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Death Jr. was a fun portable platform title on the PSP that showed some promise of a little dark humor set to your everyday platformer. When a sequel was announced it was odd to find out that is was not making it onto a major platform, yet on the DS instead. There is no denying that the DS is a hot selling system, but if you just want to talk in visual terms, there is no comparison between it and the PSP. So why take a franchise over to a system that hampers you in audio and visuals? I guess it’s to see if they could really kill death, as with the DS version of Death Jr. they have nearly accomplished this with such a shoddy platformer that only those desperate for the genre should play. Visually the game is an obvious step down from the PSP version, but it’s the strange blend of nice 3D characters and environments and poorly designed 2D menus and HUD’s that give Death Jr on the DS that look of rigor mortis right from the start. Speaking of poor design, who thought up these levels? Does Konami have some deal with Nintendo that they can have gamers tossing their DSs in anger to increase DS re-buy sales? It sure would seem like it. Not that they don’t look great, but they don’t adapt well to the character’s animations which lead to untimely deaths. If you’re gonna have a character do a spinning animation when jumping, at least have the collision detection favorable for mistakes and misreading ledges.
This leads to the controls, which we all know a bad controlling platform title is one to shy away from. Death Jr. for the DS fits this bill nicely. The only bright spot here is when you are standing still or walking in an open area, because when the obstacles come into play, it’s all down hill. Jumping is a near impossibility to judge at times, and when you happen to make it across certain platforms; you feel it was more luck than skill. This tossed in with a camera that is supposed to be free flowing, but ends up lagging behind or not being where you need it to be most of the time also lends its inability as part of the game’s problem. If you are one of few who are either into pain or playing this on a bet, there are plenty of interesting environments and characters to see and the game itself is a decent sized platformer for the DS in length. There even are some mini games that can be played wirelessly between two players, but if you can find a friend who can tolerate this game as well, then you both should enter yourselves in a glass eating competition. To say the least, I’m a bit upset as I was foreseeing larger things for this franchise. Death Jr. on the DS may end up being this cool little character’s demise as it does everything wrong in a platform title except looking pretty good. Let’s just hope there is enough interest in the character to see it hit a more viable platforming console.
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