Death Jr.
The PSP's very first announced title was a long time in coming... perhaps a bit too long.
Published: August 29, 2005
In fact, that's a game-wide problem: there's no real connection. The intro sets things up nicely, but once it's over, you'll find DJ's world to be awfully sparse and lifeless -- even with all the stuff you can smash. The generic text boxes with one- or two-sentence bits of info aren't terribly effective at giving anyone a personality, and towards the end of the game, the whole process of trudging through each world from the hub becomes repetitive and at times boring.
The boss fights liven things up a bit, but even then they aren't terribly difficult (which is a good thing, since you'll have to restart level enough from just getting ganged up on by enemies towards the end anyway).
Part of the fatigue of playing is just that the graphic design is so heavily stilted towards dark hues of red and purple. I'll give Backbone props for using a palette that's not normally used in games, and one that works well in theme for the game, but there's probably a reason why they aren't used so much, and the why the levels can actually tire your eyes goes a long way towards explaining that.
The detail in DJ's animations and the scythe physics are fantastic, but the rest of the game feels oddly devoid of any real imagination. The enemies aren't particularly interesting and the levels don't feel like they really go anywhere. There are some genuinely cool mixes of platforming and shooting, but they're few and far between, and the rest of the game is spent doing the same basic things over and over while stuck in a world that's just too eerily lit to feel cool.
The audio takes a similarly sparse approach. The plucky music fits things perfectly, but that too can get a little grating after a while. Sound effects are solid, but they're also minimal, so most of the time, you'll only hear the occasional roar or whoosh other than the sounds of DJ scything stuff up.
One of the biggest sources of personality seems to have been sucked out, and I have the sneaking suspicion that it was because of battery life concerns. Having full voice acting and a ton of music to pull from the UMD would have meant a world of difference in making things more involved, but it probably would have meant we'd have to keep the PSP plugged in too.
More than a few great people worked on this game, and worked hard, which makes poo-pooing an effort like this hard. But for whatever reason, the premise and execution never really met in the middle, so we're left with a lot of potential, and even more moments of frustration and puzzlingly clunky gameplay.
It's worth a look, if only to see how the very first development effort shown off on Sony's sleek little portable turned out, but it doesn't feel like all the personality and character the game was supposed to have panned out, and it's a shame.