Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
NARRATOR: December 1916.
NARRATOR: The Great War enters its darkest hour.
NARRATOR: Both the Allies and the Central Powers are exhausted,
NARRATOR: devastated by the scale of the ongoing massacre.
SIMON: The walking dead... They're for real!
NARRATOR: In one battle alone, the banks of the river Somme devour more than a million corpses.
SIMON: Where are you ugly *** coming from?
NARRATOR: Riddled with bullets, poisoned by gas, dismembered by shrapnel and torn down in ruthless hand-to-hand combat.
Simon: Taste justice!
"Mental World War 1 FPS action". Yeah, that sounds about right.
This is the third World War 1 FPS ever made, and there's only about eight of those in total.
Codename Eagle was the first one set in alternate history.
Darkest of Days was in a few settings, so I'm not sure if it counts. It's a question for another day.
There are some good reasons why this setting isn't that popular for the genre.
The public generally views the war as senseless tragedy and not something you can make video game villains out of easily.
People argue over whose fault it was to this day.
More importantly than that: these guns are really slow
It's harder to make the combat exciting this way.
You could make the combat slower with more consequence to compensate for that. But NecroVisioN didn't do that at all. This is...
Different.
SIMON: Vaya con dios, amigo! (Spanish: "May the God be with you, friend")
SIMON: Consider yourself purified.
Oh, not that part yet.
I'll take it from the top, starting with the graphics.
I like the loading screen, but it's clear, there's something wrong with the shadows.
This might be hard to see on YouTube but it looks like bugs are crawling all over this man.
That would be realistic, but this is on everything. There was something wrong with the lighting.
There are some versions of NecroVisioN where you need to force DX 10 in it, but no, GoG has it already.
You would need to go out of your way to make it go in DX 9, which didn't solve it.
I'll spare the details.
It was a lot of "I tried this but it didn't work" and I tried a lot. Most of it just caused other problems.
So I had to give some ground: I had to turn the ambient occlusion off.
This makes the lighting look worse, but the screen isn't crawling with grain anymore
War is all about sacrifices after all.
During explosions or impacts the screen can go kind of crazy.
It's like this with or without vsync. It can get really bad.
Recording didn't pick this up but sometimes when I use fully automatic weapons the framerate would crawl so I turned it off.
It didn't fix the screen issues, but it stopped the slow down.
While not directly impacting the game, I thought this was interesting. BJ's not really in the corner.
I put him there in post. Why? The recording overlay, which so far has been invisible in every game I've used it in... shows up.
But only when firing certain weapons, so it's on and off all the time.
So BJ will be up there blocking all that out. His spirit is here with us.
I'm not gonna spoil Quake 4 but this game is similar in that there's a bit of a turning point near the middle.
It feels like covering two separate games in a video where I'm already covering two separate games.
I'm gonna start with the first part which is the Battle of the Somme, or, as it was called at the time:
The Great *** Up.
No, that's not a joke. NecroVisioN does a great job at setting it up.
DOUGLAS HAIG: Like the rats, they love to eat.
DOUGLAS HAIG: Remember this hour. Tonight the forces of evil will be crushed once and for all.
DOUGLAS HAIG: This is the Call of Duty®.
SOLDIER: What load of horseshit.
Genius.
I think this is supposed to be Field Marshal Haig.
He was in charge of it after all. On the first day of the Somme, Haig had been shelling the lines for a few days at this point.
He assumed the German trenches would be like his and there should be nothing left by the time he was done.
This was the fatal mistake. As we all know now, if Germans have to be somewhere longer than three hours, they're not drinking.
They start building fortifications out of concrete, some of them going about ten meters into the ground.
So when Haig ordered his men over the top shoulder-to-shoulder, he thought there'd be no resistance and... there was.
They'd just been having a good time playing some steam pipe assembly board games.
So when they saw the parade coming towards them they made it go away.
*Machine gun fire*
The British took nearly 60,000 casualties in a day. I think Great *** is an understatement.
In NecroVisioN some things are off, like a date is far too late and there's a dragon.
So this isn't the 2009 version of Verdun or anything.
You play a soldier just trying to survive the war. It soon becomes clear that something strange is going on in the battlefront.
SIMON: I think I've been buried alive.
SOLDIER: An american corpse, a-hey?
SIMON: How long have I been out?
SOLDIER: Do I look like a bloody Cuckoo clock?
Yeah, you plays an American southerner named Simon. That seems slightly out of place.
Well, they tried to make the opening cinematic. It's so incoherent that you can't really appreciate it.
This game came out in 2009, they were trying to compete with the likes of Call of Duty.
It's not incoherent just because of what you're seeing but also the order the story is told in.
First you're fighting in the trenches and then the intro cutscene plays.
To their credit, you can see production values all over it. The look of it really reminded me of the Death Stranding trailers.
Then it starts playing really choppy gameplay and then back to Death Stranding and then more choppy gameplay.
The sequence seems like something you'd see at an E3 trailer instead of the beginning of the game.
Apparently Simon's gonna fight demons and duel with a big glove. Got it.
Then right after it just puts you back into World War 1. I looked it up later and yeah, it was an E3 trailer.
They just put in the beginning of the game. It completely throws a wrench into your expectations for reasons I'll return to later.
For now, it's only slightly confusing. After the prologue, I had low expectations, but things started to pick up.
The first thing the game teaches you is how to kick an enemy. For me, that's a really good sign.
You can make combos from different melee attacks, your kick and your weapons.
This is when the game finally takes your training wheels off, and when it does, there's a lot of fun to be had.
SIMON: That all you got?
SIMON: Close your eyes and pray.
SIMON: Sleep well.
This is still a very, very flawed game.
Let's start with the presentation. For 2009 standards, the character models and texture work range from subpar to average.
This is by no means something I'd call a pretty game.
This is one of those late 2000s brown and bloom titles.
For the most part everything is brown, gray, muted and washed out except for sometimes when they crank up the brightness and lights to remind you that you're still alive.
But to be fair, it is fitting for the setting.
I wouldn't expect World War 1 to look like a Power Rangers Pride Parade sponsored by Fruity Pebbles.
There are a few times in the first half and they'll make the colors more interesting and the night fights look really good.
This is where the bright lighting works with the dark backgrounds. Considering its premise I wish the first half was less generic.
Well, there are moments that remind you it's World War 1, from time to time you can kind of forget and feel like you're playing a World War 2 game.
And there were plenty of those around.
Even when reality starts warping it still feels a little bit too safe.
Even when they're being fairly generic there's a lack of consistency across the design themes.
Like this mech was made by the same people who made that giant robot scorpion.
Then it starts supplying these organic-looking Eyebot Probes, but the people who made them are wearing steampunk dwarven armor.
You might think that this seems odd to complain about. Variety is good in the game.
The problem is: it takes itself very seriously.
In the first chapter of the game I started to wonder if it was some kind of parody game. Kind of like Spec Ops: The Line but sillier.
I was legitimately starting to wonder if it was trying to tell me something about the relation between violence and games and story in games.
You know how most games by now had audio logs or stuff you could read in a menu?
Not in NecroVisioN. You find letters that will fill the entire screen, don't save anywhere.
If you stop reading it you lose a letter and have to go back to look at it. The game doesn't pause.
VOICE FROM THE LETTER: Dear Sarah, I miss you so much. I thought the Somme was the worst moment of my life, but I was wrong.
Try reading All Quiet on the Western Front next to Duke Nukem. If your character speaks, the narration gets cut off.
GERMAN RADIO : ...they're under my feet. His leg above me, high on the side of the trench. He's-
SIMON: I've got something special for you!
SIMON: Oh, get the point!
The sound design is OK, and the music forgettable. The voice acting, however, is unforgettable.
GERMAN SOLDIER: Yes, there he is. Looks like he's crawling!
GERMAN SOLDIER: Almost there! Was? (German: "What?")
GERMAN SOLDIER: We have a... problem... here...
MOON PRESENCE: That is what we want! Strong! Yes! He could lead them! He could change it all!
It's not necessarily horrible, it's just... odd.
SIMON: Was something nastier after you?
SOLDIER: Yes, I mean no, I mean *rambles in German*
Some of the best voice acting is from Simon. He has random one-liners and a dedicated button for them.
SIMON: Consider your sins forgiven.
SIMON: That's got him. Well cooked and easy on the onions
SIMON: Get the point.
SIMON: Take that, freak!
SIMON: Would you care to dance? No, yes? I guess not.
SIMON: Ah, pain!
SCIENTIST: If you only knew what this war has unleashed...
SIMON: I don't know, huh? Well, just try me. How about dragons, giant monsters, resurrecting corpses? You want me to go on?
What's odd is sometimes he'll switch voice actors.
His voice does start to change halfway through but this is a completely different third voice.
SIMON: Rise and fight!
DEEPER SIMON: Lord have mercy.
Who is that?
So now for the levels and combat. NecroVisioN was made by The Farm 51, which had a lot of people who worked on Painkiller.
SIMON: There, take a little painkiller!
The game physically looks similar to Painkiller. It uses a slightly updated version of the engine.
Make no mistake, this isn't a Painkiller clone as it has a lot more emphasis on melee combat.
A lot of your weapons are slow to reload and many enemy types will run up into your face to fight you.
You can hold as many weapons as you can find and you can really play around with it.
You can choose between holding a pistol and an explosive, two pistols, a pistol and a melee weapon.
A good variety, but no dual melee weapons for some reason.
Along with that you have an adrenaline meter which you can use to slow down time.
if you're on the verge of death it'll trigger automatically giving you a chance to make it out.
There's also mini slow-mo.
If you kill an enemy with a headshot, a melee combo or a gun melee combo the game will slow down a bit.
Each combo has a different name and the game will slow down for about half a second.
"Brute Willis", I like that. I thought this would be annoying when I first saw it.
But I ended up liking it. It encourages using firearms with melee and finding new combinations of weapons to use.
It rewards you mechanically by giving you some adrenaline each time and it raises your fury level.
When your fury goes up your attack damage goes up and eventually chain lightning is added on top of it.
Your fury level only restores when you're in combat. Otherwise, they'll start draining down.
So the better you're with variety, the more effective you'll be.
This is a big brain design. In another game the best way to fight these zombies will be to back off and pick them off from a distance.
In NecroVisioN running up to fight them in melee range is the most effective.
You save ammo since every shot counts for more damage you need to use less and it makes the fight quicker but riskier.
So how does it work so well, what is the genius of a level design. Well?
I'll tell you the secret.
Enemies are brain damaged. None of this works if the enemies are content to just sit back and shoot you.
There's already an abundance of melee enemies.
But even the ones with guns will run up and whack you with them.
Now, this could still be challenging except for the way the health system works.
When you're near-dead and slow-mo kicks in, your health comes back.
This will recover about a third of your health, but you can still find med kits, or health in containers, or enemies that drop health.
Health is everywhere.
The result is the game's not very challenging most of the time.
My first run was on the hardest difficulty and I died maybe three times in the first three quarters of the game.
It's not skill. The game's just that forgiving. Until later on. My god, until later on.
Well, it's not challenging at first, it's enjoyable and the levels are massive.
Each level has secret areas with extra items and weapons. Find artifacts to get your fury multiplier even higher. No potions or food, though.
They could be around a corner or way, way off the track.
I didn't go out my way to find these and each level still took about 45 minutes to beat.
Every level also had its own share of bugs. Enemies would get stuck.
Sometimes a weapon wouldn't fire until I switched it. Bosses could get stuck in the air, stuck in a rock, or stuck in the wall.
One boss just disappeared but the door opened so I continued on normally.
Oh, oh, he died when I left.
The worst one was halfway into a level where I press the button for a bridge and nothing happened.
Yeah, there was a bridge sound effect, but no bridge.
Only one bridge can be active at a time in a level.
I messed up using that bridge earlier. The hardest difficulty doesn't let you make manual saves - only auto ones.
So I'd have to go all the way back.
Luckily, I figured out I could shimmy along the side and that fixed all my problems. Still, that's pretty bad.
NecroVisioN has more bugs than the Amazon. It'll try your patience.
So before I get into part 2, I guess I should finally talk about the story a bit. It's the ramblings of a crazy person.
DRAGON: Foolish mortal. Did you really believe your childhood fairytales about "noble dragons"? But I am Naga, the last of my kind.
DRAGON: And I will help you not because you saved my life... but because you bested me.
You never met him before but I guess you bested him in this cutscene just now.
Longtime watchers can vouch that I'm used to games with convoluted plots or nonlinear storytelling, but this is a little bit beyond that.
It's a very cookie cutter chosen one plot.
But it feels like half the pages in the script are missing and it's going through rewrites as you're playing the game.
The game will dump vast amounts of lore and plot threads on you that don't go anywhere and are never mentioned again.
DISEMBODIED VOICE: Excellent, master! When you send us all to hell you move one step closer to unleashing your true aspect.
DISEMBODIED VOICE: Kill it off, and you will give us the veil of NecroVisioN.
SIMON: Necro-what? What are you talking about?
DISEMBODIED VOICE: You'll see!
Oh, no, you won't! I'm so lost by the story that I don't even feel comfortable giving an opinion on it.
I can only say what I think is happening. Long ago mankind split into two factions:
Human beings and vampires. Except the vampires don't seem like Dracula vampires.
They're like steampunk high elf vampires. Hell, I don't even know if they drink blood. Anyways,
Vampires have advanced technology and can control the undead, but they use it to fight demons.
They control the undead with the gauntlet called the Shadow Hand which we saw in the intro.
it's kinda like Tim Burton's Infinity Gauntlet. A German named Zimmermann took it to make his own undead army to fight the Allies and the Demons.
So because you kill him, you inherit the Shadow Hand and you become the new vampire champion like the Santa Clause.
So the second half of the game is about defeating hell.
That's all you need to know.
The Shadow Hand changes things.
If you already got into the habit of doing melee combos this makes it a lot easier
But now you can find vampire weapons to use with it, and raise the dead, and cast magic. Well.
SIMON: My guns never tire.
SIMON: Consider yourself purified.
This was a turning point. NecroVisioN really started to shine.
You could use the new vampire weapons but also switch back to your old ones.
New enemy types were showing up and while the environments are still drab, they were different.
You got to find upgrades to the Shadow Hand and use new abilities. Instead of a magic meter the spells just draw from your adrenaline.
Which means you get less second chances, less chance for slo-mo and combat gets more dangerous.
Everything was improving, even if it was only a little bit.
Remember when I said the sound was pretty subpar to average? The vampire shotgun changed me. As a person.
With the Shadow Hand it turns you to a combination of Robocop and the Shredder.
DISEMBODIED VOICE: ... THAT WHICH IS ALREADY DEAD TRULY DIE.
NecroVisioN was on a great track.
My hopes were high but then the game became very, very tedious. Room after room of tough, fast, and hard-hitting zombies.
Sometimes they throw in some spiders or the Skaven, but mainly zombies. Having this as a main enemy is annoying, but... listen to them.
*walking cliff racers noise*
They're like walking cliff racers.
*cliff racers noise intensifies*
SIMON: Eat this!
Please God make it stop.
Not even the undead army can make me feel better.
They had a decision between making harder enemies or a lot of them. And they went with the latter.
There are some ways to make this more tolerable.
Whenever you beat a mission you unlock a challenge map.
Beating these will guarantee you're always starting with a piece of weaponry or a Shadow Hand upgrade. Then you can give them a taste of the secret mustard.
Too bad you can't unlock it until after the hellish mission.
It would have been really nice to have some of these for the cliff racer swarms.
*bone-fide skull laughter*
It's not the hardest section I've ever played. Just tedious.
With the amount of health and bonuses they give you it's one of the few ways they can make it challenging.
There could've at least been some more variety. A few other enemies they do sprinkle in don't cut it. Wait a minute...
Where have I... seen that before?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, n-
Finally, the dragon-
The dragon.
SIMON: What was it again? The dragon will take me on a ride to hell?
SIMON: I'm just about ready to believe that's no joke.
DRAGON: The demons want to rule all existence.
DRAGON: They seek to bring every realm under their control.
SIMON: Yeah, right, wow, this is some ride!
The flying section has surprisingly tight and easy controls. I consider it to be a break before the hardest parts of the game.
They spawn multiple mini bosses at once, swarms of demons and long checkpoints in between them.
I died in these two chapters more than the rest of the game combined.
It's like the screeching zombies, but now they burp and throw things at you.
It is a hard road to the final boss.
I said the music was forgettable, but not the final boss theme, it's good.
Way too good.
SIMON: I never wanted this.
SIMON: I just wanted to fight my war, not get dragged into yours.
SIMON: But you took all that away from me.
SATAN: Look how much my war has given you!
SATAN: You're going to lead any human that has ever lived!
SATAN: You should be on your knees before me, but instead you will bow your head in death!
They bought the song from a company that specializes in making movie trailer music.
You kite the boss for nearly ten minutes while peppering him with machine-gun fire.
It's not an ultimate test of using all your weapons and melee with a Shadow Hand. It's using a vehicle.
It's a perfect example of how not to do a boss fight.
The music is just trying to compensate for its ultimate mediocrity.
When you finally beat him, you're the new ruler of hell. At least in the hard ending.
There's a different difficulty for every ending which is surprising but nice.
Easy gets you a cop out "It was all probably a dream but not really" ending, while normal gives you a compromise.
This could have been a great game.
But all the technical problems along with the slog it turns in to stop it from becoming one.
I'm glad I played it because I'd like there to be more gun wizards in video games.
But I probably won't ever play it again. So now it's time for the second game.
Yeah, they made a standalone prequel about a year later. I beat it in a little over three hours.
So it's about a third of the length. It has no cutscenes between levels or in the beginning.
It just fades in and you're good to go.
I think they realized the other story was convoluted or maybe they didn't have budget for it.
There's some new weapons they use and some new enemies to fight, but it's the same old NecroVisioN.
So I'm just gonna focus on the main changes. The levels are typically half the size of those in the first game.
This is a significant change. Most of the secrets are barely secrets now.
I was practically tripping over them while not looking for them and I only had to go on my way for a few.
This keeps you stronger, but it seems unnecessary. NecroVisioN: Lost Company starts slightly harder than the first game.
But it doesn't come anywhere near as difficult. It never really challenges you but you won't be pulling your hair out either.
I saw the AI hiccup a few times. Nowhere near the level of the first game.
The levels generally look better, along with other visual improvements.
Remember the awful burp demons you could barely see?
Well now they stick out more and look a little more demonic.
You might recall the man in the moon's voice. He's gone through some changes, too.
MAN IN THE MOON: Prove yourself to us, and we will give you power!
A little more intimidating.
All these tiny improvements make the game less frustrating and more enjoyable.
Even the story they have is better because you can understand it.
Hey, do I know you from watercolors 205?
You play Zimmermann before he turns evil during a zombie outbreak.
Your mission is to bring a package to your not evil superior. You fight along Germans while you do it.
The set pieces along the way are a joy. Fighting dragons and demons in a biplane is something I never thought I'd see.
Nor did I expect who your battle buddy would be.
BATTLE BUDDY: There's a house close by. I'll get you there, take a look at your wounds.
ZIMMERMAN: Wait, you're a damned Englishman!
BATTLE BUDDY: No no, fritz, I'm a damned American!
GEORGE PATTON: Lieutenant George Patton's the name. Don't be so choosy about who's saving your life, soldier.
And what a team you are.
You'll be entering Patton's tank while killing zombies. Besides sounding funny, the vehicle is also much better than any in the first game.
It's a breeze to control, plus you can get head shots in it.
Unfortunately, I still recommend the first game over it.
It has problems besides the length. Some weapons in NecroVisioN have good enemy feedback.
Like popping a head or ripping an arm off of a shot. But several are janky and floaty.
It was really the vampire weapons that shined.
In Lost Company you only have a twenty minute level to use it and it's against demons again.
Right after that is the final boss that's about as bad as the first game and then it's over. They nearly threw out the Shadow Hand entirely.
That's a shame. The new enemies are mostly redundant both to old enemies and to each other.
They reuse some boss fights and areas from the first game without remixing it into something more interesting.
It's a lot of wasted potential.
Why not expand on the Shadow Hand powers or balance around the new ones you had to unlock from challenges.
Or a campaign where you fight a well-equipped human army with a Shadow Hand. I don't know. Something.
You have it on the cover, you might as well use it.
At the end the day these games should be great but they barely scrape by as good or okay.
If you can only choose to play one, I'd recommend the first game.
The most hassle-free versions is on GoG and I think the Humble Store as well.
The Steam version is questionable.
Up next: I'll be covering a mystery RTS game. Thanks for watching.
I'm sure no one will guess it.
Also a very special thanks to all the new producers, along with the frankly terrifying amount of benefactors.
I was thinking of how I could change the end format up and I think a Q&A would be a really really good idea that I came up with.
RAYCEVICK: Welcome to my credits section as voiced by Mandalore. Mandalore politely asked if he could copy my credit format.
RAYCEVICK: Officially making him more Canadian than I am-
Right? Okay. I need to answer these. Okay, first question asked by several people:
Where's that video I liked? I wiped it out. Several videos I had up earlier with copyrighted content got permanently muted.
I talked about that in December but a month or two ago YouTube started changing the terms and conditions in the videos that weren't perma muted.
When I saw people getting strikes for videos of years old. I decided not to risk it.
In fact, today, June 1st, YouTube is rolling out more changes for that. So we'll see what happens.
Alright, question from Gruntzo asking if I like Warhammer and if there will be more videos on it.
Yeah, I actually have three I want to do this year, but I don't want to Warhammer people out so I won't do them all at once.
I'd have Steel Rain with an Eternal Crusade video right afterwards, but there's also that 4X coming out in July.
So I'll see how that goes. This question comes from Bri: Knights of the Old Republic 2 when? I have absolutely no idea.
I don't think I'd make a video on a main line game at this point since it's been pretty talked about to death.
I might do the Restored Content mod that has a lot of good changes.
But some like the HK-47 mission are kind of controversial, so I think that'd be fun.
Solifeaul asked how I felt about pineapple on pizza.
Not a fan. Alright, those pressing matters are out of the way and I can feel my voice starting to die. Thanks for watching.
INTERNATIONAL WRESTLING TROLL 1: Come on, let's go!
INTERNATIONAL WRESTLING TROLL 2: Come on, college boy!
INTERNATIONAL WRESTLING TROLL 1: Ow, my shoulder!
INTERNATIONAL WRESTLING TROLL 2: *** you!
INTERNATIONAL WRESTLING TROLL 2: Ah!
INTERNATIONAL WRESTLING TROLL 1: Ow!