The Neverhood

The Good
This is one kRaZie adventure game. Everything is made out of clay, tons of it too. You play the hero, a nondescript character named Klayman. Klayman never speaks, but he interacts with his enviroment and other characters without hampering game play.

Klayman would indicate to you when something is important by looking at something with a thoughtful expression. The clues to solving the puzzle are often presented this way. There are a couple red herrings, but nothing too agravating. He has a long loping style of walking that reminds you of a caveman. There are several comical scenes and styles in this game that are vaguely reminicent of Tex Avery and other cartoon artists.

The story has some biblical themes, but its in no way religious. You track your progress in the game with story cartridges. These cartridges can be played in kiosks that are found throughout the game. The kiosks do not provide puzzle clues, but tell you about the Neverhood and its creator. This story is delightful and frustrating as well. You strive to find the cartridges so you can view the whole story.

The imagination and creativity in this game has gone unmatched by most game producers. The game designers took several risks and produced a piece of game history. Its a sad testimony that game producers have essentially abandoned all but the sure-to-sell game design.

The music isn't made of your traditional adventure themes. Its mostly accoustic guitar and singing. Its very cool and adds to the krazy flavor of the game. The puzzles are fairly unique. You have one music puzzle, one sliding tile puzzle, one concentration style puzzle. The rest are more original.

The game does have a built in help section, but its hard to access for the tougher puzzles.

The Bad
The thing I dislike the most is a lack of a sequel. I realize that the game didn't sell and the sequel was pending on that. It doesn't change the fact that when the game was over, I wanted to go on another adventure with Klayman. So I end up playing the game for the nth time.

I also have a beef with the long hallway walk to get the cartridge. That was dirty pool.

The Bottom Line
If you are looking for a game that has an amazing enviroment, great sound and story, and hard as they come puzzles, Try and get a copy of The Neverhood.

The Good
The Neverhood is a game (or, game series) that needs no introduction to a select few individuals. Graphics age, technologies advance, but even today, it's still one hell of a technical achievement. Nothing will ever step in front of the fact that the game took over three tons of clay to make, and the same goes for its bizarre humor.

And here's where the love/hate thing starts. There is next to no gameplay in here - just point and click to solve puzzles. There's no interaction with other characters, and no dialogue, except in one small area of the game. It's just you in a huge, demented world, so most of the appreciation comes from soaking up your surroundings. However, when there are puzzles, it's clear what you have to do and usually pretty fun too. Riverhill have seriously changed the feel of this game by speeding things up for the PlayStation version. Klaymen moves at at least double the speed he did on the PC game, and slow paced plodding transition videos look more like fast walking now. I didn't really care either way, but die-harders may feel that the original feel of mystery is somewhat spoiled by this.

The FMV sequences also, are superior to the PC versions. They appear to be direct recordings of the PC clips, however the conversion process appears to have hidden the majority of video artifacts originally present. I'm guessing original high-quality masters of the cut-scenes weren't available to the developers - but they've done a damn good job with what they've been given.

Sound was always a strong point in this game. So, how has this handled the PC-to-PSX route? Not too badly - although once again, it's not of as high a standard that the original's was. It's noticeably scratchier, which really wasn't too big a distraction for me and still carried over most of the audio pretty favorably. Sadly, one of the funniest musical tracks, the credits loop, has been cut short. The PC version features Terry Taylor breaking into a hilarious screaming rant, but cuts out right before on here. It's still pretty funny nevertheless.

The Bad
With the fact that this is style over substance, it's a pity that the brilliant graphics here aren't of the same standard as the PC version. The beautiful clay-sculpted graphics appear in this version at a lower resolution to its PC counterpart - inevitable given the PlayStation's weaker video capabilities. While I'm no expert on the PSX hardware, I'm not entirely convinced that the colors couldn't have been carried over without appearing slightly muddy in parts as they do here. A few changes have been made here and there... items you can pick up, such as video discs, have been expanded in size for ease of clicking with the chunky mouse pointer on a low-res TV set.

Other graphical niceties which helped add to the overall style of the PC version aren't present. For example, the letters your friend Willie Trombone leaves you in your mailbox really do look like they've been carved into pieces of clay on the PC version. For the characters on the Japanese version, they're just in plain black and have been slapped over the space. There are other times however, where good graphical editing has been done to achieve the original style.

Even presentation-wise, the port feels a smidge rough round the edges. The PC's menu that was made of clay has not been replicated for this version - surely airbrushing the English text and carving Japanese characters in wouldn't have been too hard? Instead Riverhill have added a more console-styled black-backed menu with a few options, one of which is a Background Music Test which is a nice, if a little pointless addition. The PC version of the game featured a short documentary video called "The Making of the Neverhood" that played when you clicked the "About" button. Again, corners have been cut and that isn't on this version - would it have been that hard to subtitle the video for Japanese players?

There is also the added distraction of load times between different screens in the game. The waits themselves aren't too annoying - but what is very mildly harsh to the ears is the fact that the current room's background music starts playing again after the load. I'm guessing that pausing the music between screens and playing it from where it left off would be technically impossible on the PSX because of the small-ish amount of system memory, leaving it no space to buffer the music track in.

The Bottom Line
It's highly likely that huge Neverhood fans will want to pick this game up. Keep in mind that it's very hard to come by, but if you can find it and are Neverhood crazy, by all means go for it - it's an awesome addition to your collection. The Neverhood makes little sense in English anyway - that's part of the appeal - so the Japanese voices and text should be no problem. The strong point of the game has always been it's brilliant visuals, which are shown here in most, but not all of their former glory. On the other hand, if you've never played this game before and are all set about getting it, spend the money on trying to find a used copy of the PC version, since it's superior and is in full English. But if you've played it to the death, and really care about this slab (no pun intended) of gaming nostalgia - then buy both.

Overall: 8/10: A great game that could possibly have been ported with a little more care. People wanting to experience it for the first time are better off hunting down the PC version. The high score for what I described as a relatively rough port is for the games' sheer style alone - something that would be very hard to obscure.

The Good
The best thing about this game is that it's made out of clay. 2-3 tons. That's a lot of clay. Secondly, I just love the characters; who can forget the Weasel, Big Robot Bil, Klogg, and, oh yeah, Klaymen? The puzzles are cool. There's even one where almost the entire world of the Neverhood is involved. You have to do certain things all around the Neverhood to open up the door to the next room. The animation is smooth and it must have been painstaking to have done so much animation frame-by-frame.

The Bad
What really stood out that I didn't like was the movie quality. It just seems way too pixellated, and why couldn't it be as smooth as when you are in a puzzle room? Oh well. Another thing I didn't really like was the compatibility issues. Sometimes on a newer machine, even though the animation is vastly improved due to the high-speed processor, the game just freezes up from time to time. It may not be like this on others' computers, but it is on mine, so it's either the software or my computer.

The Bottom Line
I would say don't listen to the people who say, "buy this game if you like Wallace and Gromit or claymation in general," I would say buy this game if you have a sense of humor and a sense of solving puzzles on your computer until you make an indentation in your chair.

The Good
The Neverhood is the single most bizarre game I've ever encountered, and for a good reason: the guys who made this game are completely insane. Is that a good thing? Hell yeah!

• The game is made entirely out of clay, which is way original and cool... the graphics are excellent and the animations mostly good. So much for the visual side.
• But what about audio? Well, ladies and gentlemen, this game doesn't fail either. It has some of the best pieces of audio I've ever heard from a game, without a shadow of a doubt the most outright insane music I've ever heard. It rocks! I still occasionally hum it to myself just for the fun of it. I can't stress this enough: this game has some kick-ass music!
• The most bizarre setting and gameplay I've ever encountered... this game is just so funny it's unbelievable. If you want an example, just click the tree in the first part of the game three times in a row: you'll see what I mean...
• Puzzles? Hell yeah. Some easy, some difficult, most are simply fun.
• The most outright ridiculous plot I've ever encountered, but it is just so well implemented!

The Bad
There are a few puzzles or riddles that should've been left out in my opinion, most notably the practically endless corridor and how to turn on the radio.
Video compression not as good as I had hoped.

The Bottom Line
One of the hardest, craziest games I've ever had the pleasure of playing. Thumbs up!