Although the game uses a standard Halo/Modern Warfare style control scheme (with iron sights aiming, melee attacks, and grenades), the gameplay is more comparable to faster-paced arcade shooters such as Doom, Painkiller, and Serious Sam whereas you face swarms of enemies. Combat is a combination of shooting and different styles of melee. The game has a bullet-time mechanic, and also rewards creative kills (headshots, melee combos, etc.) with a brief period of extra damage called Fury. Chaining together multiple combos also restores your health and bullet-time.
Received an expansion in February 2010, a prequel entitled NecroVisioN: Lost Company. This time, the player takes control of Doctor Jonas Zimmermann as he hurries to deliver a cure for the wave of zombies overtaking the German camps... and in the process begins the path to obtaining Shadowhand and becoming the Necromancer.
This game provides examples of:
- Advanced Ancient Acropolis: While they're called "vampires", the underground-dwelling race in the game's story fits much better in this trope. They possess advanced technology (including giant robots), are very mystical, and wear "high elf" style armor. They don't even seem to drink blood (although in Lost Company they do display more traditional vampiric traits).
- Ancient Artifact: The Shadowhand.
- And I Must Scream: The British Soldiers at the beginning of Chapter 2: The Fortress.
- Apocalyptic Log: Letters written by both German and British soldiers.
- Badass Longcoat: Simon, Jonas Zimmermann.
- Became Their Own Antithesis: Near the end of Lost Company, Zimmerman executes his old friend Field Marshall Menge when he learns that Menge was behind the undead plague, attempting to create an army of the undead he could control for his vampire masters. One level later, Zimmerman is recruited by the vampires and plotting to raise an undead army of his own (merging with the Shadowhand probably helped this spontaneous 180 degree policy shift).
- Big Bad: Mephisto
- Bittersweet Ending: The Medium difficulty ending, in which Simon becomes a general in Mephisto's Army in exchange for humanity having 100 years to prepare for the next time Mephisto invades the human realm.
- Bond One-Liner: Sometimes Simon will make various comments after killing an enemy, ranging from confident to deranged. "Consider your sins forgiven!" Because they are entirely random, these taunts do not always make sense in context; Simon will sometimes yell lines clearly aimed at zombies or demons when fighting human German troops.
- Alternatively, there is a taunt command that you can use, sometimes turning it into a Pre-Mortem One-Liner.
- Calling Your Attacks: The German Infantry does this a lot: "I am attacking!" "I am covering!"
- The Corruptible: In Lost Company, Zimmerman is aloof and more than a little cold and snarky, but seems to be a genuinely dedicated healer and patriot and overall a good person. However, the letters and dairy entries you read during the loading screens reveal that beneath the surface he was already a deeply troubled individual, even before he merged with the Shadowhand.
- Degraded Boss: Some enemies that appear as a boss for the end of a chapter return as slightly less powerful versions.
- Downer Beginning: Simon's entire unit gets ambushed by machine guns, bombed by planes, and gassed. It only gets worse from there.
- Downer Ending: The Hard difficulty ending: Simon kills Mephisto and takes his place as ruler of Hell.
- Also the medium difficulty ending Simon only suceeds in delaying the demon invasion of earth for a fixed amount of time.
- The Dragon: Azazel.
- Driven to Suicide: The British soldier in the locked shed in the beginning of Chapter 2.
- Dual Wielding: Simon can fight with a pistol in each hand. He can also use a combination of melee weapons, such as an entrenching shovel in one hand and a bayonet knife in the other.
- Earn Your Bad Ending: The Golden Ending is gained by beating the game on the easiest difficulty, and it gets bleaker the harder your difficulty.
- Easy-Mode Mockery: The difficulty you select determines your ending. But it's inverted, since harder difficulties give you worse endings.
- Enemy Civil War: Happens mostly offscreen, but as it turns out not all of the German soldiers agree with Zimmerman's plans...
- Enemy Mine: Mostly averted in the first game — German soldiers will continue shooting at the player even if there are zombies nearby, who'll instead usually attack whatever is nearby. Near the end, however, the vampire wizard allies himself with Simon, helping him get closer to Mephisto as well as teleporting in a squad of vampires to help against the massive wave of demons that attacks.
- Played straight in Lost Company when Zimmerman teams up with George S. Patton, beginning with the two holding out against waves of undead in a cabin, not unlike Nazi Zombies.
- Finishing Move: Herr Dokter, Throat Cutter, Haircutter, and Flying Duck to name a few
- Foreign Cuss Word: "Scheiße!"
- Gameplay Ally Immortality: In Lost Company, you'll occasionally receive assistance from A.I.-controlled partners. Being essential to the plot, they tend to hang tough while everyone else is dying like lemmings.
- Gangsta Style: Simon will shoot like this (even with pistols in both hands) if he continuously shoots them.
- Gas Mask Mooks: Bulky Giant Mook/Elite Mooks using body armor and machine guns come equipped with gas masks as a bonus. In areas filled with poison gas, normal soldiers will use these too. The player even becomes one after finding a gas mask, while moving through poison gas infested areas.
- Giant Mook: "Vampire Beasts" which are several times taller than the player.
- In Lost Company, Zimmermann encounters a giant version of a Vampire Beast as a boss battle.
- The more traditional FPS version appears in the form of a slow-walking, 7-foot tall German soldier wearing a heavy metal cuirass and equipped with a light machine gun. Apparently they had Juggernauts back in World War 1 too.
- Girls with Moustaches: The madman has a picture of Helga, who sports a small mustache.
- Golden Ending: As you might have guessed from the pattern above, the Easy difficulty ending. After the final battle, Simon wakes up at the end of the war, with no memory of what happened during it. Although he's haunted by questions of what really happened and suspicions that he really is better off not knowing, for him, at least, it's all finally over.
- Gotta Catch Them All: The Vampire Artifacts, secret places, and letters.
- Guns Akimbo: an option for pistols and the heavy machine guns.
- Invisible Wall: In one place, you are able to get on top of a bridge across a trench. While both sides of the bridge are obstructed, an invisible wall blocks movement onto the side that leads to the rest of the trench network. In general, the invisible wall is still used to prevent players from reaching areas that are supposed to be inaccessible.
- Leave Behind a Pistol: Simon does this for a captured British soldier who'll (presumably) soon become a vampire.
- Mêlée à Trois: German troops and monsters will fight each other as well as the player, but there aren't many occurances where the two are encountered in the same area, and both tend to prioritize the player if they get a direct line of sight on you.
- Mood Whiplash: At scripted points, Simon will reflect out loud on how War Is Hell... and then you might easily hear him spout a Bond One-Liner (see above) seconds later when killing an enemy. It gives an odd impression of his state of mind, to say the least.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Zimmermann.
- More Dakka: The automatic weapons Simon picks up have quite a rate of fire, but with the exception of the Vampire SMG, they're all horridly inaccurate at anything but close quarters.
- Mauve Shirt: Simon encounters a number of soldiers, British and German alike, who offer various conversations, often before they die by various means.
- Multiple Endings: The game has a different ending for each difficulty level. Inversely to what you may expect, the endings actually get bleaker on the higher difficulty levels, rather than the lower.
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Narm: Some of the dialog has plenty of this.- "Ah, pain!"
- 100% Completion: Finding all secrets, reading all letters, and picking up all vampire artifacts (fortunately, you can replay levels to find stuff you might have missed). Plus completing all of the challenge maps to unlock special abilities in the single-player campaign.
- One-Man Army: Simon and Zimmermann.
- Our Vampires Are Different: While being called "Vampires", they show no vampiric traits; no blood drinking, no weakness to sunlight although it's debatable, considering they live several miles underground when you face them, no supernatural abilities aside from Martial Arts.
- If their headgear is any indication, they don't even look human.
- In Lost Company, there's a Climax Boss fight with a vampire leader just before the final boss battle. You get a good look at his face, and he looks pretty much like a stereotypical "Count Orlock" style vampire.
- Red Shirt Army: Germans and British soldiers alike die in droves, whether faced with otherworldly monsters or the player.
- In Lost Company, most of the various German soldiers, being required for various dialogue and scripted events, actually fare pretty well against the enemies they're faced with, at least until events conspire to kill them off.
- Regenerating Health: Your health regenerates up to about 50% on Normal difficulty. You need to pick up medikits to bring it up all the way. You can also restore your health by raising your combo multiplier.
- Sanity Slippage: Simon starts to show this very quickly. In the first level after the opening sequence. Simon questions his sanity when zombies start appearing, and as situations worsen, so does his mental state, until by the time he acquires Shadowhand it seems he's too jaded to care anymore.
- Shout-Out:
- "Dead or alive, you're coming with me"
- "You wouldn't like me when I'm angry!"
- "I dunno who's good or bad, but I'm the guy with the gun!"
- One of the challenge maps is actually named Serious Sam. Also, one of Simon's taunts in the final battle is "Here, take a little Painkiller!".
- Shown Their Work: In an out-of-the-way easter egg, you find a poetic British soldier in a prison cell; this soldier is implied to be J. R. R. Tolkien. J. R. R. Tolkien was actually a soldier in World War I.
- Sword and Gun: More like bayonet and gun....or shovel and gun.
- Tranquil Fury: Simon has one with his final confrontation with Mephisto.
"I never wanted this. I just wanted to fight my war, not get dragged into yours. But you took that all away from me."
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Jonas Zimmermann. He used bodies of fallen soldiers to build an army to protect both the vampire and human realms. And then he decided to start making bodies...
- You Have Failed Me: Azazel does this to his Cerberus mount after you defeat him the first time.
