NecroVisioN - Hardcore Pack

I went into this pack expecting a janky relic and came out having had a genuinely weird, occasionally thrilling time, which is the most charitable thing you can say about NecroVisioN. The Hardcore Pack bundles the original NecroVisioN with its prequel, NecroVisioN: Lost Company, and together they paint a picture of a developer swinging way above their weight class on ambition while tripping over their own shoelaces on execution. The premise is legitimately good: WWI trenches, 1916, and then hell opens up beneath you. Simon Bukner, an American soldier on the British front, goes from plugging Germans to fighting vampires, zombies, and demons in secret underground caverns. The first few hours are rough enough that a lot of players bounce off immediately, between clunky collision detection, frustrating timed missions, and enemy AI that would embarrass a 2002 budget release. Stick with it past that opening stretch and the game loosens up into something closer to Painkiller or Serious Sam territory, a pure arcade shooter that buries you in enemy swarms and trusts you to figure it out. The gunplay has a pull to it once you get your hands on heavier weapons, and the supernatural twist unlocks things the WWI setting by itself never could, including a fire-breathing dragon you can ride and a literal descent into a demon underworld. The Hand of Shadow mechanic, a demonic arm that layers in melee combos, spells, and fatality moves, is the closest thing the game has to a standout system. It does not always work reliably, which is a recurring theme. Hitboxes are inconsistent, weapon switching is unreliable, headbob is aggressive enough to cause genuine nausea at default settings, and the voice acting is the kind of bad that becomes its own entertainment. The story does not make coherent sense by the end, and the game knows it. Lost Company, the prequel, casts you as German soldier Jonas Zimmerman and tells the events leading up to the first game from the opposing side. It adds 10 single-player levels, 6 new weapons with upgrade paths, 15 new characters, and two drivable vehicles: an FT17 tank and a Halberstadt biplane. The consensus from players who finished both is that Lost Company has more coherent level design and somewhat better performance, though it runs shorter and carries most of the same bugs, including a persistent Hand of Shadow selection bug that was never patched. A new multiplayer mode called Gas Attack rounds out the package alongside new maps, but realistically this is a single-player experience at its core. Who is this for? Hardcore retro FPS fans with a high tolerance for jank and a soft spot for games that clearly had heart behind them even when the craft wasn't there yet. If Painkiller and Blood scratched something for you, NecroVisioN scratches a similar itch in a more chaotic, less polished way. If you need consistent mechanics and clean hitboxes, this pack will drive you up a wall. The Mixed Steam rating at 68% positive is honest. Half the audience found something to love in the relentless, supernatural slaughter. The other half got stuck on the corpse pile collision physics and quit. Both reactions are valid.

Alex · Scout Team

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