You're Fred.  You're dead.  And you're missing your head.  Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.

Vicious Cycle brings Dead Head Fred, an M-rated action-adventure game, to (un)life on the PSP.  Set in the town of Hope Falls, you take on the role of Fred Neumann shortly after he finishes investigating the town's twisted mob boss, Ulysses Pitt.  Pitt doesn't take kindly to having a PI snooping around, and Fred finds himself quickly short a head and swimming with the proverbial glowing fishes in a sludge dump behind the town's leaky nuclear power plant.  A little case of lifelessness isn't enough to keep our hero down however, and the local mad scientist Dr. Steiner resurrects Fred's body and brain.  Just one tiny problem though - Pitt has an unusual penchant to keep the heads of his defeated enemies, so Fred has to come to grips with a situation that is frankly, jarring.

However, being an undead headless zombie does have one huge benefit – Fred is able to swap up to nine different heads onto his body, with each head providing a unique set of attacks and abilities.  Initially Fred has only a simple jar for a head, which allows him to do basic punching attacks and to cloak himself for some stealth action.  He quickly acquires more heads, however, gaining abilities such as spitting out poison fumes, raining debris, creating decoys, and firing teeth.  Most of these abilities alternate between being useful at killing enemies and being necessary to solve puzzles blocking Fred's progress.  With nine heads in all and the ability to switch them out at will, there is a lot of variety in what Fred can accomplish.

Some heads allow Fred to perform specific tasks, such as an inflatable head that lets Fred suck up water or gasoline and either put out or make fires and a shrunken head that lets Fred, well, squeeze into tight spots.  Most of the time a combination of Fred's abilities need to be employed to solve puzzles and get past obstacles.  Other heads have a more passive use, such as a mannequin head which allows Fred to talk freely with other townsfolk without scaring them half to death (the brain-in-a-jar look has a tendency to do that to people).

Storywise the game mixes a twisted noir setting with some decent voice acting, notably the voice of Fred himself, played by John McGinley who people may recognize from his role as Dr. Cox on Scrubs and as one of the Bobs in Office Space.  The characters are all very demented and everything comes across as being rather humorous, but in a rather crude and darkly comedic way. 

The plot unfolds in a series of in-engine cutscenes that play as Fred progresses through the eight areas.  It's pretty simple - the villains are evil and must be stopped and Fred is one of the last good men left standing (albeit barely) to do it.  And he'd like to get his real head back while he's at it.  It's like being the wrongly murdered zombie from your favorite horror film brought back to take revenge on your killers, except with platforms and more attitude.

The combat system in the game is interesting but can quickly grow tiresome.  Most attacks involve mashing on the Square button to perform combos, and then hitting Triangle when the enemy's guard is down in order to have Fred go into a finisher animation that typically involves ripping the enemy's head off.  This is entertaining but repetitive, especially since you have to watch the same animation over and over again as you rinse and repeat, room after room.  As Fred finishes his enemies a rage bar grows, which then allows Fred to temporary unleash powered attack and area-effect attacks depending on the head he currently has equipped.  The positive is that each head brings its own set of attacks to the table.  It's almost easier to think of changing heads as switching weapons, as some heads provide short-range slashing attacks while others allow Fred to use slower more powerful blows. 

There's also a counter system, wherein as an enemy is about to unleash a powered attack on you the Triangle button will flash on-screen alongside a symbol for the head you need to have equipped in order to counter the incoming attack.  Switching to that head and hitting Triangle will treat you to another finishing animation where you'll need to mash Square repeatedly for a few seconds and then hit Triangle to perform a final blow.  Again, this is cool the first few times, but rapidly grows stale because, frankly, spending ten seconds watching the exact same finishing animation happen over and over again is not particularly fun.  There's also some annoyance since the R block button doubles as the free-camera button, which takes some getting used to and can be a real pain at times.  It's a shame that the combat ends up being tedious at best, and annoying at worst.

Fortunately, Dead Head Fred is more than just an action game.  There are plenty of puzzle and platforming elements here which are quite well done.  There's also the ability to collect money and items and exchange them for upgrades to your various heads, unlocking new abilities and powers as you go.  The quirky setting and kooky visual style is brought to life with attention to detail on the PSP.  The character designs and animations excel as well, with most of the denizens of the city coming across looking not just deranged, but beautifully deranged.  This doesn't come without a cost, however.  Loading times are a definite drawback in this title, with 5+ second loads with each new area.  This happens just frequently enough that it starts to get annoying, but it certainly isn't a unique problem with this game and is more of an issue with the UMD format when developers try to really push the hardware.

The title is rated M for intense violence and strong language.  While the violence is rather cartoony and consists primarily of decapitating the animated undead and mutants, the language pulls no punches and plenty of F-bombs abound.  This may not be the best game to play in public without a pair of headphones.