Dead Head Fred

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Dead Head Fred
Single-player

Dead Head Fred is an action-adventure video game for the PlayStation Portable, developed by Vicious Cycle Software and published by D3 Publisher. It was released in North America on August 28, 2007, and is powered by Vicious Cycle's proprietary Vicious Engine. It features a premise that is a combination of 1940s-style noir and contemporary horror, dubbed "twisted noir" by the design team.

Dead Head Fred is a single-player game whose title character, Fred Neuman, is a private investigator with the ability to switch heads. Fred has been murdered and decapitated, and has few memories of the events leading to his death. The plot follows Fred as he pieces together the clues of his murder and tries to get revenge on the man who killed him. Fred has no conventional weapons—he relies solely on the powers available to him from the severed heads of fallen enemies.

The game received generally positive reviews, with reviewers mentioning its dark humor and noir-inspired motif as high points. It received criticism for its controls and lack of combat depth. In 2008, it won the

award for video game writing
.

Dead Head Fred was made available on PlayStation Vita.[1]

Gameplay

Dead Head Fred is a third-person action-adventure game that incorporates a variety of gameplay styles, including combat, platforming, and puzzles.

side-missions.[8] There are several minigames unrelated to the plot, such as pinball and fishing, scattered around the city.[9]

Fred, with the Bone head equipped, removing the head of an enemy.

In combat, players have several attacks at their disposal, depending on the head Fred is equipped with.

combos, head-specific counterattacks, and ranged attacks.[2][11] During a counterattack, the player can complete a quick time event to instantly kill an enemy by removing its head,[12] which gives Fred "Rage" points. Rage energy builds up over time, and the player can use it to unleash powerful attacks on multiple foes.[13]
Dealing a large amount of damage to an opponent will stun them, during which time Fred can remove their head. Collected heads can be traded at "Head Shops" for a usable version.

There are several types of environmental puzzles that the player has to solve in order to progress through the game. Each one requires a specific head—the Bone head gives Fred sharp claws which allow him to climb on the sides of buildings, while the Shrunken head decreases his size dramatically and lets him navigate platforming levels, such as a saw mill.[8] There is also a mannequin head that Fred must use to socialize with the residents of Hope Falls, because they are terrified of his other heads.[14] There are nine available heads,[11] seven of which are suitable for combat.

Plot

Setting

Dead Head Fred takes place in Hope Falls, New Jersey,[15] a once-prosperous area based on American cities in the 1940s.[7] The city has steadily fallen from grace since a business mogul named Ulysses Pitt began accumulating power.[12] Pitt has a background of petty crime, and there are allegations that he was somehow responsible for the disappearance of Vinni Rossini, an influential Hope Falls businessman.[15] Pitt's new "Nukular Plant" has recently finished construction and has caused a high level of radiation in the city,[16] leading to strange phenomena like mutated wildlife and undead monsters.

Hope Falls is composed of several areas. The first that Fred has access to is Dr. Steiner's castle, the ancestral home of the Steiner family where Fred has been resurrected. Outside of the castle is a large cemetery that borders the forested area of Creepy Hollow. In Hope Falls proper are the urban areas of Downtown, Uptown, Old Hope Falls and Zombietown. Downtown is the home of Pitt's headquarters, and Fred's office is found in Old Hope Falls. Zombietown, as its name suggests, is overrun with

manholes, which Fred can use to quickly move from one area of Hope Falls to another.[17]

Characters

The

tommygun. Fred makes several allies throughout the game, including Dr. Steiner, who resurrected him, his girlfriend Jeanne Rossini (Kari Wahlgren), and his former partner Benny Salazar. Fred's enemies are generally employees of Pitt, like the skeletal "bone thugs", or creatures created by Hope Falls' radiation, like zombies and animated scarecrows.[11]

Story

The game begins with Fred waking up in the castle of a Dr. Freidrich Steiner, an employee of Ulysses Pitt. Fred soon learns that he has been murdered and subsequently resurrected, and his head is missing.[10] In its place is a liquid-filled jar that contains his brain and eyes.[7] Steiner explains that Fred is a private detective who had been investigating Pitt, but Pitt had discovered that Fred was on to him and had him murdered.[16] Many of Fred's memories are missing as a result of the trauma to his brain,[11] and before Steiner can explain further, Pitt and several of his henchmen arrive. As Fred hides in Steiner's lab, Pitt's thugs apprehend Steiner and announce that he is to be taken to the Horseman, a minion of Pitt's who resides in Creepy Hollow.

Fred leaves Steiner's castle and meets a blue-skinned

hunchback
in the cemetery outside. The hunchback introduces himself as Sam Spade, a gravedigger and "head merchant" who can help Fred by providing him with quality interchangeable heads. Fred continues to Creepy Hollow, where he defeats the Horseman and rescues Dr. Steiner. Steiner, however, has little information regarding Fred's investigation and suggests that he question the residents of Hope Falls to learn more about his demise. Fred begins exploring Hope Falls, meeting many strange personalities along the way. He reconnects with his old girlfriend Jeanne, who is the daughter of a prominent Hope Falls citizen, Vinni Rossini. Fred learns that Mr. Rossini had been reported missing by Jeanne, and Jeanne had subsequently hired Fred to find him. Fred had eventually followed the trail to Pitt, who had bribed Fred's partner, Benny Salazar, into betraying him. Fred was promptly caught by Pitt's henchmen and shot to death by his right-hand man, Lefty.

Armed with the knowledge of his death and the events leading up to it, Fred continues his investigation and recovers a videotape of Vinni Rossini's murder that incriminates Pitt. Pitt learns that Fred is still "alive" and kidnaps Jeanne to use as leverage against him. Fred confronts the mobster at his headquarters after shutting down the centerpiece of his criminal enterprise, the Pitt Nukular Plant, and defeating Lefty. Lefty, however, was exposed to nuclear waste during the fight and subsequently mutated into a huge beast who comes to Pitt's aid in the game's final battle. Fred ultimately defeats both Pitt and Lefty atop the Pitt Building. Pitt is killed during the battle, but Lefty manages to escape and retreats to the remains of the Nukular Plant. After the battle, Fred's head, which, along with Jeanne, had been held hostage by Pitt, is shown tumbling into an open manhole near the Pitt Building, unbeknownst to Fred. The final scene of the game shows Fred and Jeanne having dinner at a restaurant to celebrate, with Fred lamenting the loss of his head.

Development

Geo

Geo, the original incarnation of Fred.

Dead Head Fred uses the

platform game based on the character "Geo." Vicious Cycle's president, Eric Peterson, and some of his staff developed a conceptual world called "Prime" where Geo lived.[21] Geo had the ability to switch his head between several different shapes (a cube, sphere, cylinder, and pyramid) that would help him solve puzzles, fight, and move around Prime in his quest to stop the evil King Rhombus, who was trying to destroy Prime.[21] Each of Geo's shaped heads had unique properties that gave him different abilities—the sphere head allowed him to roll around very quickly, for example.[22]

The Geo concept was described by the development team as similar to other platform games like

edutainment", and that they were interested in developing a more edgy, adult premise.[21][22] The GameCube had been an early choice for hosting the game before the PSP was chosen.[21]

Noir setting

Vicious Cycle went back to the drawing board and produced a new concept that they felt was darker and better suited to an older audience.

D3Publisher.[21]

Vicious Cycle then submitted the concept to art company Massive Black Studios to develop initial character sketches.[22] Massive Black's artists were allowed to use their imagination while developing Fred, but the one stipulation Vicious Cycle made from the beginning was Fred's head—the developers wanted it to be a liquid-filled jar with the detective's brain and eyes floating around inside.[19] Massive Black came up with several different versions of Fred, including some with guns, which lead designer Adam Cogan had already decided the game would not include.[19] After receiving the sketches, Vicious Cycle chose several that portrayed Fred with a squat, childlike appearance that retained some of the youthful focus of the scrapped Geo project. The publisher, D3, decided to present all of the concept art to a test group. To the developers' surprise, the test group was much more interested in a darker, more intimidating portrayal of Fred than the cartoonish, playful look they had chosen.[19] The developers decided to flesh out the concept and took the chosen sketches back to Massive Black. This time the art came back darker,[23] with similarities to Dirty Harry and The Matrix and The Evil Dead,[22] and a Norman Rockwell-inspired look that would influence the game's art style towards a more violent theme.[2][19]

Further testing

D3 provided the development team with more focus groups, and as a result, the game slowly incorporated more combat and less platforming and puzzles.[2] Fred's combat capabilities were revamped to give him more attacks, counterattacks and combinations.[24] D3 also gave Vicious Cycle more time to develop the game, with the hope of receiving better reviews and potentially turning Dead Head Fred into a franchise.[25] The delay pushed back the game's release from January to August 2007. D3Publisher bought Vicious Cycle two months before the game's release, but the company's headquarters remained in North Carolina and the staff was retained.[26]

Audio

Soundtrack

The music of Dead Head Fred was composed by

Stubbs the Zombie and Beetlejuice.[30] The development team did not have any substantial ideas for the game's music beyond the theme and mood of Hope Falls, giving the composers free rein on the soundtrack's direction.[28]

Voice work

A crucial area of development was the formation of the game's mood, theme, and story to give it a dark, yet humorous quality.[19][21] Hiring a Hollywood screenwriter to create the script was proposed,[31] but ultimately Vicious Cycle designer Dave Ellis was given the task of writing the game's cutscenes and voiceover script, while Cogan focused on the in-game dialog.[32] Ellis referred to several noir films for inspiration, especially Miller's Crossing and Who Framed Roger Rabbit[32] During this time, Eric Peterson cast several voice actors, including John C. McGinley from the TV show Scrubs and Jon Polito from the aforementioned Miller's Crossing. McGinley was cast as Fred because of his Scrubs character's sarcasm and wit, while Polito was cast in the role of mob boss Ulysses Pitt, which was very similar to his role of Johnny Caspar in Miller's Crossing.[32]

The development team then set about recording the game's dialog, which proved to be challenging because of Vicious Cycle's location on the East Coast. All of the recordings were done over the phone at a studio in Hollywood.

improvisation. The design team liked the recordings and the script was modified to permit McGinley and other actors to curse more.[32] McGinley focused on portraying Fred as "pissed off" and "having a chip on his shoulder" because his head was missing.[33]

"No, this guy was unique because, well… his head was gone! With him, you could really just open up your imagination and roll out a cavalcade of eccentricities and see what makes sense to you. It was pretty much unlike anything I’ve ever done before."

— John C. McGinley[33]

Promotion and release

Dead Head Fred was first announced at the

Lakeshore Records on September 18, 2007.[45]

Future

Dead Head Fred was designed specifically for the PSP, and Vicious Cycle intended it to be their "flagship" title for the system.

Namco Bandai Games
(the parent of D3) were impressed with the game and wanted to publish the sequel because they "wanted" to test out Vicious Cycle's gameplay on the PSP.

However, Vicious Cycle was shut down in 2016 and its publisher D3 Publisher of America has shifted its focus to mobile gaming a year before (changing its name to D3 GO!), making the future of the game unknown.

Reception

Dead Head Fred received generally favorable reviews from critics.

GamesRadar included it in their list of the 100 most overlooked games of its generation. Editor Jason Fanelli felt that PSP games often lacked creativity and that Dead Head Fred was the exception.[54]

Many reviewers were pleased with the game's premise and setting, variously describing it as "weird", "wacky" and "silly".

level design, with its emphasis on changing heads to solve environmental puzzles, made up for the "mediocre combat system".[10] The character design was praised; GameSpy said "Fred is one of the most interesting and entertaining characters to ever hit gaming,"[11] and GameZone said "Fred’s freakish form is like looking at a car crash … you really don’t want to stare but you just can’t help it."[7]

The voice acting, in particular John C. McGinley's portrayal of Fred, was widely praised,[8][16][17] as was the rest of the game's audio.[14] GameZone's Natalie Romano said "There’s also some great music in the game and the sound effects are...wonderfully detailed".[7]

"The sound for the title, however, is fantastic. The majority of it is centered around the voice acting, which is anchored by John C. McGinley of Scrubs and Office Space fame. McGinley expertly brings his dry, sarcastic delivery to Fred's lines and consistently delivers humorous lines across the entire game."

— Jeff Haynes, IGN[17]

The focal point of reviewers' criticism was Dead Head Fred's gameplay, specifically the combat. It was generally considered tedious and repetitive.[7][17][50] PALGNdescribed the combat as "one of the poorest elements of the game",[14] and Game Informer called the combat mechanics "awful".[50] The performance of the camera was also criticized,[14][16] with IGN noting "Considering that the camera will sometimes choose some horrible angles for you in battle or during puzzles, it's annoying to have to fight it as well as mutants that want you dead."[12] GameZone said "I just wish the camera wouldn’t be such a hindrance sometimes."[7] Reviewers were also unhappy with Dead Head Fred's loading times; Eurogamer considered them "excessively high",[49] and IGN said "The only downside that crops up when it comes to the visuals are the continual loading times on just about every single area."[17]

Awards

Dead Head Fred was nominated for several awards, including the Writers Guild of America's first award for video game writing, which it won.

Game Audio Network Guild's 6th annual ceremony, Best Soundtrack of the Year and Best Handheld Audio.[56] Dead Head Fred lost to BioShock and Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow, respectively.[57]

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External links

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