Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Grows on you"

Necrovision (2009, Farm 51) is one of those games that, at the very first moments, make you think why you would spend your time playing it. What is so interesting in playing a First-Person Shooter built on the old PAIN Engine, featuring the depleted World War I theme? To be honest, if you consider Necrovision as part of the Painkiller series, this is the best of the sequels that were released along these years.

Although this game hardly tries to break any new ground, it's quite refreshing to play something suitably old-school after the release of Painkiller (2004) and Serious Sam II (2005). And I'm happy to say that Necrovision is by far superior to Battle out of Hell (2004) and Overdose (2007) expansions, because it features something different to the series. Let's put this in a few words: this game is a gift for old-school players.

I'm one of those gamers that don't like to spend time. If a game doesn't draw my attention early on, then I probably uninstall it and start looking for something better. Fortunately I gave Necrovision a shot and I got one of the most thrilling experiences in the world of First-Person Shooters. Make no mistake: this game starts painfully horrible. Your team gets ambushed while trying to attack the enemy's territory, but you manages to survive. Then you wake up in a cave, where there is a dude who presumably saved you and his own sorry ***, but he had to sacrifice a lot of your teammates to do so. Your avatar starts a fight with that scared dude and, after smashing him down, you grab his rifle and the game becomes even worse.

The scenario of the World War I never looked so horrible. At the very first moments, Necrovision looks like a bad version of Call of Duty. The maps look ugly and confusing, the camera shakes and blurs too much, your rifle is weak and inaccurate, your enemies are hiding in several unreachable places... but suddenly, after some minutes of gameplay, you spot at the sky a huge ghost who start taking with your character. At this time you wonder if Farm 51 was trying to remake Wolfenstein, because zombies and other monsters of undead nature start to appear from nowhere. Although this made the game a little more interesting, Necrovision's full power will only show up after several hours of gameplay.

First of all, the PAIN Engine here looks a bit better than the version in which Overdose was built on. The developers enhanced a bit the special effects, and they look OK for a 2009 game. The fantasy World War I scenario, however, looks crude at some particular moments. The initial maps are confusing to look at, and the frames per second drops a little depending on the video configuration settings and your hardware specifications. Since performance wasn't a problem in the original Painkiller, playing Necrovision (which doesn't look that better) with low FPS was very disappointing.

Thankfully the bad first impression will disappear when the real show begins. I'll not spoiler here, so let me say that your character becomes powerful after some special events, and you'll get magical artifacts to fight against evil in the underground. These special powers are fun to use, particularly when you go melee against the various types of monsters featured in this game. The violence in Necrovision is satisfying, and the close combats with the melee attacks are very well-done; you can kick, bash or slay your opponents with the various weapons at your disposal, which is a resource you must use through the entire game.

The ranged arsenal isn't very useful later on, although a few weapons are fun to use. The sniper, for example, is extremely useful until you get the magical stuff. There's also the option to use akimbo pistols and machine guns, which increases your firepower against tough monsters. When the spells become available, you can combine then with the bizarre weapons of the underground, which made me forget to use the arsenal from the surface.

Your enemies aren't very smart, but you'll find some of them taking cover and launching grenades at you. They also hide when you fire against them, and this is where the AI creativeness ends. In general, just like Painkiller and Serious Sam, you'll find yourself running-and-gunning almost the entire game. Maybe you'll stop for a while to search for a specific lever or door to continue your way, which will not take too much of your time and it's fine to take a breath before moving on.

As I said before, the maps set in the World War I theme are very puzzling, but the underground ones are extremely well-designed and they look appropriately gloomy. In these unfriendly areas, your enemies look terrifying and huge when they need to be; there're barbed-wire zombies, tall monsters armed with hammers, crawling creeps and list goes on. The setting is convincing and things become even better when you find those special toys for combat, such as the heavy-armored mechanized suits and... well, the giant dragon. You fly around with the fire-breathing monster, taking down the spawns of hell and finding your way through the innumerous dread caves of the underground.

About the background music and sound effects I have nothing to complain. The game sounds just as good as any other title based on the PAIN Engine. I would like to hear more intense soundtracks during the slaughtering sessions, but that's just a little detail. The music is a bit boring sometimes, but as always it's your taste that really counts.

Since I applied the patch that updates Necrovision to v1.1, the long loading times were fixed and the game ran pretty well. There're some issues with the physics, which I don't remember to experience in Painkiller and other games of the series. Naturally, they don't mess with the gameplay so you can easily overlook this issue. In general, Necrovision is a sharp game... something hard to see nowadays.

The multiplayer is pretty simple; however it's fine to just have competitive modes to extend the life of this game. Again, as I keep saying in all my reviews, a cooperative mode would be great. Naturally, since your avatar is unique in the single player, it would break the storyline if two or more equal characters share of the same the underground world; but who cares, anyway? Flying in a dragon doesn't make sense as well, however it's undeniably fun!

There is also a challenge mode, which rewards you with a permanent bonus for the single player campaign... if you're able to beat the challenge, of course. These hard accomplishments are unlocked as you finish the maps, but the rewards aren't that much. This mode is only to extend the life of this game for serious players. Personally I managed to beat three of them, and I stopped because I noticed the bonus weren't worth of my time.

Necrovision is a game that grows on you. Just give it a shot until you pass through the boring and uninspired parts, and you'll get some pleasant surprises around and a truly visceral gameplay experience.