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Death Jr. Review
Written by Señor Cha Cha on Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Cool characters and lots of action.
The technical issues.
Sometimes it really sucks being at the end of a line, but taking the point isn't exactly a vacation in paradise either. For example, if you're a police officer and you take the point in front of your buddies you might be the first to get shot. Unfortunately the same applies to videogames, where a developer is leading the pack, but the enormous hype and expectation to do well eventually causes the team to fall short of what's expected and the product to be quite lackluster. Such is the case with Backbone Entertainment's PSP title, Death Jr.
To be perfectly fair, DJ's far from being a bad game. In fact, it's an enjoyable third person platform/adventure hybrid chock full of a numerous ugly beasts, charming main characters, some offbeat humor, and some catchy theme music, but it's obvious that, despite the numerous delays, this title just needed more time to cook, especially since it was the first announced game for Sony's handheld. Where the powers that be could have taken a safer approach by naming Ridge Racer or Wipeout as the first games for Sony's new toy, they came out and announced a brand new IP, impressive considering Nintendo was pushing Super Mario 64 for its DS, but it was a huge risk. Nintendo went with a proven winner that people identified with, while Sony went with an unproven idea that may or may not catch on, and the result is a game that'll make some waves with the PSP community, but it's just not as exciting or as polished as I expected it to be.
As its name suggests, you play as Death Jr., the son of the almighty grim reaper who, while on a trip to a museum with his whacky-looking friends, stumbles upon and opens a strange box, unleashing a powerful and evil creature named Moloch. Now because Moloch gets his kicks from doing super mean things he captures all of DJ's friends using these weird tentacles, rendering them immobile. He's also snagged what appears to be their very essence and separates everything into puzzle pieces, thus laying out DJ's mission. You're to rescue your friends by visiting each level (all of which contain a few different variations of the same place) and reclaim these pieces.
Putting your best buds back together again is no easy feat, thanks in large part to the swarms of creepy crawly creatures that have been tossed into each locale to make your life difficult. Ugly spiders, tons of demonic looking baddies, and other assorted nastiness will get in your way, and they will either bop you on the head or fire innumerable amounts of projectiles at you, and more often than not you'll hear DJ's death cry and have to restart because this game can be pretty difficult and I don't mean in a good way. Cheap hits are commonplace, so you'll really need to be on your guard to make sure you're not six feet under.
On the positive side, I really love the character and level designs. DJ's a cute little guy and the various enemy types are well-constructed. The environments are equally impressive, featuring typical suburban neighborhoods, lava locales, and a place called Meat World, where you can chop up creatures of the bovine variety. The museum, which acts as the hub world, is also pretty cool, featuring multiple stories and paintings to check out. In all, DJ's not a horrible looking game. It's just a little simple looking and the 3D graphics suffer from that washed out appearance that plagues other PSP titles.
As for the gameplay, this isn't your standard issue platform game. While DJ can use his scythe to swing on meat hooks, slide on cable, and twirl through the air (and truth be told, there's plenty of ledges to reach), more than half of this game is all about blasting everything that moves with a fairly wide assortment of weapons that include dual pistols, a freeze gun, a flame thrower, C4 hamsters, his scythe, and a shotgun that's practically useless, among other cool toys. Plus, all of the enemies' gibs go all over the place, so that's an added incentive to hack away. In all, it's a good time.
Unfortunately, the more that I played (actually, as soon as I began playing) DJ's faults became annoyingly apparent. For starters, the camera is a total mess, made horrible because the system only has a single analog stick. Fixed positions would've been a lot more efficient, but instead I'm left with not being able to judge distances and bizarre angles where off screen enemies hit me in the back. The camera can be adjusted by holding the left trigger, which transitions to a first person view, but you cannot move around while in this mode, and you have to actually stop what you're doing to engage it.
There are also a few disappointing control issues. I've fallen into lava and been unable to jump (which led to a very quick death), DJ's gotten stuck on staircases, and simple leaping exercises have been an exercise in frustration. There were several moments where I was so angry that I had thoughts of chucking my PSP across the room and into the wall. To that I say, woe is the development team that's game actually tempts the player to break a $250 piece of equipment.
I'm also upset with the presentation. After all of the hype about the story, the Death Jr. comic book, and the upcoming film, one would think that the actual game would include a kick @$$ story, but that's just not the case. There's a neat opening cut scene, but past that there's nothing worth checking out. The characters have voices in the aforementioned scene but communicate to you through text for the most of the adventure, and there was really no effort made to expand upon what could have been classic personalities.
Death Jr. is going to sell a ton of copies because despite its faults it's still a fun little action game and PSP owners are probably hungering for a more diverse selection of titles, but it's far from being an excellent product. Like our friend at the point, DJ dodged a few bullets but didn't make it out unscathed. Kudos to Konami for picking this title up, but both it and Backbone Entertainment should have spent more time tweaking it.
