Netherworld: Beyond Time I Stand Review

Netherworld: Beyond Time I Stand

Alternate title: Agni: Queen of darkness / Inferno: Where Death Is Your Only Ally

Developer: Irrational Games (former)/ FX Labs

Release: 4/13/2009

Genre: Action-Adventure

Platform: Windows

Modes: Single Player

Availability: Unknown

Disclaimer:

-I play on the highest difficulty

-I'm harsh and picky.

-I'm not a professional journalist.

-I try to 100% games unless it's pointless or tediously stupid.

-No bribes were taken.

-No bribes were offered.

-Good luck finding this game
-DRM Free

Story:

           The Story is about a woman named Amanda who one day finds her daughter kidnapped/ murdered (never made clear) from her apartment. Distraught, she thinks about jumping off a bridge, but is stopped by a conductor of a train, who give her a choice. To go into hell and save her daughter. Scared, but determined, she sets out to find her daughter.

           The story is one of the better parts of the game, both for good and bad reasons that will be covered latter. The story it's self is isn't too complicated or really deep, but it is compelling. Rescuing your child from the depth's of hell is a plot that a (decent) parent can understand and relate to. Along the way, Amanda meets interesting characters who at first regard her as a wimpy human, but soon respect her skills. They change from a rag tag bunch of scoundrels into a team that shows some of the positives of humanity.

Graphics:

           Visually, for an Unreal 1 engine game, it looks pretty good with very clear and detailed

textures. The lighting, at times, looks really good like at the start of the church level. At best, it looks like a game from 2004. Art wise, the game feels like you are in one of the nine circles of hell and the details show how lousy that world. From the gritty metal work of corruptions tot the rocky and stone terrain of the second level, the visuals convey it's broken state.

Game-play:

           Game-play in Netherworld is the weakest link. Netherworld is a linear third person, action-adventure title for the pc. You go through area's, kill the enemies, and complete the objective required in order to proceed. The game has lost souls which you can collect in each level. Except for the ones, that boost your stats, they are worthless except when they hold a door scroll. Combat is mostly just button mashing the attack buttons to win and hope the enemy doesn't hit you. Even on the highest difficulty setting enemies don't pose too much of a threat in the first half. The second half is where that changes thanks to the gunmen, but even they don't pose a threat once you know how to deal with them. There is no strategy to combat at all despite the various different abilities you can use and the different attack animations that Amanda has.

           An interesting, but underused feature is the ability to switch between different characters for a limited period of time. These character function in different roles to help you in combat and traverse the levels. For example; Instinct is for combat, while Shadow is for grappling certain points and sneaking around. For the first half of the game you will most likely relay exclusively on instinct to deal with enemies. Once you have enough mana in the second half, you will rely more on shadow to sneak up and kill enemies or sprint past them. This where you will find Shadow to be more useful as he sneak up and kill them with ease or sprint past them. Regardless, all other character end up being useless except for a few mandatory uses due to levels designs and strength of enemies.

           Your mana meter acts as a both a rechargeable shield and a time limit for using different characters. When you play as Amanda, your shield will recover, but your health doesn't. To recover your health you will need to find health from dead enemies or use health orbs you find. As you explore the levels, you will find various orbs to pick up and use for latter. These range from keys, health, and attack abilities, that are exclusive to Amanda.

           Levels themselves are interesting in concept but, feel more like a let down in execution. Visually they are interesting to look at and tend to feel open, but in reality, they are mostly linear hallways that with little to explore as all that you need will be in-front of you. With tedious amounts of enemies scattered through a level, the game becomes an obstacle course of getting through it the fastest.

           It is easy to tell that the game was intended to be more then what it is now. You can look through the games system files and see a ton of interesting features that are not in the final product. There are parts of the game that hint of the alignment system that was originally planned for the game. You will notice this in the cut-scenes of the lost city that imply the concept, but never gets brought up elsewhere in the game. I'm not sure if this due to the game switching developers or if the original developers couldn't figure out how to implement those features. It's always a shame to see a final product that is less then what it could be, especially in a game like this where all the potential is there, but unfulfilled.

Technical:

           Netherworld has plenty of technical issues. Despite being a 2003 game that was released in 2009, it does not run well. The first level is the worst example of this where majority of the time, my frame-rate would bounce between 10 to 30 frames per second in non-visually intensive area's. No matter how graphical settings I enabled or what resolution I used, the frame-rate would be the same. Oddly enough, it is only the first level where this is the problem. The rest of the game doesn't have this issue and bounces between 30-60 fps. Considering that this was made on the Unreal 1 engine, it surprises me that it even has these problems and it isn't the most visually intense game made for the engine.

           Another issue that you may encounter is where the game will decide to not recognize your mouse and keyboard. You can press the windows key to return to the desktop, but nothing will work inside the game window whether full screen or windowed. If this happens, copy your saved games and reinstall the game to fix it. Remember to turn of visual themes in the properties for the exe file as after you quit and reload the save file, a big grey polygon will obstruct you view randomly. This isn't your computer overheating but an odd bug.

Audio:

          Probably the best aspect of the game is the voice acting. It is seriously top notch and better then a lot of Triple A titles that are out on the market nowadays. The voice actors do an excellent job conveying the other worldliness of the characters and even the creepiness of some of the monsters. When you first hear the harpy tell her story, it is unsettling, yet appropriate for the enemy's background. None of them feel unnatural or like they are in a recording booth. Unfortunately, the music is not that great. Besides the fact it only happens sparingly, it average at best. There are no memorable tracks that you would want to listen to or remember latter.

Thoughts:

           Netherworld: Beyond Time I stand is an interesting game that is ends up being mediocre. The visuals, story and audio are great, but the game-play is the weakest link that pulls it down. Much of this could have been remedied if the devs implanted the features that were cut out. Unfortunately, because of that, I find can't recommend anyone this game unless someone just once to try a piece of history that no one has herd off.

Notes: The Indian version's maybe different in story and translation.