Death Jr. has always been just shy of reaching his potential. As one of the first games to debut for the PSP system, Death Jr.'s endearing character design and art style looked promising.
The Good:
-Improved controls and camera
-Characters and stages have lots of style and personality
-Dead Guppy really is a dead guppy
The Bad
-Some great characters are underused
-Sticks too conservatively to platforming conventions
-Story is limited.
GB writes: "Death Jr. Started life on the PSP before being upgraded to the Wii with a few additions. Set in a Tim Burton-esque world of gothic creatures and creepy little girls in mascara, Death Jr. Follows the Grim Reaper's skeletal son and his friend Pandora as they try to stop Poison Ivy wannabe Furi from killing everything. After all, it's their fault she got out in the first place."
Game Focus writes: "Death Jr. Root of Evil was a fun but flawed Playstation Portable title released over a year ago and we now have a Nintendo Wii port of the same game, but do we have the same flaws or new ones to annoy the gamers with another bad port? Actually no, we have a well done fun port that has fixed most of the flaws from the original and given us a fairly decent story based game on part with Crash, Spyro and other similar 3D platform games.
In Death Jr. you play surprisingly as Death Jr. or DJ as he is lovingly referred to and as Pandora his girl friend as they embark on a quest to save his father and finish their science fair project at the same time. This fun quirky adventure has the makings of a fun classic title, even though it is a little on the short side."
Ultimately, it may not help dispel the myth that the Wii cannot deliver visual flare and genre muscle - anyone who's ever played Metroid Prime 3: Corruption will know that's simply not true - but Death Jr. Root of Evil manages to convincingly sidestep the bargain bucket graveyard thanks to its character appeal, solid platform action, amusing and inventive weaponry, and a control system that largely succeeds in papering over any emergent sense of creeping mediocrity.
