Necrovision Described:
Necrovision is a first-person shooter that takes gamers across the frantic battlegrounds of World War I and into a dark underworld of vampires, demons and dark magic. Seeking adventure, young American Simon Bunker joins the British army in war-torn Europe of 1916. During a particularly ferocious battle, Bunker and his battalion are pushed into a series of dark trenches where they encounter mysterious phenomenon. As they move through the labyrinth they discover that there is a greater evil hiding underneath the battlefields of the Great War – an evil that is forcing its way into our world and threatens to wipe out humanity. In the depths of this newly discovered underworld, Bunker must confront the dark forces and fight for the survival of mankind. Welcome to hell soldier!
- Amazon Sales Rank: #2941 in Video Games
- Brand: Aspyr
- Model: 11971
- Released on: 2009-05-25
- ESRB Rating: Mature
- Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP
- Format: CD-ROM
- Dimensions: 9.84″ h x 54.72″ w x 76.77″ l, .22 pounds
Features
- An engrossing storyline blends elements of a traditional war shooter with magic and the supernatural world
- Players fight with authentic WWI era weapons, powerful magic artifacts and vampire powers
- Hordes of enemies that include humans, demons and vampires enter massive, brutal boss battles
- Intense, fast-paced FPS combat stands out from the trend of plodding shooters
- Battle online with up to 16 players
What Customers are Saying:
Pleasantly surprised
Despite it’s silly sounding and rather irrelevant title, Necrovision was quite a fun FPS. I finished it the other night and had a good time playing through it.
PROS:
- Nice graphics. While not groundbreaking there’s quite a bit of eye candy in the game to be seen. Bosses looked great, were fun to fight and not frustratingly difficult to defeat. Some distance views were a bit blurry and the sky at times was solid, unmoving and boring for the most part things looked great. I have a decent system and the only slowdown I experienced was when there was too much fire on the screen, which can be quite a bit at times as you’re tossing fireballs around in the underworld.
- Decent map layouts. I’ve seen several reviews stating the game (like most FPS’) was too linear. Personally I didn’t feel the gameplay was overly linear as there were usually two directions to explore to find secret areas or to progress through the level. I really enjoyed searching everywhere I could think of on every level for hidden weapons and artifacts to boost my powers.
- Plenty of ammo and health upgrades. As this is an over the top shoot em up they do a good job of giving you plenty of bullets to pump into the baddies and health to keep yourself alive. Also the health system allows you to regenerate your health if you remain undamaged for a short period of time.
- Fury level. I really liked this option in the game. It gave me a reason to be more accurate with shooting and not be afraid of getting up close and personal with mobs. Normally I play the sniper role in FPS games if I can and prefer not to get close to enemies. This game however made me take a different approach to dealing with enemies, especially after you receive the gauntlet the character is wearing on the box cover. I don’t want to spoil it more than that but it’s a gameplay changing item.
- The Nazi Mech machine was really fun to use and you get it a few times. If ever you were feeling outnumbered or frustrated by enemies in the game, this contraption will definitely help ease that frustration. Did it make a lot of sense? No. Was it a ton of fun to blow things up? Yes!
CONS:
- Voice acting of the main character was absolutely atrocious. I honestly felt like they could have called him George W. Bush rather than Simon because that’s exactly who he sounded like, Texan and all. It was simply unforgivable. If the developer’s goal was to make the main character sound like the most stereotypical, moronic, southern redneck there is, then they succeeded. The strange part is the rest of the games voice acting is quite good with only a few lines of odd dialogue or poor grammar.
- Storyline is rather odd and convoluted at times. Not impossible to follow but doesn’t really make a ton of sense. Granted given the style of game it’s not imperative but it wouldn’t have hurt to have a more coherant story.
-Unforgivably long load times, even after deaths.
- Dragon riding sequence was sort of a let down. Basically all you get to do is fly around and burn/blast stuff. Sounds great doesn’t it? I thought it would be as well but it was only one level and you pretty much did the same thing over and over. Not to mention you could die quite easily atop the dragon from the over abundance of mobs on the ground shooting at you as you were trying to accomplish your “destroy the barrier machines” objectives. While they did give you a decent amount of health drops it didn’t seem like enough to me if you wanted to take out all of the ground mobs. Some of them were immune to your dragon’s firebreath even but not his fireball (limited by adrenaline levels). I also didn’t like the fact you couldn’t land the dragon, get off and fight the mobs yourself. The sequence felt tacked on and not well thought out.
- Short looping music tracks. I a huge fan of great atmospheric music in all games. I want to feel like I’m in the dungeon with creatures at every turn. Unforunately the game falls short in this category. It suffers from that awful guitar action cheese rock that so many games seem to possess. Luckily the entire game isn’t plagued by it but what decent spooky atmospheric music there is it’s very short and sloppily looped.
All in all it was a decent game worth the price. It reminded me a bit of Return To Castle Wolfenstein – Operation Ressurection. If you’re not terribly concerned about a FPS with a wonky story and a main character with terrible voice acting then definitely give Necrovision a try. I know I was glad I did.
One of the best games I’ve played and here’s why…
Necrovision is a great action FPS game in the tradition of the Painkiller games. Basically, it consists of a series of levels that each get slightly more aggressive as the game goes on.
Typical of most shooters, weapons, ammo, and health kits are distributed throughout the game. Weapons start simple and get more powerful as you progress through the game. The weapons are quite well conceived. The initial weapons are WWI vintage. Melee weapons include a bayonet and shovel. There are pistols, a rifle, a sniper rifle, a shot gun, a machine gun,and grenade launcher. There are grenades and oil lamps that you can throw and there is dynamite for blowing up barricades. From there you move on to more potent and futuristic weapons including a machine gun, shot gun, grenade launcher, and flame thrower. Finally, there is the “shadow hand” which is a powerful claw for close in fighting. It also shoots balls of fire, spikes, and bolts of electricity if your adrenaline level is high enough.
Unlike most shooters, this game encourages close-quarter hand-to-hand combat. It is actually easier to kill enemies by stabbing them than simply shooting them. As part of that, several keys are associated with melee style attacks. You can stab, club, and kick, and shoot and in various combos, these tactics are more powerful and can actually help you replenish your adrenaline level which enhances your fighting capability. Adrenaline level is depicted as a bar graph next to your health level. With sufficient adrenaline, the “shadow hand” weapon (essentially a clawed glove) can project balls of fire, darts, or electrical energy bolts that are effective against different types of targets.
Usually each level is punctuated with a level boss and after each level there is a “challenge room” that you can play which, if you beat the challenge, results in certain weapons becoming a permanent part of your arsenal. The challenge rooms are tougher than the game, but lots of fun. You don’t need to play them to complete the game. After you complete the game, you can replay the levels with the shadow hand.
If you have Vista, the game installs a DX9 and DX10 icon on your desktop. I played the DX10 version and it is kind of a resource hog. It will get jerky during disk accesses if I don’t close any other open applications. Although I have two SLI-linked 8800GTS 512 GPUs, I selected a slightly lower resolution (900×1440) than my monitor 1050×1680 size, but I have everything else maxed out.
Graphics are good with nicely done level design with fairly good variety. Lighting and textures are good by modern standards although not groundbreaking. The story line is mediocre and the voice acting is pretty decent except for the main character which is not just bad, but stunningly bad. The game has reasonably frequent auto-saves, there are menu-saves, and quick-saves. Since the game saves all quick saves, it’s really the only method you need to use.
The game runs smoothly with few problems although I have had a couple crashes to the desktop. After the first crash, I lost the last save game and all five of the challenge rooms that I completed were marked as Not Beaten. I replayed them and they have remained marked as Completed even though the game has crashed a couple more times since then.
Movement is standard with jump and sprint capability. The game is linear, but not quite on the rails in the sense that there is some wandering around involved. For variety, there are parts of the game where you drive a robotic walker and other places where you fly a friendly dragon. Both are fun and operate quite easily with practically no learning curve.
I have finished all the levels and all but the last challenge room which is called Serious Uncle Sam (an obvious reference to the game, Serious Sam). Through out the game there are secret places to discover. Also there are Vampire Artifacts to be found which will give you added fighting power. Since I didn’t discover all of the Artifacts when I played the game, I am now replaying some levels to get the artifacts I missed. You need the added killing power (referred to as Fury Level) in order to succeed in completing the Serious Uncle Sam challenge room which is exceedingly difficult (killing 500 enemies in 15 minutes).
I highly recommend this game if you liked the Painkiller series. It is quite a long game so it’s a bargain for the price (I paid $15). As a comparison, I played FEAR 2 right before I played his and I think Necrovision might be the better game (although I also game FEAR 2 five stars). It’s non-stop fun, only moderately difficult, but there are no frustratingly difficult areas, although the challenges are… challenging.
Fun in a Duke Nukem outrageous way
Necrovision is a game you will like if you love shooters with tons of action and your brain turned off. If you are looking for any sort of realism or WW1 story you might injure your brain when in 10 seconds the games goes from WW1 trench fighting to vampires flying in the sky and giant mechs attacking you.
The gunplay is good and there is a good variety of weapons and ways to use them. Their is also a combo system of using different types of attacks (shoot, melee, kick) in different ways results in things exploding in more spectacular fashion. It is a little rough around the edges but it’s something new in an FPS. The voice acting and plot line are terribly insane and also insanely terrible but in such an over the top way it manages to loop back to being good. There are some cool challenge modes that unlock equipment for the campaign and the levels are large and have stuff to collect if you are in to the 100% completion side of games. Graphics and animations are as good as any AAA game except for a few things.
Necrovision is a great example of what kind of games have been coming out of small Eastern European dev shops with games like STALKER, rough around the edges but at its core is just a fun game.
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Images
Intuition
Interactivity
Instruction
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