fly of Painkiller fame and a few other industry veterans decided it would be a good idea to start a farm together. Now I'm not talking about raising animals and producing dairy products for the local village, but offering game development services to the industry. This farm became known as The Farm 51.

Onto The Farm's first offering of Necrovision and the comparisons with Painkiller are glaringly obvious. The fight between "Good" and "Evil", the face in the crowd suddenly thrust into the battle between the two almighty powers, and other little touches like the compass which points you to the next objective or wave of enemies to which makes Painkiller veterans feel at home in this title.

But sadly, in my own humble opinion anyway, the comparisons end here. Gone is the simplified bunny hopping and the traversing levels with gay abandon at high speed, whilst dispatching hordes of enemy forces through the French windows of the pavilion with consummate ease. Say hello to a slower pace of slightly over complicated combat with a grittier, more underlying sense of an evil presence within.

The story of Necrovision goes a little like this. You take the role of Simon, an American soldier serving in the British Army in the midst of the First World War at the Somme, nearing the Christmas of 1916. The action kicks off with you being sent on a mission through no man's land after a rallying speech from your CO, only for all hell to break loose via a suspiciously well timed ambush by the Germans.
Not everything is as it seems, as after some story filler and a highly questionable FMV sequence, you discover that Mr. Mephisto is up to no good again, so it falls down to you to save the human and vampire races from death and destruction, along with all the other bad things the Bible talks about. But help is at hand from the race of vampires via the ShadowHand weapon - the tool of the necromancer - able to slice, dice, flambé and freeze your foes.

Before you get your sweaty palms on such a weapon, you must first persevere with the wares of The Great War. The standard FPS armoury is at your disposal, including bolt action rifles, a shotgun and the trusty sidearm. You may also melee with your weapons along with kicking your enemies and finally letting you combo weapons in either hands, be it dual pistols or a bayonet in one hand and a luger in the other, which ties in with the over complicated combat system I mentioned before.

Basically, you have an adrenaline bar which enables you to slow down time. To fill this bar you have to perform special kills which in turn unleashes your inner fury; for example a kick then a blast from the faithful shotgun awards you with a "Farmers Revenge" kill. Furthermore, the more vampire relics you discover increases your fury level, allowing you to chain combo kills letting you fill your adrenaline quicker whilst also releasing some magical zappy magic which can knockback nearby enemies to the ground, or just simply burning them to death which can be a life saver when clustered in close combat.

This may sound rather fantastic, whereas in practice it feels cumbersome and monotonous to chain these combo moves, along with discovering what actually works as a combo, whilst requiring the appendage dexterity of a world class speed typist to press your attack buttons, when a simple headshot can put down the vast majority of opponents you will encounter during this game. Another reservation I have about Necrovision is the rather simplistic AI. Now I know it's not meant to be some ground breaking system where the AI feels like a human opponent, but some sort of self preservation would have been nice to see instead of just simply following the shortest route to the player. Also, in a few instances the mobs seemed to simply ignore the fact I was within their presence until I thwacked their jawbone with the butt of my rifle. 

In terms of graphics, the engine used in Necrovision does the job with ease, from the gritty war torn battlefields of the trenches to the vampire inspired underground temples and looks rather good in both DX9 and DX10, though in all honesty I personally couldn't see a visible difference between the two DX modes other than a drop in frame rates in DX10 due to my now ageing system. Along with a capable graphics engine is a soundtrack which caresses your ears with the bloody screams of war entwined with a backing track of military-esque music used to dramatic effect inside the trenches. Along with this you get a mixture of high beat rock like tracks during combat and boss encounters, spooky-ish ambient music composed to build tension I guess, then on the final encounter a nice piece which I'm struggling to describe.

It's like an orchestral-come-rock-come-choir-like track which fits extremely well in your battle with Mephisto, but sadly after that I was personally let down with its popular music track for the credit rolls. It didn't work well in Max Payne and it doesn't work well here; it's simply out of place for the game's theme. I mean you've just battled through the trenches of the worst conflict in human history then battled to the bowels of hell and rode on the back of a dragon to finally defeat the devil, only to be rewarded by something seemingly penned by the hands of Hanson or some other 90's teen loving pop band which left me feeling quite melancholic.

Multiplayer, well the less said about this mode the better, as it definitely feels like it's been an afterthought in the games development cycle. You have the usual MP shenanigans of DM and TDM, along with a variation of CTF named Capture the Artefact, then finally a last man standing mode where players are given a set number of lives where obviously the last man standing wins the map.

Finally in terms of replayability you are given the option of a challenge mode allowing you to pit yourself in an arena situated in one of the many levels within the game with the objective to kill enemies in set manner within a time limit of usually 5 minutes, the goals of which unlock extra abilities or starting equipment if you wish to play through the single player campaign again. Or you may wish to revisit levels to try and discover the secret area's to obtain vampire artefacts previously missed in your first sitting.

Overall Necrovision isn't the visceral romp I was expecting it to be. This doesn't necessarily make it a bad game at all - it's a good few hours of mindless shooting, just I was hoping for that little bit extra 'oomph', a little extra surge that would have made this into a bloody good romp indeed. Nevertheless, if you are looking for something to fill the void before the fresh wave of titles hits our store shelves, then Necrovision could be that filler, but in all honesty that's all I see it being - a stopgap before the next wave of A-list games occupy our gaming hours.