Dead Head Fred - first look

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One of the PSP's most promising games stars an unknown, undead private eye

Of all the weird games we saw at E3 this year, few of them were as flat-out bizarre as Dead Head Fred. Offering up a cartoonishly grim take on brawling and film noir, it tells the story of Fred, a detective who runs afoul of a local crime boss and winds up headless. Luckily for Fred, a kindly mad scientist finds his corpse and reanimates him as a jarheaded monstrosity, able to steal and use his enemies' heads as he tries to track down his memory.

It's a gruesome, darkly funny premise, and Dead Head Fred aims to do as much with it as a PSP title can. At its core, the game is a brawler, with Fred running around on city streets and beating up on enemies. But as Fred makes his way through the big, non-linear world, he'll run afoul of various bosses who work for the gangster that set him up. Defeat them, and you'll learn a decapitation move that Fred can use to take their heads, which in turn impart new abilities when Fred wears them.

Nine heads will be available in all - each of them upgradeable - and a few enemies will even have disposable, one-time-use noggins. In any case, heads are more than just weapons; Dead Head Fred is structured a little like Metroid, in that you can roam freely, but certain areas are blocked off until you get the right head-power.

Mikel Reparaz
Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.