Here’s how the first few minutes of Romeo is a Dead Man go down: first, the entire cosmos floating in a fish tank to the ethereal strains of what eventually turns out to be Japanese rap (this is just the title screen). Next, a stop-motion animated intro over a glorious town of miniatures. Then! Cut to the interior of a police car; a zombie attack; our hero’s gruesome death; a portal opening onto the space-time continuum and a granddad on a motorbike. Romeo Stargazer’s resuscitation via the medium of eyeball syringe and big spacehat. More zombies! A love story told in flashback, relayed by an energetic camera gliding across a beautifully illustrated comic book. Romeo’s dimension-hopping evil girlfriend Juliet, and his Doc Brown-like granddad inexplicably reborn as a sentient jacket patch. Honestly, if I hadn’t just spent the last six hours playing it, I’d call Romeo is a Dead Man exactly the kind of game they don’t make anymore.
This latest oddity from idiosyncratic studio Grasshopper Manufacture feels like it’s been catapulted from the past, from a long-gone, distantly remembered era when video games were wild; unbound by rules. I realise this is selective memory filtered through nostalgia talking, but even so – it’s had me reminiscing about the El Shaddais, the Asura’s Wraths, the Seamans of this world. And, of course, pretty much anything Grasshopper boss Goichi Suda (better known as Suda51) has had a hand in before. Suda has previously called his design philosophy “punk”, but for Romeo is a Dead Man it’s jazz – and if that shift in outlook has resulted in anything tangible, it’s perhaps a game with less edge and more soul, but one that’s no less creatively untamed.
For all its wild, peripheral abandon, though, Romeo is a Dead Man has an instantly recognisable core. Here, Grasshopper serves up another hyper-kinetic third-person hack-and-slasher – essentially the studio’s No More Heroes by way of 2014’s Killer is Dead with perhaps a nod or two to Suda and Shinji Makami’s 2005 Capcom cult classic Killer7. Which is to say it’s Suda doing what Suda does best, and if you’ve struggled to connect with his work in the past, Romeo’s batshit continuation probably won’t change that. Me though, I’m mostly in the “love” camp, and from that perspective, Romeo is a relentlessly joyous return.
Given how many times Grasshopper has done this particular violent dance already, of course, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise to hear Romeo is a Dead Man’s foundational combat is where its most immediate pleasures lie. Just like No More Heroes, just like Killer is Dead, its furious hack-and-slash sword action is so viscerally intense, so visually excessive, it’s a miracle you can see anything at all. But there’s more to celebrate than just the ceaselessly hypnotic arterial sprays of lurid neon. Romeo’s combo-based combat (built from light attacks, heavy attacks, and special attacks with show-stoppingly outlandish psychedelic lead-ins) is wonderfully honed – fluid and rhythmic in a way that’s enormously, consistently satisfying.
Attribution
It’s not especially deep so far, true, but Grasshopper adds enough wrinkles to keep things interesting. For starters, melee is complemented by a snappy gun blast available at any time, used to target opponents’ flower-like weak spots for Massive Damage – a little rhythmic flourish that feels faintly reminiscent of Killer7. And Romeo’s daft roster of undead Rotters is diverse enough to prevent the hack-and-slashing from devolving into mindlessness. You’ve got sniper-armed grunts; charging mutants with bulbous tomato heads; huge muscular things with devastating clap-back attacks; even scampering little buggers that squeeze out streams of explosive poop. And that’s before you get to Romeo’s elaborate showpiece boss battles – hundred-foot tall mutants with pendulous arms, giant dismembered heads with electrical attacks – that add an almost puzzle-like dimension to combat, shaking things up even further.
Combat, then, is a strong anchor for the mayhem around it, and while there’s definitely the familiar sense that Grasshopper’s ambitions may have once again exceeded its time and budget, what I’ve played so far also suggests Romeo might be one of the studio’s most refined games to date. As you catapult through time (did I mention you’re a new recruit for the FBI’s space-time division?), you’ll visit everything from a lovingly rendered 80s shopping mall in search of a confederate soldier-turned-mobster to a 1960s government building. They’re decently expansive areas, encouraging a kind of fleet-footed exploration as you mow through enemies in your path. And specific objectives – tracking down generators, say – help further concentrate your focus. There’s nothing too elaborate here, but there’s a paciness, a breezines, to the action that stops things from getting dull. And it all feeds into Romeo’s loosely Soulslike rhythm; its fast-travel save points functioning something like bonfires, resetting enemies each time to keep the farmable levelling currency flowing – further incentivising combat.
Attribution
Amid all this, Grasshopper adds a bit of spice by giving levels a sort of trans-dimensional overlay. Interact with the retro, jazz-spewing TVs floating around the place and a headless gentleman will whisk you away to a weird polygonal otherworld, giving things a bit of a platform-y, puzzle-y twist as you portal back and forth between dimensions trying to reach otherwise inaccessible areas of the main world. As with most peripheral elements in Romeo is a Dead Man, it’s not exactly what you might call fully realised, but it’s just enough to change things up whenever the thrill of combat might threaten to flounder.
Romeo is a Dead Man is full of this stuff, and it’s hard not to fall for its relentlessly enthusiastic sense of invention. There’s a farming component back on your spaceship (yes, you have a spaceship and, yes, it’s presented like a top-down pixel-art RPG) where you can grow seeds into Rotters who’ll help out in combat. There’s a katsu curry mini-game, styled like a prestige anime show, where you fry up your collectible ingredients to create elaborate meals with powerful effects. There’s a scanning game that’s basically quadruple-paddle Pong; a weird first-person space-flight thing where you’ll navigate space-time and collect boons tucked away in procedurally generated dungeons. Elsewhere, levelling plays out like a Pac-Man maze game; you’ll acquire ability granting badges, and buy new weapons – power shotguns, big feck-off hammers – then level those up too. I could go on.
It’s a wild, wonderfully compelling mess of interlocking oddball systems. And while much of this stuff probably wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny in isolation, slammed together into this ludicrous, inexplicable whole – this world of science cats and extra-dimensional dojos; this weirdly sweet love story spilled across all of space and time – it’s just delightful. And it helps that Romeo’s cast, working to a buoyant script packed with joyfully stupid gags, and even some surprisingly affecting moments, is just relentlessly endearing.
Six or so hours in, I can tell you Romeo is a Dead Man isn’t perfect. And I can also tell you it’s been a good long while since a game has kept me this delightedly enthralled. It’s brilliant, stupid, spectacular, imaginative, and clear-eyed in a way that prevents it from feeling like a creative crapshoot and more like a coherent, consistent whole. They really don’t make this kind of game anymore – if they ever did at all – but they have and it’s brilliant and I love it so far.