Nevermind

With a new social challenge of True Achievements came a new excuse to buy games on the wish list when they go on sale. That’s how I came across Nevermind, a quick to complete adventure game ideal for this year’s iteration of the Great True Achievements Score Challenge. I don’t have the time to compete with the elite of the field for this as the competition runs for 48 weeks. Thankfully, the challenge only requires getting to week 10 and the score available from Nevermind was enough by itself to get through one of the earlier weeks.

Nevermind places you in the body of a doctor working for some company that specialises in analysing and repairing (I think?) the memories of its clients after they’ve suppressed horrible memories that they can’t face. In terms of games, it’s quite similar to Layers of Fear in the way that it plays. There are also echoes of The Park during some of the gameplay elements as well as you explore some frankly disturbing images the game conjures. It’s more emotionally jarring that visually scary with some of the iconography and representation focussing on some real issues that people face.

Criticisms of the game are also similar to The Park in that it takes an age for your character to get anywhere as they have the walking pace of a snail. If a snail had legs.  The looking mechanism also feels severely handicapped even if you adjust the sensitivity to max. So essentially in a game where the walking and looking are the two main gameplay elements, they are both the worst aspects of the game.

Where the game does strive though, is the atmosphere it creates and this is done by the scenes you explore, which are all intricately designed and thought out, and the accompanying music and eerie sound effects add to the immersion. This also makes it feel like the gameplay is part and parcel of the atmosphere the game aims to create.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 17 Achievements

It’s another short list and takes around 6 hours to get through. There are four individual memories and a tutorial, which is essentially Hansel and Gretel, to play through and just doing this will net you 6 achievements.

Unfortunately, the game makes an error next with its achievement list and requires you to play through all of the memories again for a second time to collect an additional set of memories. The memories don’t change so it’s effectively an entire second playthrough that feels redundant and unnecessary as there is no reason why these couldn’t have been incorporated into the first playthrough.

This is made even worse during the last memory where you have to play through a third time as there is an alternate solution to one of the puzzles that contains one of the memories. You also have to finish the memory for the collectible to register so that’s three full playthroughs of this bit for the completion and as it’s the last mission in the game it’s one of the more convoluted ones to complete.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Nevermind is a good atmospheric story game that falls down on a combination of slow gameplay and replay requirements. It’s painful once you’ve been through the whole story to not be able to speed things along during a second playthrough. This isn’t helped by the fact that the second playthrough feels entirely unnecessary when the memories could have been put into the first playthrough.

Still, it’s another quick and easy completion to add to the pile.