Reviewed: July 12, 2007
Reviewed by: Ansel Newcome-Beill

Publisher
Konami

Developer
Backbone Entertainment (Vancouver)

Released: May 22, 2007
Genre: Platform
Players: 1-2

4
5
4
4
4.3

Supported Features

Death Jr. and The Science Fair of Doom focuses on the mishaps of the teenage son of the grim reaper, Death Jr. and his cast of friends which range from the ghostly Pandora, to the fetal foreign exchange student Seep. While Death Jr. and his friends are a little less than ordinary they still attend school like any other kid and are wrought with the same day to day problems, like slaying a bunch of science projects gone horribly awry.

Thus lies the premise of Death Jr. and The Science Fair of Doom, Death Jr. and his friends accidentally release Moloch (he’s the bad guy) and his horde of demons who turn their science projects into ridiculous monstrosities as well as kidnapping Death Jr.’s more ordinary classmates and turning Pandora into a ghost.

Although you may be playing as the son of death himself, the environments and characters lend the game a light-hearted, albeit twisted nature. The whole game however feels rather dry, as the characters which you would expect to be funny and quirky, lack any real personality which really subtracts from the game.

There are a variety of different moves and weapons that are gradually unlocked as the player progresses through the game, these small features try to distinguish Death Jr. somewhat, but do little to actually make the game fun. For example, the player is given both a shotgun and pistol to use in the game, but feel more like filler as they are both all but useless when compared to the player’s more reliable scythe. That being said, the scythe has a number of special moves, which are also quite pointless, as Death Jr.’s most basic attacks are more than enough to get the job done. This tends to make most of the combat in the game overly simplistic, boring, and a little too easy.

While Death Jr. might have you believe that you are playing in a true 3-D world, most of the game is kept to an almost pure side-scrolling mechanic. Occasionally, the game switches camera angles to allow for full 3-D movement, but these tend to be kept fairly short and serve only to complicate the game’s control scheme.

As one might expect, relying solely on the D-pad for control makes the game anything but simple, especially when considering that this is only one of the several control issues that plagues this game. Being introduced on the DS, Death Jr. and The Science Fair of Doom tries desperately to incorporate DS exclusive features into its gameplay, specifically the use of the stylus and the DS touch screen, however this proves to be more than the game can handle. Many of the game’s features rely on using the stylus, but using the stylus exclusively is not an option, so this forces the player to clumsily wield both the D-pad and the stylus at the same time. Needless to say this gets irritating rather quickly and makes you wonder exactly how much forethought went into this game’s control scheme.

Things only get worse when the overtly complex level design is brought into the mix. Often times players will have to go through the same area multiple times in order to reach their goal, which is especially difficult considering that losing your way or backtracking will sometimes land you a one way ticket to the beginning of the level. This convoluted level design is the single most infuriating aspect of this game, and when coupled with a save system that barely works, I can honestly say that I have met few games that can match this level of frustration.

There is a nice, vibrant artistic style associated with the game that bears a small resemblance to the kind of themes shown in Psychonauts or the Invader Zim cartoons. Each level has its own unique graphical theme, which is simply a more exaggerated version of the various rooms in the school, such as massive plants that attack you in the garden and giant forks that try to impale you in the cafeteria. The enemies you encounter also follow the same trend, and while some enemies do make appearances throughout the course of the game, this lends a little bit of variety to the otherwise bland combat.

The game does suffer from a couple of nagging graphical issues however. The animations for the characters are a little choppy and only get worse when fighting more than a handful of enemies at once which makes the frame rate dip drastically. And while each level does have a unique look, they tend to recycle many of the same textures, making many of the parts of a level look all too similar, which makes finding your way around an already complex level far more difficult than it should be.

But perhaps the single most puzzling aspect is why Konami chose to not have any voice-overs for the game’s characters. The characters are creative an quirky, but the complete lack of voice detracts any kind of personality these characters may have had to begin with.

There is a small multiplayer component to the game that provides a decent enough albeit, short-lived distraction from the single player component. All of the various multiplayer modes are built off the games combat system and are different variations of death match style play. There are also a couple of mini-games that can be unlocked over the course of the game that can be played either alone or against a friend.

Granted, this game shows incredible potential, but anyone besides platforming purists will probably want to call their local exorcist as soon as possible to rid their DS of the vile corruption that is Death Jr.