Konami Gamers' Day 2005 Hands-On: Death Jr.
We finally get some play time with the first PSP game announced. Impressions inside.
Published: January 31, 2005
Jr. High is hard enough for a kid, but being the son of the Grim Reaper can't help, what being a cloaked skeleton and all. Still, that doesn't mean the Reapers youngin' can't make the best of things, and for the most part Death Jr. seems to be doing just that. He's found a couple of friends, all of them outcasts themselves, and they've done the best they can to carve out their own little clique.
There's Pandora, an OC goth girl who can't seem to resist trying to open locked boxes; Stigmartha, who has the (literally) nasty habit of bleeding from the hands when she gets worked up; Smith and Weston, genius twins conjoined at the head; and the Seep, an armless, legless foreign exchange student in a vat -- hands-down (har har) our favorite of the bunch.
When the group of freaks and geeks take a trip to the local supernatural museum, however, they can't resist splitting off from the group to explore things on their own, and come across an obviously evil looking box. Pandora, being the quasi-klepto that she is, decides she needs to know what's in the box, and given that Jr. has the hots for her, he's happy to help out. Of course, once the box is opened, it unleashes Moloch, an ancient demon who literally transforms the world into Hell on Earth.
Rather than enlisting the help of deal o' dad, however, Jr. decides it's a better idea to save his own ass and try to clean things up himself so he doesn't get in trouble. This of course involves a whole lot of scythe swoops and assorted weapons fire, because everyone knows you fix a deluge of evil by killing everything in sight. Developer Backbone Entertainment is making strides to break up the action elements with platforming bits as well, though there's been a conscious effort to meld the two so that they flow seamlessly from one to the next.
We got a little hands-on time after waiting for quite a few minutes (making the game one of the biggest draws at Konami's Gamers' Day event) and while we weren't able to get extensive play time, the short bits and info we got were plenty promising.
There's Pandora, an OC goth girl who can't seem to resist trying to open locked boxes; Stigmartha, who has the (literally) nasty habit of bleeding from the hands when she gets worked up; Smith and Weston, genius twins conjoined at the head; and the Seep, an armless, legless foreign exchange student in a vat -- hands-down (har har) our favorite of the bunch.
When the group of freaks and geeks take a trip to the local supernatural museum, however, they can't resist splitting off from the group to explore things on their own, and come across an obviously evil looking box. Pandora, being the quasi-klepto that she is, decides she needs to know what's in the box, and given that Jr. has the hots for her, he's happy to help out. Of course, once the box is opened, it unleashes Moloch, an ancient demon who literally transforms the world into Hell on Earth.
Rather than enlisting the help of deal o' dad, however, Jr. decides it's a better idea to save his own ass and try to clean things up himself so he doesn't get in trouble. This of course involves a whole lot of scythe swoops and assorted weapons fire, because everyone knows you fix a deluge of evil by killing everything in sight. Developer Backbone Entertainment is making strides to break up the action elements with platforming bits as well, though there's been a conscious effort to meld the two so that they flow seamlessly from one to the next.
We got a little hands-on time after waiting for quite a few minutes (making the game one of the biggest draws at Konami's Gamers' Day event) and while we weren't able to get extensive play time, the short bits and info we got were plenty promising.