Game Classification

In 1916 at Verdun, the Germans discovered a cave with strange gems in it. Named Red Lantern, they react with dead tissue and bring it back to live - at least in a zombie-kind of way. German doctor Jonas Zimmermann sees a big opportunity in this and begins to experiment on corpses of dead soldiers and soon the trenches are filled with hordes of zombies and other vile creatures that kill everything that stands in their way although they do not really like it and look for the Chosen One to free them from their miserable existence.

Simon Bukner from Texas did not expect to sit in a trench in the middle of the Battle of Verdun when he signed up in early 1916. But as the American commanders execute a massive counter-offensive on the German forces at the beginning of December, things get much worse as the Americans approach the German trenches. And soon Simon finds himself on a path to put an end to Zimmermann's research.

The player jumps into the body of Simon and has to fight his way through hordes of Germans, zombies and gas clouds alike in a standard first person shooter fashion. Besides his very important gas mask, he is aided by several kinds of weapons including a shovel, pistols, machine guns, rifles and a mysterious glove called ShadowHand. The ShadowHand requires adrenaline to work which is earned by performing combos on enemies. The player also needs to have unlocked the deadly spells he wants by beating the corresponding challenge before the ShadowHand does anything useful. If enough adrenaline is available, the ShadowHand also allows to resurrect fallen enemies and lets them fight on your sight for a short while.

The player gets other bonuses by performing combos including a short slow down of time after two headshots. After a combo has been successfully executed, the Fury timer starts. Doing another combo during this time fills up the Fury meter and allows for unleashing even more powerful demonic powers. To increase the amount of Fury the player can collect and use he needs to find hidden artifacts during the course of the game or by going into the challenge room.

The challenge room not only gives the player direct access to each individual campaign level that he has already finished but also contains several challenges like killing 50 zombies with only a shovel and a pistol. Successfully completing these challenges then grants the player access to new spells for the ShadowHand or new weapons.

Instead of a traditional health pack system, the game employs a mix of both automatic regeneration and health packs and a berserk mode. Once the player is near death, time slows down giving the player a chance to still get out of the mess alive if he manages to avoid damage for a few seconds until the automatic regeneration kicks in. But the automatic regeneration won't fill up the health bar to the top. This is something only health packs, scattered around the levels, can do.

The game also features multiplayer for up to 8 players. The game modes include Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Artifact (a CTF-variant) and Last Man Standing. [source:mobygames]

Distribution : Retail - Commercial
Platform(s) : PC (Windows)

Links

• http://www.mobygames.com/game/necrovision/