I hate to say “I don’t get it" in two impressions, (see Elebits), but I really don’t know what this is. Necro-Nesia’s title seems to allude to Death and Amnesia, and judging by the amount of context I got before playing, amnesia is the perfect disease to describe it. I won’t pretend this game works, not for a minute, but I’m willing to bet the people behind it have some good ideas that we just don’t see in the E3 demo. If it ever gets released here, or released at all, I’ll be surprised.

You play as a young man with board shorts and a hip shirt who seems to be stuck in the woods. You move with the control stick, hold A to look around, and hold B and swing the controller to use your stick. If you shake your Nunchuk you will roll left, shake the Wii Remote and you’ll roll right. The rolling looks darned silly, but it did come in handy.

The woods are predictably dark, making your flashlight a necessity. Your Wii Remote does very little while you move, but for some reason you have to hold A to look around. This is the first major problem. Also, the map of the level, oddly, has areas lit up, indicating you should visit. Without this, Necro-Nesia's demo would take a lot longer because you'd have no idea what you are supposed to do, or where you should go. I must assume the map guidance is an E3 demo feature only, otherwise the game will be far too easy and meaningless. While moving towards your first target, you find a giant herd of weird oval-shaped characters that will crawl over you and hurt you, kind of. Your first goal on the map is an orange, whose need is perhaps undisputed while lost in the woods, but gameplay wise is unclear at first.

While moving up a hill towards another flat area of dark woods, (no real trees, just black fog), you encounter a giant praying mantis. His one attack is quite mean compared to your one attack, and you have to keep good timing to dodge, then attack back. It takes so long to wind up your attack that this battle is quite scary (bad control = terror, a la Resident Evil). After you beat him, barely, you are confronted with two more. This fight is harder, though hit detection is awful which, again, ups the scares. When my health dropped to zero, my orange was used automatically, revealing its secret gameplay function. After the two praying mantises, the demo shows a giant gorilla rumbling towards you, but the demo ends before you can play him.

The whole game reeks of an action/slash Resident Evil, but much less playable. If the developer wants this to sell, they have a lot of work to do. Though the demo was atmospheric, play control is the main issue. Why do I have to hold the B button, and then move the remote to attack? Why not just hit the button? The Wii Remote does not make this game better, in fact it probably makes it worse. Graphically the game is trash, animation is clunky, and fighting enemies is unnecessarily hard. Without any story details or gameplay promises, the E3 demo feels like a tech demo for an undeveloped idea, which is unfortunately not uncommon in Nintendo's Wii booth.