Every single aspect of The Neverhood is great...
Story:
10/10
The story is my favorite aspect of the Neverhood. Once you press start, you are instantly thrown in a blue room, and you see some weird looking klay guy sleeping and snoring. *CLICK*. He wakes up. There is a door with no knob over to your right. You click a red button next to it, and the window opens, but the door remains shut. So you move to the left and pull a lever, which swings a mallet down over the door, which is now bended and in rough shape. You do it twice more and it opens. That's pretty much how starts. This game progresses beautifully. You soon realize your name is Klaymen. You are on a quest to collect 20 floppy disks, which can be stored into T.V. machines that are scattered throughout the world. The disks tell a story told by one Willie Trombone, a clumsy but heart-felt character. Basically the world you are in, or rather on, is called the Neverhood, or the place that never was. It was originally called the Everhood, created by king Hoborg who has a magic crown. He decided to create inhabitatnts. His first creation was Klogg. Klogg was greedy though, and stole Hoborgs crown, paralyzing Hoborg. Klogg mutated into a powerful being, and was ruler of the Neverhood ever since. I won't ruin the rest of the story for you, but basically in the end you are given two choices, to rule the Neverhood like Klogg, or to save Hoborg.
Gameplay:
10/10
The gameplay is just point-n'-click. But oh what a marvelous click it is. Gamespot has said that clues are sometimes abstract. I disagree. Some clues may be un-orthodox, but they all require some logic, and once you find the anwsers, you'll think back to how stupid you were. Here's the best advice I can give you, if you get stuck, retrace your steps all the way back, to the first room if you have to. Basically the puzzles are magnificent. Some may be figured out right away by some people, while others will keep them stuck you weeks on end. No two puzzles are the same. Some puzzles interwind with others. It's all good.
Graphics:
10/10
There are simply no graphics like the neverhood. It was created over several years in klaymation, a painstaking process of moving peices of Klay frame by frame turning it into an animation. This game looks spectacular. The only reason it can't compete with today's graphics is because it was limited to 256 colors and was shot on a 320x240 pixel camera. But for the time it was created, it looks simply astonoshing.
Sound:
10/10
The voice-acting in the Nevehood was actually all done by the creators, modified for the pitch. It isn't exactly the most professional, luckily the Neverhood has very few times when talking is needed to explain what's going, unless you count the disk-story by Williw Trombone, but that's already great. The music should probably have its own section. Doug TenNapel (the creator of the Neverhood) hired Christian Rock singer Terry Taylor. Strangely enough, the Neverhood's score sound nothing like Terry Taylor's regular music, or any music really. Originally planned to be natural, earthly music, it actually sounds like happy, fast-paced, never-gets-old, dixieland music. It was all done by a talented orchestra, and the only parts edited were the singing, which was done comepletely by Terry Taylor himself. Every song is great in its own respect, and you could easily listen to it time and time again. I've found that turning it on in the car radio can pick me up and make me happy when I'm feeling down. It isn't like anything you've ever heard, but that turns out to be a wonderful thing.
Value:
10/10
This game probably has more value than must games out today. I mean, klaymation is one of the most painstaking arts there is, as I know from experience. The creaters literally spent night working on the game. But it all payed off, the animations are great and smooth, the Neverhood itself looks amazing and colorful, and it really looks better than almost all other games at that time.
Tilt:
8/10
At first this game looks childish, with un-educated humor, and many fun colors. But the Neverhood can be played by people of all ages. For toddlers it can be a colorful adventure, for teenagers it can be a great way to spend time, and ever for middle-aged people it can be used to exercise their mind.
Unfortunatley it isn't portrayed like that at first glance, so I can't give full marks here.
Total: 9.4/10
Final thoughts:
The best game I can ever remember playing, a classic, original, there are so many ways to describe the Neverhood, and all of them are positive. Basically, I would suggest doing everything you could to get a copy of this game, the best way would probably to get it off of eBay. I promise everyone will enjoy the Neverhood experience.