The Neverhood is an incredibly amusing adventure game that has a unique twist. This is one of the only games, if not the only game done entirely in claymation, which is what makes it so strange. The team working on this game put an astounding amount of attention to the animation of all the characters and objects within the game, giving it a very bizarre and cartoony look. It's clear that a lot of time and effort went into this.
Unlike most other point-and-clickers, there's not much plot or dialogue at all. Klaymen, our hero, is all alone for the most part. He never speaks, except for one sole part near the end. There are only a few other creatures in his world, quite a few of which want to hurt him, and he has to figure out what happened that made the Neverhood so barren. This is revealed to you through little disks left by Klaymen's cousin, Willie Trombone. When you collect all of them, you are presented with a nifty little animated sequence which explains what happened to The Neverhood and its king, the strange creature named Hoborg. It all involves an evil villain named Klogg who's naturally up to no good. It's not a terribly complex plot, but the execution is done very well, and the voice acting is superb.
Aside from the language, there are a few notable differences between it and the original PC version. The resolution needed to be downgraded, but it still looks pretty good, and most of the animation is intact. It being on the Playstation, there are a LOT of loading times where there weren't any before, such as between screens, and even when Klaymen does his animations when he's holding still. This is annoying, but what makes it even more so is that the music starts over every time it happens. There is also a bit of a tutorial when you start the game. It mainly consists of little signs saying something like, "Push the circle button here!" so it's not all that special. The voices are also in Japanese, but sadly, they're very monotone and completely lack the soul that the American voices had. Probably the sole positive addition is the sound test in the options menu, which is really the only thing this version has going for it.
There are also some omissions from the PC version. The ridiculous two-minute-long belch has been cut out, which is strange, considering that belching after a meal is a complimentary gesture in the East. Also omitted, thankfully, is the incredibly lengthy hallway in the house with the "H" on the door. The hall originally had a lot of stories about former kings of the Neverhood written on its walls, but it's highly unlikely many players actually took the time to read all of it, which is probably why it was taken out. It's just as well; the only real reason for traversing the hall is for the Klay disk at the end. The worst of the omissions is the lack of the "fast forward" code or the ability to skip the little walking sequences. In the PC version, if you typed "fastforward", the action would speed up, and you could also skip the walking segments by pressing the Space bar. These things made backtracking a lot less tedious, but as far as I can tell, neither feature is in the Japanese version.
One of the most important new features of the Playstation version is the use of the analog controller and the support of the vibration function.
Manufacturer's description:
Made of clay covered with mysterious world "Neverhood" to save, a game made of clay animation. Solve puzzles with the hero Klaymen. Realize that the world represented and warm full-length clay animation. Make full use of machines also have never seen such a strange one here and there, let's solve the many challenges standoff.
Features:
- Third person perspective.
- 2D graphics
- Cartoon graphics
- Fantasy & Humour themes.
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