Aramation Games

There is one important reason why you should be mindful of creating an action game with 3D camera for PSP: camera can make or break the game. Unfortunately for Dead Head Fred, all the good things they try to do are undone by unruly camera that’s hard to control.

 You play as Fred, and you wake up one day without your head, victim of a mob hit. It’s up to you to seek revenge on the guys who killed you. You lost your head, which means you have no memory of who you are… but that does give you one of the best game mechanics Dead Head Fred introduces: head swapping. You can literally rip off heads from your enemies and use them as your own. Doing so, you gain bonuses as some heads allow you to spew liquid out of your mouth, give you more strength and even talk to humans.

Head swapping is pretty easy and fun, too bad combat cannot match the game’s head swapping or humor. Combat consists of pummeling enemies before they kill you: many of the heads have their own special attack that can clear out a group of enemies, but you can never use enough of them, and the enemies will just gang up on you and kill you as you are severely underpowered.

Simplistic can be fun in other games but Dead Head Fred’s camera makes sure you become frustrated. Even worse is several sections where platforming (jumping) is mandatory, and sometimes all you can do is do a blind jump and hope you land where you have to go. It is possible to control the camera yourself, but that requires you to stay still, which isn’t possible when you’re getting attacked by a large group of enemies.

In the end, perhaps PSP’s hardware limitation is to blame for Dead Head Fred. Its head swapping mechanics and good productions value are better suited at a console with 2 analog controls.

Rating: 55%

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