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Wii Fanboy Review: Death Jr.: Root of Evil
As a property, Death Jr. is simply hilarious. The characters are delightfully twisted, in a sort of Oblongs-meets-Jhonen Vasquez way, and some of the humor and dialogue can only be categorized as ridiculously funny. In order to build a successful game, however, you need more than that; the gameplay has to be there, to provide the player a reason to move from joke to joke, and some of that impetus is clearly lacking in Death Jr.: Root of Evil. Have you ever played a platforming game? Sure you have. Then guess what? You've pretty much played Death Jr. Get ready to bounce from here to there, collect items, and navigate a number of levels. There's not much more to it than that, other than the aforementioned humor ... which, unfortunately, is somewhat lacking in quantity.%Gallery-24649%
Wii releases this week: Emergency Heroes edition
This week sees a few new games releasing on the Wii, providing those of you with a burning desire to feed your Wii new retail discs an opportunity to do so. Of note is Ubisoft Barcelona's Emergency Heroes, along with the PSP-to-Wii title, Death Jr: Root of Evil. Without further ado, let's get to the games!This week's new games are: Emergency Heroes Kawasaki Snowmobiles The Monkey King Death Jr: Root of Evil %Gallery-19279%
Death, Jr. 2 takes root on Wii
The annoyingly punctuated Death, Jr. 2: Root of Evil will be making the leap from PSP to Wii this spring, complete with a bunch of stuff that should come as standard in the Wii version of a PSP-to-Wii port more polygons, higher-resolution textures, more voice acting, better pacing, splitscreen play for co-op, and an improved user interface. The game's score on Metacritic doesn't exactly leave us bursting with hope, but hey, we wrapped up Super Mario Galaxy a while ago, and could do with another platformer to sink our teeth into.Speaking of Galaxy, here's Death, Jr. 2 producer James Stanley talking up the game to 1UP: "It's definitely one of the better looking Wii titles. I'd say 'best' but we might get in a battle with some Mario fans." Check out more screens past the break and tell us if you agree with him.
Metareview: Death Jr 2
Death Jr. gets a bit more attention than it may deserve, simply because it was the first PSP game ever to be shown. We were wowed by its impressive non-GBA quality graphics, but when we got our hands on the original, we were a little underwhelmed by its gameplay. The sequel was supposed to fix the problems of the original game, but it appears that the critics are still a little negative on this franchise. Maybe they focused too much on the tech? Let's find out: IGN (71/100) wants to believe in the franchise, but they end up disappointed: "The game is still sloppy in execution despite its best qualities -- it's time for DJ to grow up and scythe straight. The story again makes little sense, despite some funny sequences, and it feels short with only three bosses and little to revisit stages for on your second play." Games Radar (60/100) fails to find any originality in the gameplay: "You know that game where you run around and hit things repeatedly? It's the same one with floating platforms, simple combos and a camera that almost gets it - ringing any bells yet? Oh wait, that's practically every third-person run-and-jump game made in the last eight or nine years, and even though it's a marked improvement over the original, Death Jr. 2: Root of Evil still falls squarely in the "pretty OK" department." GamePro (80/100) loves the game, more than GTA: "Death Jr. 2 is definitely a game that works for those of you who just love hacking at things. Levels spawn swarms of enemies with complex AI that keep coming at you unless you attack their regeneration area. The creative randomness of the enemies is delightful. After all, not too many games have llamas, chickens, hamsters, gorillas, possessed trees, gigantic centipedes, and mechanical spiders going for you all at once.." There's a pretty wide range of opinions on this game so far, but one thing's clear: this game is much better than the original. But does that say much? The game is now available.
Death, Jr. 2 producer starts a blog, reveals game details
Death, Jr. 2: Root of Evil producer James Stanley has recently created his own blog, which is hosted on IGN, and plans to start delivering regular updates on the game's progress.In his first post, Stanley admits the camera and lighting in the original title made the game too hard and has said he's on a mission to rectify the problems."One of the first responsibilities I had as the producer was to make sure the feedback from critics and fans was gathered from the message boards and reviews to help us identify the major issues that needed to be addressed in the sequel," he wrote. "One of the first responsibilities I had as the producer was to make sure the feedback from critics and fans was gathered from the message boards and reviews to help us identify the major issues that needed to be addressed in the sequel."Stanley also wrote about two other problems (not the evil llamas and chickens) he hopes to rectify and how he plans to do it. Check it out after the jump.
