The mortality of the video game protagonist has been a fundamental facet of the experience since the first time Pac-Man got cornered by Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde. Having an immortal hero is not unheard of–Lost Odyssey handled it masterfully–but it’s rare, and something that, by necessity, should change the very mechanics that any other game of the same genre would rely on. When the character can’t die, the player can’t die, which opens a world of possibilities for both innovation and disaster.

NeverDead is the story of the immortal Bryce Boltzmann, and how he just can’t manage to get a head in life. After his wife died he went all to pieces. He tries to pull himself together, but he just can’t seem to get his head on straight. Also, he hunts demons for the government, which is more difficult to explain using a dismemberment pun. He is joined by Arcadia, a mortal woman whose job is to spew exposition, turn large portions of the game into an escort mission, and to allow for some of the worst banter since the invention of language.

That’s putting the cart before the horse, of course, because the selling point of NeverDead is neither its plot nor characters. As you’ve probably gathered, the game is a third-person action game in which your character cannot die by traditional means. There is no health bar of which to speak. Getting hit by enemies causes your arms, legs, or head to fall off, forcing you to chase down your body parts (or roll after them, if your head comes off). After a set time you will eventually be able to manually regenerate your limbs, but by that time something will have probably eaten your head, sending you to the game over screen despite your curse. So it goes.

If only the NBA Jam commentator was here.

Besides removing the conventional health bar, the limb loss gimmick is also used to solve puzzles. For example, you sometimes need to tear off your own head so you can roll it through a small hole and open a door somewhere on the other side. Your immortality also comes in handy for when you need to grab some electrical wires or run through fire, but nothing too drastic is ever done with these features. The main payoff for the entire concept of NeverDead is that as long as you don’t have your head eaten (and fail the digestion minigame), fights can go on for as long as they have to. This may sound awesome, but what it really amounts to is spending a lot of time chasing your limbs around and not actually learning to become a better fighter.

Combat is split between a sword and an assortment of firearms, which are dual-wielded. Better weapons can be found, and experience points can be extracted from demons and found in the environment, with which you can buy upgrades such as “+10% Sword Damage.” Upgrade slots are limited though, and if you’re somewhat diligent about collecting the red experience icons then you shouldn’t have any trouble achieving your desired load-out. These RPG elements are pretty shallow, but the most disappointing part of fighting is the sword controls. Instead of being assigned to a button, you swing your sword by holding down a trigger and moving the right thumbstick to mimic the motion of the sword, which is more complicated than it needs to be. Ultimately, combat is simplistic yet clunky, which is not in fact mitigated by the lack of dying.

Guns have finite ammo, but at least they take one button to use.

Another element of the game’s design that is disappointing is its monotony. While settings range from mental hospitals to suspension bridges, you spend pretty much the entire game fighting the same two enemy types: Puppies and Spoons. I couldn’t make those names up if I tried. Boss fights are a delightful reprieve from the boredom that sets in after you spend long stretches of time fighting the same foes and chasing your wayward limbs. Most of the boss battles are Zelda-esque in that they require you to figure out a trick before you can damage them outright, which is a nice change of pace. In fact, the best utilization of the game’s whole premise comes in one fight where you have to trick a monster into eating your arm; a clever moment which is far too rare.

The story that ties together all of this is interesting in theory, but too predictable in execution. Even the characters seem to realize this, with villains taunting the hero as to how obvious their inevitable betrayals were. Bryce’s story sounds compelling, but he never really gets enough time to make you care about him, and his “wisecracks” are painful. The supporting characters range from “barely there” to “kill it with fire,” but that has a lot more to do with the voice acting (which is embarrassing) and the writing (which is painful). The biggest shame is that everyone becomes suddenly much more likable near the end of the game, which seems to indicate that perhaps some planned development was cut out of the middle of the experience. In fact, the last couple chapters are almost enough to redeem a lot of the awfulness of the earlier ones, but I imagine most people will quit by the time interesting backstory is revealed or the inventive bosses show up.