#h.e.d.z.

I've gotta go with Havoc, with a package designed by Hock Wah Yeo. It's designed to look like a post-apocalyptic computer monitor covered in radioactive debris, and it was made with egg carton material. An absolutely stunning package that makes the game more exciting. My copy is slightly dirty, which just fits the design and adds even more character and history to it.

For a more traditional box design, I also love this version of H.E.D.Z. with a holographic cover and an explosion chunk taken out of the front cover.

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H.E.D.Z.: Head Extreme Destruction Zone, an action-platformer where you collect costumes for over 200 characters!

What’s a reasonable number of characters to have in a game? H.E.D.Z. from Hasbro Interactive has, if you can believe it, 225 characters, and about half of them barely make any sense. It’s gloriously silly.

That’s basically all there is to the game. You walk around and fight other characters, and the action’s pretty dull. So let’s just talk about that character list for a second.

Actual characters in H.E.D.Z., a real game that was released in stores, include:

Goldminer

Soccer Player

Ice Cream Man

Monkey God

A fake Napoleon

Renaissance Painter

Poodle Fancier

Green Grocer

A dragon

Shotgun Nose

Lady with Lamp

It’s almost nonsense, and even if the game isn’t too great, that’s amazing.

H.E.D.Z.: Head Extreme Destruction Zone (read on The Obscuritory)

The lineup reminded me of the video game ideas my brother and I made up when we were kids. When the time came to make up characters, we would start writing down every concept we could possibly think of until we had a list of hundreds of names, most of which were random nouns. H.E.D.Z. is like that, but real, with a budget and a publisher.

Unfortunately, the game doesn’t do much with the characters. For the most part, they shoot something or throw something, and that gets old really fast. The bizarre character roster deserves action that’s far less dull. One bright spot is the game’s level design. It’s on the same page as platform games on the PlayStation and Nintendo 64, where the idea of making a 3D game seemed infectious all on its own.