Psycho Killer Retro Review

“Prepare to dieeee.” …From boredom.

The Story

The plot, if you want to call it that, revolves around the protagonist nearly hitting an abandoned car on the road. If you hit the car, you explode. Once you manage to avoid exploding, you exit the car and hear a woman scream as she is dragged off by the Psycho Killer.

The protagonist decides that he has to help, so he springs into action. You find the killer pretty quick and he comically appears in front of you brandishing a machete. If you click fast enough you’ll kick him in the head and escape. He runs away and leaves his machete behind. You need to grab the machete to progress the story, but leaving it behind presents a funny death animation.

You continue to pursue and the killer attempts to kill you with a “petrol bomb.” You click to escape and it pretty much repeats for another 10 minutes. You ultimately end up on a dock with the killer and the woman. If you picked up the tree branch a few screens back then you’ll win the game if you click his knife in time, otherwise you lose.

There isn’t any crazy fanfare either; it’s just a newspaper article stating what you did. Congrats!

C:\Users\Jeremy\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\Content.Word\20200105_214200.gifBOOM!

Gameplay

Psycho Killer has you navigate through fields and forests to rescue the woman and escape a gruesome fate by the hands of the killer. When I say navigate, I mean you are clicking on icons to move from one location to another.

That’s right, it’s a point and click adventure game. There are a few “action” commands, but it is the result of clicking the killer on certain frames.  The action scenes are not called out very well, but you don’t need pinpoint precision to stop the killer.  In fact, the game is pretty forgiving as it gives you plenty of time to react and click on, or near, the killer.

Development

The game was brought to us by the developers of The Town with No Name, Delta 4. In fact, Psycho Killer was released alongside of The Town with No Name for the CDTV. 

Again, like The Town with No Name, the game can be played on the Amiga 32. A DOS version was also released, so the game is playable on DOSBOX. You can find the game on the myabandonware website; however, it really isn’t worth the effort.  

C:\Users\Jeremy\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\Content.Word\Psycho Killer - rough_2.gif “Did someone call for a Psycho Killer?”

Conclusion

While The Town with No Name has charm due to the graphics and humor, Psycho Killer has nothing to make it stand out. The lack of music (save for the intro and credits) caused me to lose interest in the events of the game.

The instances where the player has to click on the psycho killer to interact with him are not called out well. The items you have to interact with are not well outlined either, making it easy to miss them and cause a game over.

The voice acting is awful as well. The main character delivers his lines with the same enthusiasm as I had in playing the game, that is, not much at all. The only actor to put any effort into his character was the psycho killer, but he was still mostly grunting and mumbling into his microphone. If it wasn’t for the poorly animated, but funny, scenes, this game would be a complete waste of time.  

Certain scenes show FMV sequences, although the framerate is very low. It almost looks like stop motion vs. traditional FMV. I’d go on a limb and say this game has even less FMV than Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties… Let that sink in.

The scenes were taken from a variety of locations found in London.  In fact, the still images where you need to click on an arrow are digitized photographs from the suburbs of London.  

C:\Users\Jeremy\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\Content.Word\20200105_214121.gif

This Psycho Killer just loves to dance!

With that being said, the game is monotonous and very boring. I give this game 1 dancing psycho killer out of 5

(For more retro reviews, check out Hyp3rBlue’s review for Back to the Future NES.)

2 responses to “Psycho Killer Retro Review”

  1. […] [Did you know J-Town “Hyp3rblue” also reviews really bad games? He’s sort of an expert. Check out his review for Psycho Killer!] […]

  2. […] Name and b) what I did to get it to work properly. I mentioned in my Town With No Name Review and Psycho Killer reviews (shameless plug) that these 2 games from Delta 4 take a bit of knowhow to get them to work. […]

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