Death, Jr. 2: Root of Evil review

You know that game where you run around and hit things repeatedly? It's the same one with floating platforms, simple combos and a camera that almost gets it - ringing any bells yet? Oh wait, that's practically every third-person run-and-jump game made in the last eight or nine years, and even though it's a marked improvement over the original, Death Jr. 2: Root of Evil still falls squarely in the "pretty OK" department.

Problems with the last game, like a crap camera and total lack of a narrative, have been addressed. The L and R buttons now give you a fair amount of camera control, but when running through tight corridors or locked in a tense firefight with mechanized chickens, the viewpoint can quickly descend into madness. The new storyline certainly livens up the presentation (including fancy new cutscenes), though anyone with a driver's license probably won't be cracking too many smiles at the Nickelodeon-caliber jokes.

The world presented in Evil does have a certain Invader Zim appeal to it, but it's neither creepy enough to disturb nor unique enough to excite. Killer toys? Check. Weird amalgamations of machines and obscure animals? Double check. Area after area filled with crates, switches and every other idea that's been done to death? Yeah, well, we've made our point.

Even the bullet-pointed changes to the game (new lighting effects, upgradeable weapons etc.) are things that should have been there all along, because they're in just about any platformer made after 1999.