When people think of becoming a private investigator, it’s likely that they’ve done so considering that a large part of their job is spent sitting in a car spying on undesirable people doing unseemly things. What they probably don’t consider is that they might run afoul of the local crime boss and end up an undead abomination with a jar for a head. Whoopsie.
This is exactly the predicament of Dead Head Fred’s titular character Fred Neuman. While investigating the disappearances of his girlfriend’s father, Fred pokes his nose in one too many places and is taken out by Ulysses Pitt, the town’s mob-boss-disguised-as-a-captain-of-industry. You know, one of those guys. Pitt has Fred’s body ditched in the local toxic waste dump with the exception of Fred’s head which he delivers to the game’s resident mad scientist, Dr. Steiner, to be stuffed and mounted. Dr. Steiner, who has his own beef to pick with Pitt instead takes Fred’s head, removes the brain and eyes, slaps them in a jar and mounts the jar on Fred’s reanimated corpse. It’s certainly not the prettiest of solutions, but it works, with the exception of Fred’s memory loss. Armed with only Fred’s fists, and his ability to wear multiple, interchanging heads, you’re off to recover Fred’s memories and whup up on a whole bunch of zombies in the process.
The game’s main mechanic is the ability of Fred to wear multiple heads, each with its own sets of special attacks and special abilities. Need to sneak past some cops? Use the jar head’s special stealth field generator. Have a pesky wall that needs to be broken down? Slap on the stone head and get to ramming. See some fires that need to be put out, but there’s no hose nearby? Put on your handy corpse head and suck some water out of the nearby pipe to then spray on the flames.
Fred’s different heads also play an important part in combat. Each head is effective against particular enemies allowing for counter-attacks against the supercharged attacks of your foes. If Fred has the correct head equipped, the triangle button will appear and hitting it at the right time will allow Fred to either dodge or counter the enemy’s attack and by continually pressing the square button to fill up Fred’s counter meter, followed by pressing the triangle button again, Fred can take out his enemy in one of many gruesome ways. Each head also has particular direct or area of effect attack, called Rage attacks, that can either stun enemies or kill them outright. Refilling Fred’s Rage meter for subsequent Rage attacks is as simple as wailing on an enemy until they’re stunned and then pressing triangle to decapitate them.
The combat sounds a lot more complicated than it really is, and while at first, things may seem disjointed, it doesn’t take very long to get used to the system. The one caveat is that this is not a game where you can wade into hordes of enemies and expect to lay waste to them. Fred can be ganged up on fairly easily, and while he can block, he still takes damage when blocking, and if he’s surrounded, it’s easy to be blocking one enemy while being wailed on by two others. Blocking is mapped to the right shoulder button, which also allows you to move the camera around. In addition to blocking issues, the X button pulls double duty as both a combo attack button and the jump button which means that if your first attack, done by pressing the square button, doesn’t register, pressing the X button will cause Fred to jump for glee and possibly get shot in the crotch by the mutated farmer he’s gone up against.
As a result, combat becomes more of a cat and mouse kind of affair where you may enter an area, take out one enemy with a direct rage attack and then retreat some to either regenerate your health, or to draw off another enemy that you can than attack with combos so that you can stun and decapitate them, refilling your rage meter in the process. If things get way too hairy, you can use Fred’s stealth field generator to slink away and lick your wounds, or just apply some red worm juice (health potion) and keep on fighting. Combat can be very exciting, especially once Fred’s different heads are powered up and you’re using the counter attacks along with his special abilities and rage attacks, but if you’re looking for Interchangeable Head God of War, this ain’t it.
Fred also has some more utilitarian heads such as the shrunken head which allows him to shrink down for easier access and the mannequin head which allows Fred to talk to the town’s residents without them screaming in terror. Switching between heads is accomplished by pressing the left shoulder button and picking a head with the thumbstick, so switching between noggins is never a problem.
Along with combat there are various puzzles, solved by using the special abilities of Fred’s various heads as well as some platforming. The platforming is probably the weakest aspect of the game as the camera control just isn’t where you want it to be, and based on where Fred is in the level, may not be controllable. Add to this the fact that the shrunken head’s version of the super jump can be difficult to time correctly and you’ll find yourself less than thrilled at the platforming.
