Death Jr. Review (PSP)

[SALvation]

Death Jr. was one of the very first PSP games announced when the system was first unveiled. When the details for the game were first being announced, it looked to be poised as one of the first 3D action games on a handheld platform. Konami is looking to make Death Jr. (developed by Backbone Entertainment) one of its main franchises as it quickly created comic books and stories based around the main character, Death's son. After repeated delays, Death Jr. has finally been released amid a complete drought of PSP games. Does Death Jr. live up to the early hype, or will PSP owners continue to have that dry taste in their mouth?

Gameplay

The gameplay for Death Jr. is fast and furious. It seems like there are not very many moments when your not flailing away on the attack button trying to kill everything in sight. The game does a pretty good job at sending waves of enemies at you with minimal slowdown. There are some problems, however, with the control of the game which can make fighting these waves rather frustrating. Death Jr. has a complete arsenal of weapons that grows during the course of the game, with each weapon having its own upgrade path. Each weapon has its own unique purpose and the developers did a good job of having a use for most of the weapons.

Control

While the gameplay holds so much potential, much of it is ruined by the horrible control scheme and camera. While playing, I kept finding myself reaching over for that right analog control stick which Sony left out of the PSP. Without it, you are left to the mercy of the game controlling the camera, or pressing the left trigger button to center the camera. The problem with centering the camera, though, is that once you press it, instead of swinging the camera into the new position, the screen just instantly changes to the new position often leaving you disoriented. In the heat of battle, when you have a dozen enemies around you, this becomes extremely frustrating and you are left hitting the attack button blindly hoping you hit everything around you.

The second most frustrating element with Death Jr. is trying to judge distances for many of the jumping puzzles in the game. There are many times when the camera is at a bad angle, or you just can't tell how far away an object is and you miss your jump, leaving you to try and guess the distance again.

Lastly, when you are moving around in Death Jr., the running motion of Death Jr. just doesn't feel natural. You either start to fast, or don't stop fast enough, or the camera waits a second to get behind you when you change directions. Overall, the entire camera and control scheme just feels wrong.

Overall

Unfortunately, Death Jr. is a platformer with a lot of potential, but feels rushed (despite numerous development delays) because of the sub-par camera and controls. If you can play enough to get used to these shortcomings, you'll find a decent platformer whose arsenal reminds you of the Ratchet and Clank series. Fans of action games which have been looking for a PSP fix may enjoy the game enough to stick with it, but the casual fan will quickly become frustrated with the controls and will most likely give up fairly quickly.