Double Fine Entertainment has made tons of crazy, fun and really bizarre games. And this one's no different. It's a game where your head pops off from one body and flies onto another. It's kind of crazy, kind of weird but it's kind of fun. This is Headlander. The game begins with you waking up on a spaceship called the Starcophagus. But this ain't no normal wake up procedure as, you see, you don't have a body. You're only a head. And this weird voice speaking to you from somewhere in the galaxy is telling you that there's some guy out there trying to kill you. Or, I don't know if it's really a guy could possibly be an A.I. but that's for you to find out as you play. But essentially you've got to start running. And you have to start defending yourself. So what do you do? Well your head can fly off this one body that you just got temporarily and jump onto other bodies and hijack their abilities like laser guns opening up doors and in some cases disco dancing. Because that's a thing you can do in the game if you want. This game is essentially one long story that doesn't have a lot of really good direction and that's one of my big problems with it unfortunately. It has some kind of narrative and plot that drives the game along but there really isn't great direction with the story so you never really feel engaged or captivated by any of the characters. That can be a really big problem when you're basically playing a game like this just for the narrative. So I didn't. I played it for the gameplay and believe me folks the gameplay? It's pretty damn solid.
Throughout the game you're going to be stealing a lot of bodies since that's the central focus of the game. You're going to go up to certain bodies at certain points that you need, suck off the head from the body with a little vacuum attack and attach yourself firmly to that body. Don't worry though none of these things are actually gory or anything like that. Every single body in the game is a robot so you know they freak out and scream for a couple minutes but I'm pretty sure they don't really feel that much pain. The game is designed like a Metroidvania style game and like Metroid there's these elements where you have to shoot doors to open them. But what they've done which was really cool is that all the doors are different colors and you have to steal a body that has the corresponding color to open up the door. But this is the cool thing about the game. Let's say there's a red door and you want to open up that red door well you take a red body. But if you wanted to open up that same red door and you had a different color that was higher in the spectrum, like let's say yellow, you'd still be able to open up that red door. Making the game play a little bit more relaxing and less hectic. I never really found the door system too challenging and the spectrums that you actually get access to are listed right at the bottom and it kind of worked out pretty well. I liked it a lot more than a key card system which a lot of these games tend to use so that part was really fun. One aspect of the gameplay I really didn't enjoy was the gun play mechanics. Now you see depending on what body you have you might have the ability to actually fire lasers all over the place and what sucks about the laser gameplay in this is that, well it's hectic. Once you get into a really big firefight there's just lasers flying everywhere and you really don't know what to make of anything. It's really bright, it's really distracting and it's not easy to use. It's not really set to skill it's just set to chance and I really didn't enjoy that. There's a couple of boss battles in this game too that just get super difficult for no reason whatsoever. Up until the point when you've actually gotten to that boss it really didn't feel too difficult. But then the difficulty spikes upward and it becomes impossible to get through and you just have to really repeat it again and again and again until you've completed it. I know there's a couple of fans of Castlevania out there who have played boss battles in those games where you have to remember the movements of a boss in order to beat them. Well this is sort of the same way only it's not as well designed as Castlevania games go. So it's cool, it's passable, but I really feel like I added an extra hour or two onto this game of just trying to beat boss battles when they could have been just a little bit more well designed.
Now there are two things I absolutely loved about this game, its setting and its music. They use all these filters and effects to give you this really crazy retro/sci-fi feel that's unlike any other game I've played. And the rainbow filter they use whenever you get a superpower just looks amazing. I wish more games were this bright and colorful because well it's really, really good. And that signature style of humor you find in a lot of Tim Schafer's games over at Double Fine well it's here as well. It is a very funny game. Unlike a lot of other Double Fine games I've played this one seems to be aiming for more of an adult feel. Especially with the story being a little bit more darker. And that's kind of interesting to see come from Double Fine so that's cool. Maybe we'll start to see a lot more games like this in the future. Or maybe not. You know, whatever, their games are funny no matter what they do. Personally the music is my favorite feature of this game because it just sounds great. It sounds like Clockwork Orange then in some instances it just sounds like waiting room music from some 1970s doctor's office and I know it sounds kind of stupid but it really does fit the vibe of the entire universe and it's enjoyable to listen to. Every time I got to the next level or got to this new area I'd just want to hear what other crazy textures and sounds they've planted into this game. And it doesn't sound like modern music. It doesn't sound like something that really would have just been created overnight. It sounds like it's something they put a lot of time and effort into to give it this really crazy sound and it is awesome.
During the first two hours you'll be subjected to some very interesting gameplay and pretty unique game mechanics plus some really awesome visuals and a really cool soundtrack. And sure the story didn't do a lot for me but you might enjoy it. And honestly after those first two hours I got so sucked into the experience that I ended up just going through and beating the whole thing which took me just over seven and a half hours. If you're better at playing boss battles, apparently I do suck at them, you might be able to beat the game a lot quicker. But the entire mechanic, everything that's going on with the whole switching bodies aspect, that's really fun, really engaging and honestly that sells the game just by itself. If you really like Metroidvania style games you have to try this out. It's certainly not a game to miss.
