E3 06: Death, Jr. 2 First Look

LOS ANGELES--Earlier today, at a pre-E3 event just a short cab ride away from the Los Angeles Convention Center, Konami unveiled the PSP sequel to Death, Jr. from Backbone Entertainment. Simply titled Death, Jr. 2, the new game will let you choose between playing as DJ or his friend Pandora, and you'll also have the option to play through the entire game cooperatively with a friend. Each of the characters will purportedly have quite different moves and weapons at their disposal, though we've not yet seen enough of the game to confirm this. We did get to see the pair using a number of different weapons, though.

DJ's default weapon is still a scythe, of course, and Pandora's looked to be some lethal variation of a child's cup-and-ball toy. Weapon pickups in the game will include such childhood favorites as the cherry bomb launcher, the tommy gun, the flamethrower, and the enhanced C4 hamster mark II. DJ and Pandora will be able to power up their attacks using the game's all-new "rage mode," which lets them unleash "reaper madness" and "pandemonium" moves respectively. Your enemies in Death, Jr. 2 will be every bit as unconventional as the weapons that you're killing them with, and will include armies of evil toys, robotic llamas, mutant mall security guards, and an evil waffle restaurant.

Backbone Entertainment claims to have taken the feedback that it got from Death, Jr. very seriously, and as a result you can look forward to an improved manual camera system, more advanced enemy artificial intelligence, and tighter controls. For the moment we haven't seen nearly enough of Death, Jr. 2 to comment on those claims, but we'll bring you more information on the game just as soon as we get our hands on it.