video game
A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...
for the
PlayStation Portable
The PlayStation Portable (PSP) is a handheld game console developed and marketed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on December 12, 2004, in North America on March 24, 2005, and in PA ...
. The PSP iteration was the first PSP game shown publicly and advertised as a killer-app. It was released to a mixed reception and noted for numerous problems about the camera, gameplay and uninspiring graphics, but was praised for its
Tim Burton
Timothy Walter Burton (born August 25, 1958) is an American filmmaker and producer. Known for popularizing Goth subculture, Goth culture in the American film industry, Burton is famous for his Gothic film, gothic horror and dark fantasy films. ...
-esque themes and quirky characters. Slightly better received was the
comic book
A comic book, comic-magazine, or simply comic is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panel (comics), panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are often accompanied by descriptive prose and wri ...
adaptation by
Gary Whitta
Gary Leslie Whitta (born 21 July 1972) is an English-American screenwriter, author, game designer, and video game journalist. Whitta was the screenwriter of film '' The Book of Eli'' (2010), co-wrote the film ''After Earth'' (2013) with M. Night ...
and
Ted Naifeh
Edward "Ted" Naifeh is an American comic book writer and artist known for his illustrations in the goth romance comic '' Gloomcookie''. Naifeh has since become most known as the creator of the Eisner-Award-nominated series '' Courtney Crumrin'', ...
, which includes two three-issue miniseries. The game was followed by '' Death Jr. II: Root of Evil'' in 2006 and '' Death Jr. and the Science Fair of Doom'' in 2007.
''Death Jr.'' was conceived during experiments with the engine of the cancelled game ''Prime 8'', a planned
spin-off
Spin-off, Spin Off, Spin-Off, or Spinoff may refer to: Entertainment and media
*Spinoff (media), a media work derived from an existing work
*''The Spinoff'', a New Zealand current affairs magazine
* ''Spin Off'' (Canadian game show), a 2013 Canad ...
to the ''
Spyro The Dragon
''Spyro the Dragon'' is a 1998 platform game originally developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation. The first game in the ''Spyro'' series, it stars the title character, a young purple dragon ...
'' series.
Gameplay
In the game, the player has a variety of guns ranging from pistols to a rocket launcher. The controls are simple. The player moves around with the analog nub and attacks people with the square and circle buttons. There is a lot of emphasis in the game on the combos which can be achieved by linking attacks to each other in rapid succession.
Plot
The game and comic book are about the teenage son of the
Grim Reaper
The Grim Reaper is a popular personification of death in Western culture in the form of a hooded skeletal figure wearing a black robe and carrying a scythe.military school. He meets new friends at this school:
Pandora
In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first human woman created by Hephaestus on the instructions of Zeus. As Hesiod related it, each god cooperated by giving her unique gifts. Her other name—inscribed against her figure on a white-ground '' ky ...
, a girl with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and a thing for locked boxes; Stigmartha, a girl who has holes in her hands and bleeds from them whenever she's nervous; Smith and Weston,
conjoined twins
Conjoined twins, popularly referred to as Siamese twins, are twins joined '' in utero''. It is a very rare phenomenon, estimated to occur in anywhere between one in 50,000 births to one in 200,000 births, with a somewhat higher incidence in south ...
who are very smart and conjoined at the head; the Seep, an armless, legless, foul-mouthed kid in a vat; and the Dead Guppy, a character who speaks for himself.
The friends go on a field trip to a museum, where they find a locked box that Pandora wants opened, so DJ opens it to impress her. Unfortunately, all
hell
In religion and folklore, hell is a location or state in the afterlife in which souls are subjected to punishment after death. Religions with a linear divine history sometimes depict hells as eternal destinations, such as Christianity and I ...
breaks loose and demons run amok. It's up to DJ to stop them and revert the town back to normal, all the while making sure Dad doesn't find out.
Reception
The game received average or mixed reviews, as
GameRankings
GameRankings was a video gaming review aggregator that was founded in 1999 and owned by CBS Interactive. It indexed over 315,000 articles relating to more than 14,500 video games. GameRankings was discontinued in December 2019, with its staff bei ...
gave it a score of 63.30% while
Metacritic
Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...