The Immortal

"Immortality BITES"

Will Harvey Presents: The Immortal - henceforth just ''Immortal'' - is a queer duck of a game. It's a good looking and sounding isometric action-RPG that should be a winner, and yet somehow it manages to screw everything up.

GRAPHICS (7/10)
As I said above, the isometric perspective looks great, sort of like Diablo and Fallout. The color palette is dark, but it still has enough variation given that this is a dungeon after all. Unfortunately, the graphics are not very sharp, and this does adversely affect the gameplay score below.

MUSIC & SOUND (8/10)
The music is very atmospheric and the battle sounds are convincing. I especially like the ''aawwrrrrgh!'' you hear when you finish off an enemy.

CHALLENGE (9/10)
Immortal is super tough, and you will die often. This means you - no matter how good at games you generally are. The challenge is not the fun kind of challenging, either. This is highly frustrating ''challenge.'' Bats fly at you from out of nowhere, they are overly difficult to see, and the controls are counterintuitive enough that you will probably never really get the hang of aiming your magic attacks at them. In fact, you may never get the hang of moving around AT ALL. Combine very tricky controls with level design that is deliberately laden with a plethora of traps, and you have a recipe for a major headache.

GAMEPLAY/FUN FACTOR (2/10)
There's some fun in here somewhere, I'm almost sure of it…

FRUSTRATION FACTOR (9/10)
…or maybe not. Immortal could have been fun, if only Will Harvey's team had done things a bit differently. If you could save the game anywhere, then the difficulty wouldn't be so maddening. Instead, you will use up all of your lives (only three, I believe) and then have to replay the whole level over again. This means the same boring dialogues with the same people in the exact same places. Talk about repetitive! There are other strange decisions as well. For some reason the game asks you if you want to search bodies and pick up items despite the fact that the manual clearly says that you will ALWAYS want to do this. Why not then just let the player character automatically search and automatically pick everything up? I have a feeling they left in this ''no-brainer'' decision-making so that you might actually think there was some story branching or strategy here. It requires no thought, though, just more button mashing and tiresome menu selections.

REPLAY VALUE (5/10)
There is only replay value here because you will be forced to replay levels A LOT in order to get that coveted password that enables you to resume at the beginning of the current level instead of being thrust back to the very beginning of the game. Once you actually finish the game, I can't understand why you might want to return to it.

GAME VALUE (5/10)
Some people seem to love this game. I have come to loathe it for all the reasons mentioned above. I wouldn't pay a single penny for it, personally. No reason to take my own opinion too seriously, right? I'll just play it safe and split the difference in this category.

DOCUMENTATION (9/10)
I don't always comment on this aspect of NES titles, but Immortal's manual is substantial enough that it warrants its own rating. It is thick and full of screen shots and hand-drawn artwork, most of these in full color. There is story background, a thorough explanation of the aforementioned tricky controls, and a detailed walkthrough of the first level. This program was clearly a labor of love, making the frustrating gameplay all the more disappointing.

THE BOTTOM LINE
If you are by any chance an immortal yourself, then you might have the time and patience to play this one all the way through. Personally, I have better things to do than die over and over…and over…

FINAL RATING: 2/10

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 07/13/01, Updated 07/13/01