Dead Head Fred Hands-On Preview

After spending a weekend with a beta build of Dead Head Fred, I can tell you that once the bugs are out (and I'm told they will be) this is a game I'd be happy to spend my money on. It did take me a while to get the hang of the controls, but once I did, I had a blast. Head-swapping is an ingenious idea for a mechanism to give your character different abilities, and the character design is brilliantly macabre.

Dead Head Fred is an action game--actually, I'd probably call it an action-adventure--in which you play Fred, a guy who wakes up to discover his head is now a brain and eyeballs floating in a jar of green liquid. Fred, it seems, was murdered, but a morally conflicted scientist working for the same villain who had Fred killed salvaged Fred's body and brain and put him back together, as much as possible. Now it's up to Fred--and you--to find out what the baddies are up to, get revenge, save the day, and maybe get Fred's head back.

New Look

While the graphic quality doesn't exceed anything we've seen before on the PSP, the design is cleverly dark. The character Lefty has that name for good reason, though I won't spoil it--you'll just have to play and find out for yourself.

The head-swapping, though, is really the chief appeal in this game. (Which isn't to say it's the only reason to play--by all appearances, DHF is a solid action-adventure even without the heads.) You start the game with a couple of spare heads, each with its own strengths and skills. Swapping heads might give you flame-spitting powers, or extra strength. As the game progresses you collect even more heads.

Wait, What?

My main difficulty in the game, and I attribute this more to my own absent-mindedness than to the game itself (but I'll keep it in mind if I get a chance to review the finished game), was keeping the controls straight. They're not difficult, or anything, it's just that I'm used to games that make minimal use of some of the buttons and that use the d-pad and analog nub interchangeably. DHF uses all of the buttons for different things, enabling more control. I kept getting them mixed up at first, and I kept forgetting I could swap heads to try different tactics. I did eventually get it straight, though, and that was when I really began to have fun.