Name: Dead Head Fred
Genre: Adventure
Platform: Playstation Portable

Not too long ago the market was flooded with action games. Fun, mindless “beat-em-ups” that kept players constantly punching, kicking, and smashing their way through a ridiculous plot. For my money the Sega Genesis had the most of these types of games. The genre seemed to disappear with time and for a while developers opted for more complicated games with more convoluted storylines to draw players in.

Dead Head Fred is a rebirth to that lost genre. It has elements from many of the games that defined it for me in the ways of plot and gameplay. The plot is similar to the classic Decap Attack, involving a character whose head was stolen and must be retrieved. In this case it is the head of Fred – a private investigator who got too close to the mob. The plot doesn’t try to be too strong because it knows anything that rests on interchangeable heads can’t do much in the ways of dramatic storytelling.

The gameplay is that of a typical adventure game with a fun and interesting twist. Again, I reminisce to the days of the Genesis and the title Kid Chameleon; a game in which your character would morph into different forms to fit the circumstance and solve different problems. A similar style is used in Dead Head Fred by allowing the player to switch Fred’s head with any you have grabbed off of an enemy. Each one comes with different abilities and allows Fred different bonuses for defeating his enemies.

While it does feel like an old school game in some aspects it brings them to the current day in many others. Every character has wonderful voice work. From lowly mafia henchmen to Fred, voiced by the illustrious John C. McGinley (Dr. Cox from Scrubs, one of the Bobs from Office Space, ect). His quips and one-liners are worth the price of admission as they bring the character to life. The graphics are also impressive with interesting character models and environments.

The only problems that come up while playing Dead Head Fred are control and camera issues. The analog stick’s placement on the PSP leaves a bad feeling after too much gameplay and some button mapping isn’t ideal (attacking and jumping are the same button during combos). Camera issues don’t get in the way during combat as much as they do during some of the games puzzles and platforming. These are small issues that anyone who has ever played a game on the PSP has to be used to by now.

I have said on several occasions that the PSP is somewhat of a wasteland when it comes to finding good titles. It tries to spin too many plates and balance between a handheld system and a home console. Because of this some developers are at a loss for what to develop for the platform. Dead Head Fred is the perfect example of what the system needs. On a home console it might not deliver an experience worth $60 and it is slightly too large of a game to take place on the Nintendo DS.

It also was developed with this in mind, so the player is frequently given good spots to save the game to be continued later or, if they choose continue playing for a long plane ride or car trip. One of the benefits of having multiple heads must have been the ability to successfully spin plates while balancing between handheld and console, because Dead Head Fred does it flawlessly.