When zombies, no, interdimensional aliens, eat your face clean off your skull, the only thing to do is become a cybernetic agent of the Space-Time FBI. We’ve all had those weeks.
Romeo is a Dead Man has style dripping from every orifice like the flesh of the unworthy staring into the Ark of the Covenant.
Grasshopper continued to refine that spirit and combined it with a stronger gameplay loop than ever before in the excellent No More Heroes 3, but the most memorable parts of that game were the scenes which incorporated FMV and different, mixed-media art-styles into the medley. Romeo is a Dead Man takes things even further with real-life miniatures, VHS-style scenes, lush comic books and 16-bit graphics alongside the particle-heavy, Unreal Engine-powered set pieces. The result is something which takes you on its own merry dance, managing to be exciting and novel while maintaining a familiar ‘challenging action’ framework.
A lot of this game’s marketing seems to lean into how strange and incomprehensible it’s supposed to be, but it’s seriously not that off-the-wall. Romeo is vibes, he’s here to make art and stop space crimes. He’s opening a trenchcoat to reveal a stock of knock-off watches and asking what you’re buying.
At the risk of slipping fully off the deep end of pretense, a lot of games take inspiration from Twin Peaks and David Lynch in general. There are several of these hallmarks in Romeo is a Dead Man: first-person views of road markings at night; the FBI; immediate, shocking violence; and the liminality between dimensions and realities.
Ever since playing the exceptional and heavily Lynch-loving Alan Wake 2, I’ve been thinking about whether a recognisably traditional video game could ever capture the same surreal journey as one of those works. Whether an interactive experience which necessitates your input to proceed can ever be as dreamy. But while Romeo isn’t necessarily that heavyweight thematically, its grab-bag of settings, mechanics, storylines and visual styles is an exciting and effective exercise in dream logic.
Of course, this doesn’t mean everything drifts along soundly. While Romeo is the kind of game to make you beam a surprised smile, it’s also the kind of game which slaps down a mechanic you’ve never seen before in the middle of a boss battle. Like there are environmental hazards which disable your abilities until you can complete a relatively lengthy button-mash mini-game. I’d managed to completely avoid them until an early chapter boss who incorporates them into their moveset. I’ve said how much I enjoyed the surprises of Romeo is a Dead Man, but I don’t think “press 7 buttons which are the same colour as the background in the next 3 seconds or you’re dead” is the kind of surprise anyone is looking for.
Another mechanic I don’t know whether I’m completely sold on is where you have to meditate with a fuzzy green tear in reality by moving the left stick to manifest some stairs or a ladder in the environment. I’ve completed all of the “puzzles”, but I have no idea how. The tool-tip in the manual says to just reset until it works, and I can’t decide whether blindly fumbling about until something clicks is absolute genius or complete lunacy. Giving in to the conceit, you could argue that it forces players to detach from what they’re doing, clear their mind and groggily feel for an answer until they’re struck by a revelation which solves the puzzle, like they’re actually meditating for enlightenment. Or you could, you know, say it’s an opaque implementation which needed a rework.
Generally the gameplay is a muscular, meaty mix of ego-stoking fodder and more technical mini-bosses which is very engaging and more varied than it first appears. You unlock different melee and ranged weapons, ranging from the Travis Touchdown beam katana and a two-handed Guts sword, to a Resi-style over-the-shoulder pistol and chunky shotgun. The action is fast and frenetic, as you switch between weapons and combat styles constantly to exploit different enemies’ weak points or push back crowds, but it has a peculiar spikiness in parts. All of the guns have to be reloaded manually, either by hitting the reload button or dry-firing an empty weapon, which feels incredibly clunky in the frantic moment of combat – like catching a crab in rowing.
Every so often you’ll just get melted out of nowhere, but, aside from the occasional smelly fight in one of the optional side-dungeons, it’s more confusing than annoying. To further the dream analogy, it’s like your partner shoving you to wake up when your nightmare disturbs their sleep; it doesn’t take much to roll over and drift back off.
But overall, it’s the touches of mischief which make Romeo is a Dead Man stand out in a ‘good enough’ landscape dominated by Live Service and competitive games. Stuffed with one-off moments and boisterous action honed over nearly 20 years of carnage, it’s a game that never sits still, never settles for boring but functional and dies with a live hand grenade slipping from its fingertips.
Reviewed on PlayStation 5 with a code provided by the publisher.
