Take control of the protagonist Romeo Stargazer in this third person singleplayer action adventure, split into various chapters. His story is both unpredictable and littered with intense battles, interspersed with side missions to suit the player's pace. "Fight blood with blood" Romeo switches between swords and guns to fight. Wipe out the waves of enemies that stand in your path to give birth to a new kind of bloody action, and take down the fearsome space-time criminals that await. Absorb the blood of your enemies to unleash Romeo's special attack: Bloody Summer, capable of turning any situation around...

It throws out all the usual conventions and reinvents the genre as an artistic endeavour

The most impressive aspect of Romeo is a Dead Man, is the fact that it's unhinged. It throws out all the usual conventions and reinvents the genre as an artistic endeavour. You never really know what on earth you're playing. And I was onboard for the ride. Is it an interactive artbook comic? Is it a hack-and-slash arcade game? Is it a retro sci-fi adventure game... In part it's all of these and much, much more.

I'd only played for a few hours when... BANG! The game was over... Or so I thought. Nope, it was just a wonderfully clever twist in an almost constant attack on the senses, confounding notions of what a game is; tearing up preconceived ideas of the rigid path a game should follow and constantly keeping the player on their toes.

It's hard to talk too much about the game without spoiling it - not that there's a narrative that's easy to describe without sounding like you've been slipped some mind altering substances. This is not only an enjoyable game, it's also a work of art in its own right.

8

Nick Smithson