A 3D action starring a super-deformed version of the Grim Reaper (or, as the title would suggest, the junior successor to Death himself) featuring platforming and shooting elements. Death, Jr. has a range of weapons to go along with his trusty, multi-use scythe (which can also be used for platforming challenges when it's not being used to slice up evil enemies.) This handheld title is exclusive to the PlayStation Portable system, and was in fact the first game ever publicly shown for the handheld (Game Developer's Conference, March 2004.)
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Mixing early 2000's era Hot Topic, Ratchet and Clank, and MediEvil together should've created something amazing, but instead we got passionate mediocrity with janky camera and gunplay that at least has an appealing skeleboy. I knew something was up when my main takeaway was "Man, MediEvil had better controls..."
Do yourself a favor and read the graphic novel instead, because you get to see the Grim Reaper get into a fistfight with dinosaurs fossils at a museum and it whips.
Do yourself a favor and read the graphic novel instead, because you get to see the Grim Reaper get into a fistfight with dinosaurs fossils at a museum and it whips.
Death Jr. was a game I thought I would like, but the game controls, camera work, graphics, and overall aesthetic just don't mesh well on the PSP. It has become one of my least favorite experiences on the handheld and possibly one of the worst games I have played this year.
The game centers around the teenage son of the Grim Reaper, Death Jr. (aka DJ). During a field trip to a local museum, DJ and his school friends Pandora, Stigmartha, conjoined twins Smith and Weston, an armless, legless, kid in a vat named the Seep, and a dead guppy fish aptly named the Dead Guppy, find and unlock Pandora’s box. This obviously releases hell on earth and DJ must fight demons and other monsters to return the town back to normal and save his friends.
The controls and camera work in Death Jr. are severely lacking when compared to other action platformers on the handheld PSP. After recently completing Daxter, it is apparent that the Sony handheld can handle a great action platforming experience. The camera work, controls, and presentation of Ready at Dawn’s Daxter is near perfection when considering the limitations of the PSP. The developers behind Death Jr. may have understood the limitations of the handheld hardware, but were simply unable to create a game that utilized that hardware in a meaningful and enjoyable way. To start, the camera is passable at best and atrociously awkward at worst. The only means of control a player has over the camera is a button press to swing it around behind DJ. So for 90% of the game the player is at the mercy of the camera - something that was acceptable in older games, but not in 2005. Many may cry foul at this statement given the PSP only having one joystick, but Daxter had no problems with offering camera control to the player by using the L and R triggers, something that Death Jr. could have utilized just as well. This lack of camera control would honestly be fine if the game was only platforming, but this is an “action” platformer meaning there are demons to defeat and monsters to slay. Unfortunately, these beasts are incredibly difficult to find and accurately attack in a 3D space without camera control. Even if the player had control over the camera though, the controls used in Death Jr. would still pose a major hurdle to the games overall enjoyability. DJ can wield a variety of weapons throughout the game that are all either melee focused or projectile weaponry. The melee weapons work decently, but usually have short combos, weird hit boxes, and are flung wildly around the screen in lackluster animations. The projectile weaponry (i.e. guns) would be a nice addition to this action platformer if not for the poor implementation of both the aforementioned camera controls and the unintelligent lock-on system that never prioritizes the closest enemy and fails to lock on to much of anything some of the time. While I wouldn’t go as far as to say that either issue mentioned here makes the game completely unplayable, those issues certainly make Death Jr. a less than enjoyable experience.
While the PSP had a screen resolution of only 480x272, there are still some graphically impressive games on the system. Unfortunately, Death Jr. is not one of those games. The image is somehow both grainy and smeared at the same time with both DJ and the enemies he faces looking more like blobby masses on the screen than the actual son of Death and horrifying demons. The backgrounds and stage assets are also constantly popping in and out leading to stages being far more confusing than necessary. Overall, it is hard to explain how bad Death Jr. looks on the PSP when compared to other games on the system unless you play it yourself, which I don’t really recommend.
The aesthetic for Death Jr. is that of a 15 year old goth kid who spent too much time at Hot Topic and watched every episode of Invader Zim and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy - it’s just really dated. The jokes are all crude and lifeless, the side characters are mostly flat, and the game just reeks of an air of knock off horror. It’s a shame really, because the premise of Death Jr. is solid and could have made for an enjoyable experience, but it unfortunately just isn’t - unless you are into that sort of thing.
In the end, I believe Death Jr. was a waste of my time and is an entirely missable and forgettable title on the PSP.
The game centers around the teenage son of the Grim Reaper, Death Jr. (aka DJ). During a field trip to a local museum, DJ and his school friends Pandora, Stigmartha, conjoined twins Smith and Weston, an armless, legless, kid in a vat named the Seep, and a dead guppy fish aptly named the Dead Guppy, find and unlock Pandora’s box. This obviously releases hell on earth and DJ must fight demons and other monsters to return the town back to normal and save his friends.
The controls and camera work in Death Jr. are severely lacking when compared to other action platformers on the handheld PSP. After recently completing Daxter, it is apparent that the Sony handheld can handle a great action platforming experience. The camera work, controls, and presentation of Ready at Dawn’s Daxter is near perfection when considering the limitations of the PSP. The developers behind Death Jr. may have understood the limitations of the handheld hardware, but were simply unable to create a game that utilized that hardware in a meaningful and enjoyable way. To start, the camera is passable at best and atrociously awkward at worst. The only means of control a player has over the camera is a button press to swing it around behind DJ. So for 90% of the game the player is at the mercy of the camera - something that was acceptable in older games, but not in 2005. Many may cry foul at this statement given the PSP only having one joystick, but Daxter had no problems with offering camera control to the player by using the L and R triggers, something that Death Jr. could have utilized just as well. This lack of camera control would honestly be fine if the game was only platforming, but this is an “action” platformer meaning there are demons to defeat and monsters to slay. Unfortunately, these beasts are incredibly difficult to find and accurately attack in a 3D space without camera control. Even if the player had control over the camera though, the controls used in Death Jr. would still pose a major hurdle to the games overall enjoyability. DJ can wield a variety of weapons throughout the game that are all either melee focused or projectile weaponry. The melee weapons work decently, but usually have short combos, weird hit boxes, and are flung wildly around the screen in lackluster animations. The projectile weaponry (i.e. guns) would be a nice addition to this action platformer if not for the poor implementation of both the aforementioned camera controls and the unintelligent lock-on system that never prioritizes the closest enemy and fails to lock on to much of anything some of the time. While I wouldn’t go as far as to say that either issue mentioned here makes the game completely unplayable, those issues certainly make Death Jr. a less than enjoyable experience.
While the PSP had a screen resolution of only 480x272, there are still some graphically impressive games on the system. Unfortunately, Death Jr. is not one of those games. The image is somehow both grainy and smeared at the same time with both DJ and the enemies he faces looking more like blobby masses on the screen than the actual son of Death and horrifying demons. The backgrounds and stage assets are also constantly popping in and out leading to stages being far more confusing than necessary. Overall, it is hard to explain how bad Death Jr. looks on the PSP when compared to other games on the system unless you play it yourself, which I don’t really recommend.
The aesthetic for Death Jr. is that of a 15 year old goth kid who spent too much time at Hot Topic and watched every episode of Invader Zim and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy - it’s just really dated. The jokes are all crude and lifeless, the side characters are mostly flat, and the game just reeks of an air of knock off horror. It’s a shame really, because the premise of Death Jr. is solid and could have made for an enjoyable experience, but it unfortunately just isn’t - unless you are into that sort of thing.
In the end, I believe Death Jr. was a waste of my time and is an entirely missable and forgettable title on the PSP.
DJ's a cutie pie. I like him a lot. His friends are cool too, the Hot Topic poseur goth aesthetic goes pretty hard in the two cutscenes in the game. Game's an alright platformer with very bad combat mechanics! Gunplay sucks. Gunplay just straight blows ass. Rancid. Camera too. Why they made the PSP without a second stick is the greatest mystery in video game history
kinda fun,i mean i like the artstyle and theres not much for this game
gameplay sem impacto
This game spooked me as a kid