Death, Jr. and the Science Fair of Doom (DS) review on HonestGamers

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Review by Felix Arabia
June 06, 2007

Taking place in the drab netherworld of a school replete with physically disfigured kids isn’t exactly the greatest setting for a platforming DS adventure. Death, Jr. and the Science Fair of Doom sounds more like a 30 minute episode for a show on Nickelodeon; but unlike the channel that brought us such classic cartoons (depending on who you ask), you’re unlikely to find one bit of redeeming quality in this excursion in pointlessness.

Playing as a skeletal kid named DJ, you must go through the twisted realms of your hellish school to set right the wrongs afflicted by some wily experimentation gone awry all because there is, quite frankly, nothing better to do in such a totally lackluster universe. The settings, ranging from a food-stuffed cafeteria to a floral excursion through a botanical realm look unfavorably plain. These polygonal 2-D levels (mixed with some fully 3-D segments) look as if they’re constructed from boogers and a wide variety of doldrums colors. DJatSFoD has utilized virtually every shade of brown and gray, and they’ve thrown in plenty of black for good measure.

That would seem appropriate since this is supposed to be a more macabre sort of game if the motif indicates anything. You do play as Death Jr., after all. Yet such a simple task fails to be realized. Simply put, this game looks like crap. It’s depressingly dark, yet not a bit mysterious at all. This isn’t depressingly surreal or darkly humored. It’s an platformer targeted towards a younger audience, but it’s not capable of holding the strongest gamer endurance. Further more, it’s just really awkward.

As Death Jr., you’re going to have to save your friends who have been heinously nabbed from right underneath your nose. I don’t know why I’m supposed to feel compelled to save all of these depressing, personality-less characters. Names like Stigmartha and Pandora don’t exactly conjure up wholesome images, so why should I want to help out these miserable beings? DJ’s best friend, Pandora, is a particularly stupid case. She somehow or another dies in the opening intro, though she’s still capable of chatting it up with DJ without any sort of problem. In fact, you’ll have to switch from DJ to Pandora whenever you need to hit the random netherworld target or collect souls.

That’s the DS stylus’ greatest use, collecting variously colored soul orbs so you can use them to advance ever deeper into this incredibly bland and boring game. Pandora’s pointless; and if DJ wasn’t armed with a scythe for combat, his role would be questionable at best, too.

He’ll have to battle his way through backpack toting minotaurs, bloodthirsty dandelions, and a fat ass hamster boss suffering from diarrhea. The bulging boss craps heat-seeking hamster doots at you.

Personally, I find that to be the most refreshing thing this game offers. That’s a very, very bad sign. It doesn’t’ contain one inkling of humor, and even though the game really tries hard at times to be something better, it always falls flat. This platformer is just flat out broken, and it will cause a serious amount of frustration for anyone willing to spend some time with it. DJ can be very difficult to control, especially when it comes to jumping. His scythe can be used to pull himself up from ledges, but this feature often doesn’t work, causing our hapless hero to fall to his doom. The combat is very base, too. You’ll be forced to kill headless, flaming chickens in order to progress to the next room at times. If you tap the enemy with the stylus, Death Jr. will wildly flail his scythe about, but he’ll also take a pounding from what should be an easily eradicated enemy. If you decide to push the attack button instead, though, things are barely easier to control.

The biggest insult by far, though, comes in the second world when you’re forced to scale a seemingly never-ending tree, having to use mushrooms as stepping in order to ascend the great woody trunk. There are so many spots where falling boogers caused me to careen back to the very bottom of the infuriatingly high structure. Other times I would have to switch over to Pandora to shoot an invisible target so I could then use DJ to jump toward an uncomfortably out of reach mushroom . . . only to miss it and then careen back to the bottom.

And after all that work, after all that time and trouble spent finally getting to the top of the tree, I was rewarded with a boss fight. DJ was soundly pummeled by a carnivorous dandelion because the play control just refused to cooperate.

Frustrating design and control, abysmally bland graphics and characters, and deadly hamster turds are what await you in Death, Jr. and the Science Fair of Doom. Do those things sound like something you want to experience?

Rating
1	Heat-seeking hamster doots.
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Death, Jr. and the Science Fair of Doom (DS) game cover art

Staff Score (Avg): 1.0 User Score (Avg): N/A Press Score (Avg): N/A
Reviews: 1 Guides: 0 Cheats: 1 Ratings: 1	High Scores: 0 Screenshots: 0 Videos: 0

Title: Death, Jr. and the Science Fair of Doom
Genre: Action (Platformer)
Publisher: Konami
Developer: Backbone Entertainment
Release Date: May 22, 2007
ESRB: E10+

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