NecroVision

My first hour with NecroVision had me convinced I'd wasted my time. The opening chapters plant you in the smoky trenches of the Battle of the Somme - authentic enough on the surface, complete with Lee-Enfields, Luger P08s, and bayonet charges - but the collision detection is fussy, enemies clip through walls, and a nauseating headbob hammers you on every hit. Worse, the weapon-switching system has been broken for so many players since launch that community threads still recommend console workarounds just to cycle your loadout. That is not a great first impression for a 2009 game you're picking up in 2024. Push through it, because about a third of the way in, NecroVision quietly becomes something else entirely. The WWI skin peels back to reveal a full-on arcade shooter in the Painkiller and Serious Sam mold - swarms of demons, trolls, and undead filling sprawling arena corridors, punctuated by oversized boss fights. The Shadow Hand, a clawed gauntlet you acquire mid-game, opens up a magic spell system (fireballs, ice, stakes) alongside its heavy melee punch. Chaining melee combos with gunfire fills a Fury meter that briefly amps your damage output, and creative kills like headshots or combo strings trigger instant weapon reloads. There's also a bullet-time mechanic that lets you squeeze a bit of breathing room out of the more chaotic fights. The dual-wielding setup lets you mix and match pistols, the Colt M1911 in one hand and a Luger P08 in the other, or swap in a trench shovel or bayonet knife for a full melee pairing. Late-game the campaign throws in a vampire exosuit sequence and a dragon-riding segment that feel like they belong in a completely different, louder, more caffeinated game - and I mean that as a compliment. The problems never fully go away. Level navigation is frequently unclear, with too many lever-hunt objectives interrupting the carnage. Dark environments blur together and enemies blend into the geometry, making it genuinely difficult to spot targets at range. The protagonist's one-liners are aggressively terrible in a way that stops being funny around hour three. Repetitive enemy waves in the back half exhaust their welcome before the credits roll, and online multiplayer - Free for All, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Artifact, Last Man Standing - is functionally a ghost town at this point. The story exists, nominally, but coherence was clearly not the priority. Who is this for, then? Fans of old-school arcade FPS games who've already burned through Painkiller and want something weirder and rougher around the edges. The WWI-to-demon-dimension pipeline is a legitimately strange concept that no other game has really revisited, and the combat reward loop - combos, Fury, Shadow Hand spells, dual-wield mixing - has more depth than the mixed reviews suggest. It is a patience test upfront and a jank-tolerance test throughout, but the middle section of this game fires on cylinders you wouldn't expect from a 63-on-Metacritic 2009 curio.

Alex · Scout Team

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