I had seen Killer7 around here and there and it always struck me as that one unique looking Gamecube game with highly stylized artistic cel shaded graphics and I heard it had 'weird' gameplay and controls. Thats basically all I knew about it for the longest time, but I kept my eye on it for years. Eventually It was on sale on Steam for a really nice discount so I finally got it and went in expecting nothing and almost clueless about what I was going to experience. The game starts off in some kind of apartment building complex where you quickly some your first mindfuck oddity. This gimp suit guy in a red outfit constantly calling you his master and talking about how dangerous everything is and talking in this weird high pitch unintelligible robot voice. Well, everyone you encounter talks in this similar sort of voice. Theres voice acting, but its almost like The Sims voice acting, they kinda just mumble random syllables and phrasing and sometimes will say a word that matches up with the subtitle on screen. Its just strange, but since its so weird it does grip you and make you interested in it. So this red gimp suit guy I quickly realized seemed to act like a sort of tutorial for the player. A much needed tutorial because this game plays like no other. Infact, the first few hours I think i was almost hating this game. I was pretty frustrated trying to figure everything out because it was almost like having never played a video game for the first time. For one, the controls are very novel. You dont simply push the analog stick to move, you just hold the A button and your character runs on a preset path, you can release A and he stops. You can press B and he turns around. You can press RT at any time to go into first person free aiming mode, but you cant walk while aiming. The game almost plays like an on-rails shooter, except, it kind of isnt... its this creative blend of on rails shooter and action-adventure where you go around these big maps completing various puzzles and finding items and keys to progress, usually in the form of these items called Bullet Shells that you have to turn in at the end of a level to some gatekeeper guy that lets you then progress past to the end of each episode. There's frequent backtracking involved to solve puzzles, something which kind of reminded me of Resident Evil, which makes sense because this game is designed by the man that came up with Resident Evil Shinji Mikami.
The overall art style and tone of the game is one of the most instant striking parts, its this cel-shaded cartoony look where the game barely looks like it even has textures, instead almost everything being this mix of different color shades and hues, Somehow, despite the game looking like it has almost no textures, it looks very visually appealing. The way theyve managed to stylize the graphics and make everything fit together here is a sight to behold. The character models and designs are interesting because the animations in particular are so atypical it makes the whole thing feel cinematic and fluid. It isnt just the striking art style but also how the game functions, while moving you come across these 'Junctions' which let you pick what direction to go next, these fade the screen and then make the game look almost like a comic book or something, the whole presentation is memorable and eye catching and if someone is in the room watching you play this game, chances are they wont be able to take their eyes off it and just think to themselves "What the fuck is this?" because to top things off you've got all sorts of insane cutscenes involving horror, gore, silly dialogue, monsters, and this Trevor character that keeps popping up that has these goofy muscle t-shirts with random words on them, usually about music or like over the top "so cool" type stuff. His shirts will say things like 'SEXUAL' 'HUSTLE' 'Gothic metal' 'New wave' and so on. The game definitely has its own brand of humor, something that was always entertaining and fun to see what new shirt this guy had on. Oh yeah, and everytime you talk to him he always says some deranged shit about international politics and the US government and conspiracy and all sorts of intense political stuff its like mindboggling the amount of shit going on here.
Its quickly obvious that the game has a wide variety of characters you can swap to at any moment. Each with their own weapon, and special abilites and attributes required to progress the game. They each have different amounts of maximum health, reload speed, movement speed, and you can level up each of their stats like Power/Speed/Critical/Waver/ which further unlocks different passive abilities and skills like being able to melee enemies when they get to close for instance. You start off playing as Dan, a guy who holds a revolver behind his neck the whole time in a silly posture but also has a fast reload speed. All of the playable characters share the last name Smith, so they are The Smiths. Something completely mindfuck is that you get these notes, and the titles of the names are all song titles from the band The Smiths. At one point, 'How soon is now' is written on the wall. In your notebook, you can see song titles like 'Cemetery gates' 'Still ill' etc, all Smiths song titles. So, one of the developers was a huge fan of the band which I found funny. You've got Kaede, a girl who runs around barefoot in a night gown and uses a powerful handgun with a scope on it, letting you zoom in, she has a satisfying reload animation but reloads kind of slowly. Con, a short litle kid who runs really fast but has two pistols, Coyote, a guy that uses a revolver but acts like a thief can unlock stuff, Mask, which is some guy in a cape and mask but uses grenade launchers, some kind of wrestler, and Kevin which is maybe the weirdest one because he never talks or has any dialogue associated with him and hulks over like an animal and uses knives but otherwise looks like a normal guy. They all play differently and have their uses to progress past certain events, though in the first few hours I was getting really frustrated with how cryptic the game seemed to be and what it expected out of me. That's because you frequently have to go up to different areas and use your characters special ability to unlock doors, delete walls, or jump up to something, but it isnt obvious when or what I was supposed to do. At times it almost felt like totally cryptic bullshit like something out of the infamous Castlevania 2 Simons Quest, stuff where its like "Ok now go crouch in this corner and hold the DPad down for 15 seconds then wind will appear then tap B and then A and you can progress". It almost felt that cryptic, so I was getting annoyed. It doesnt help things that, (at least at first), the UI is very hard to decipher what everything is, and what it means. Even in the first 10 minutes of gameplay I was stuck and had to look up how to progress. This part with a big enemy that spawns these rolling eggs towards you that you shoot which turns into enemies, I couldnt figure out how to get past. It just kept spawning enemies. The red gimp suit guy said something like "Press Y 3 times for a powerful shot" and I was trying that, but it just wasnt working right. The special ability mechanics all operate around the concept of collecting blood, something that seemingly happens randomly(?) when you kill enemies. But the UI design for these blood vials is just confusing, on the left side you see 3 empty vials, but then theres also a number next to them like x1, x9, x20 etc. So youll be looking at these empty vials but then it also says you have 10 of them for example, what? Ontop of this, if you press start, theres yet another blood vial, this one shows a fatter vial that displays how many 'dl' of blood you have. For the first few hours all of this made no god damn sense to me and I just couldnt wrap my head around wtf I was looking at here. I eventually realized that the 3 empty vials just signify how powered up your shot is, you can power up your shot 3 times by pressing Y, each time you press Y it highlights one of the vials. The other number "xx" shows how many times you can use your special ability, and the Start screen 'dl' blood shows bascically your experience points, you can turn this blood called 'Thick blood' in for Serum vials which is what lets you level up your characters. So yeah, in the first 10 mins of the game it wanted me to press Y three times to do a charged up shot to take out the egg laying enemy but the UI was such a clusterfuck I had a real hard time comprehending what was going on.
The general way the combat operates took me a bit to get a grasp on, too. Almost nothing in this game operates like any other shooter or action game youve played before. In this game, I eventually realized that the combat works like this: You roam around the map as usual until you hear laughing. Then, you instantly stop and have to press the Scan button. I'm not sure why they chose to do this, maybe to heighten tensions and give the game a more horror vibe, but enemies are mostly invisible until you press a Scan button and look around the enviorment in first person until the scan makes the enemies visible. Then, you can choose to either blast most of them over and over, or there are these glowing yellow parts which randomly spawn on the enemies that you can try to shoot for an instant kill. For the first half of the game or so, most of the enemies were not much of a threat and you can just choose to blast them nonstop, but towards the second half I really got a hang of shooting at those yellow weak spots, especially with upgrades you get later on which makes it even easier. The combat is fairly well done, and serves its purpose to give the game this tense action vibe, I especially appreciate the many horror elements put into the game, like all of the enemies being these disturbing combination of mutated humanoid almost zombie-like enemies. Theres a decent variety of enemy types, too, which all slowly get introduced to you one by one in the form of mini boss fights at the end of each stage. A lot of them have these scary gaping open mouth screaming designs, they almost look like some mutants out of Resident Evil, except they have various shades of color to them instead of being all fleshlike. The enemy design was constantly entertaining to see what kind of shit was going to pop out at me next. Some of the enemies you have to shoot in a very particular spot or else they basically kill you instantly. Other enemies can only be killed with certain characters, like having to use the Mask to use his grenade launcher or having to use Dan to use his special charge shots. Other enemies can only be killed by shooting the glowing yellow weak spot. Other enemies are little flying airplanes that you have to be super quick, other ones are these weird robot hybrids that you have to try to spin around and shoot on its back. Theres a lot, and im genuinely impressed how many interesting enemy designs theyve crammed in here, its a major part of what makes the game constantly engaging. Though, once again with my UI gripes, the whole health system was completely foreign to me for the first few hours as well. It turns out theres an eyeball on the top of the screen, when it gets closer to being closed, you have low health. When its filled all the way overtop the grey part, its full health. Yes, the tutorial explains this, but still I wasnt really sure what it means because the eyeball also has different colors. Sometimes its blue, sometimes its red. I still dont know what the colors mean after beating the game, which signifies just how weird some of these mechanics are. Still, after some time I got the hang of how to atleast make sure my characters were healed up. Alongside the various different blood mechanics, the 3 vials on the UI, the "x amount" of vials, the 'dl' blood on start screen, you can also heal your characters instantly at any time using blood. The way the game explained it made it sound like it was going to use my 'dl' blood resources, or, everytime I wanted to heal it was going to cost me my experience points. I realized thats not how it works - to heal, it only wants to use the "x number" blood vials, which you can collect up to 20 of, and you get from simply killing enemies. So healing in this game is very generous, almost the entire game I was running around with 20 instant healthkits to use as soon as I took damage, something that definitely lowered the frustration and annoyance of learning the games various mechanics. Still, I was dying semi-frequently and having to retrive my characters bodies with Garcian, because some of the enemies 1 hit kill you or can surround you fast if youre not viligent on constantly scanning and listening for laughter, so the game still keeps the tension up and makes you stay on your toes. Since you cant really freely run in any direction you want, its more an on-rails running system, its not always viable to run past enemies, more often than not youre forced to deal with them. The aiming has some depth to it, your weapons sway and the crosshair changes and hones in depending on what part youre aiming at, each character has a unique reload animation that plays this almost cinematic cutscene like third person camera which is always satisfying to do, and the whole combat and gameplay experience has this cinematic flair to it that almost never makes combat dull or boring.
Other moments that were frustrating during my learning curve were places like you had to walk up to a certain wall or statue and use a certain characters ability to make it go away, or in particular this shadowy tree on Assignment 2, I would go back and forth the map multiple times not knowing how to progress, seemingly at dead ends. When it turns out I just had to, for example, swap to Kaede and press Y to use her special ability to make the tree disappear. Though, unfortunately, again with the confusing UI, to successfully use a characters special ability it requires a sufficient amount of x blood vials. However, if you dont have any, it wont even notify you that its not working - simply nothing happens. This was really confusing because multiple times I would go to a place where I need to use a characters special ability, press the button, and nothing happened so I figured thats not what I have to do - only it IS what I had to do, I just needed vials. the UI could of atleast popped up on screen and showed a red beep sound like insufficient blood or something, but nope, just nothing happens, furthering the confusion. Thankfully, shortly into the game I realized a major key that sparked an almost lightbulb moment that made the game way more enjoyable, less frustrating, less cryptic, and I started to really have a good time. It was the map screen. At first, I couldnt make sense of the map screen. You cant see exactly where your character is on it, but also it shows all sorts of icons of different characters, items, and rings. I eventually realized the map literally tells you exactly where it expects you to use what character, and exactly where it expects you to use what item to progress. So that previous shadowy tree; on the map there would be a picture of Kaede. So, no longer was it this crpytic guessing game of what the fuck do I do, I just need to look at the map and it will give me a good idea of what characters it wants me to use. This, along with finally understanding most of the UI elements made the game pretty entertaining. Still, there were a lot of things I had no clue about and took awhile to fully understand. I guess one thing that makes this game constantly exiting is the fact that it operates like no other game before, like even comprehending the basic gameplay systems and how to fully play takes multiple hours, atleast for me, to finally understand. It wasnt like it was annoying the whole time, it was cool trying to unravel and discover all the mechanics, but some hurdles along the way could of been smoothened out. Another thing that took me awhile to figure out was the whole Harmans room save system. To save the game, you have to find these safe rooms called Harmans room. But, not all of them will allow you to save. The rooms with the Maid will allow you to save, the rooms with the casual girl wont. In both cases, you can still use the TV thats in there to look at your various characters, turn in your dl Thick Blood at the Blood room for stat points, interact with the red gimp suit guy at any time to see a large list of tutorials, and more importantly swap to the other playable character Garcian, which is his own playable instance, separate from the other characters. When youre Garcian, you cant swap to any other character on the spot, for awhile I had no idea what the point of this guy was. But the fact that he keeps saying "Dont make me say it again, I'm a cleaner" whenever you hover over him on the TV gave me some clues. Hes basically the medic. Whenever your other agents die, they leave a crime scene blood spot on the ground. If you play as Garcian (medic) and return to that spot, you revive the dead agent. The challenge, though, is if you die as Garcian it forces you to reload previous save, if you die as any of the other agents, it simply swaps you to another remaining agent until theyre all dead. So playing as Garcian has a real risk of making you lose lots of unsaved progress instantly. His stats also cannot be upgraded and his weapon is very weak. So its this strategy of, if an agent dies, try to find the closest Harman room where you can swap to Garcian and run the shortest distance back to your crime scene to revive the character. Actually, this whole retrival process is almost similar to Dark Souls blood stains, in a way, funny enough because this is a 2005 game.
I didn't level up any of my characters stats until probably about halfway through the game, because I wasnt sure which characters I actually enjoyed playing so I had to play with them for a bit. Also, because its not clear what upgrading the stats even does, its vague. I eventually fully upgraded Kaede because I liked that her special ability wasnt too vague or gimicky, it was just zooming in on a scope, something that proved very useful with the enemies weak spots. It turns out that upgrading your stats unlocks other abilities and features, like for Kaede upgrading a certain amount of times unlocks 'Double shot' which, seemingly at random, will make your gun shoot twice. This actually isnt a good thing as it only serves to fuck up your aim and its annoying that it never even showed you that this was a possible upgrade path and theres no way to get rid of it. Also, shockingly, when you upgrade certain stats enough times you eventually unlock this lock-on ability that automatically locks onto the enemies weak spot, essentially providing instant 1 hit kills on every enemy, giving yourself an aimbot for the rest of the game that completely breaks and bypasses most of the combat in the game. Its not really a bad thing, though, the combat kind of only serves as a segway to and from each setpiece, puzzle, and story plot. Besides, even with this insanely good upgrade, theres still multiple enemy types that just dont even have a weak spot and you still must manually aim at a certain place to kill them, like their oversized hand or head. Regardless, I think the character upgrades could have been clarified better so thats kind of a downside. Everytime you kill an enemy each character will say the same dialogue over and over, Kaede says "Hurts, doesnt it?" so you'll be hearing that a lot. Garcian says "Son of a bitch" and so on. It didnt annoy me too much, it just further shows how much personality this game has, although maybe they could have used a bit more voice lines each.
As for the story, well...it's complicated. The games premise seems to be about this group of assassins called the Killer7 that get sent on various Government tasks to take out certain targets. Along the way theres lots of twists and turns and moments that just fuck with you. Like you have the Travis guy that keeps talking about politics and espionage, but also theres hints that the other playable agents are just a sort of Multiple personalities of one guy (Garcian?) and that everything thats happening is some kind of hallucination or dreamlike state? you have over the top segments where you fight this overly obvious Anime face girl that turns out to be some normal woman wearing an anime mask, the story is really hard to explain or comprehend, and after beating it I still dont really have any clue what was happening, but it was constantly engaging and almost had me on the edge of my seat wondering what kind of crazy shit I'll see next. Maybe a gripe I have is that towards the end of the game it doesnt really do a good job wrapping everything together or explaining anything, the last few levels you get all sorts of hints saying that the end is near almost suggesting that theres multiple branching paths and endings and you have a lot of meaningful decisions to make that will impact the ending outcome, but theres nothing really of the sort. 10 minutes before the game ends you can make Choice A or B and it doesnt really affect the ending in a significant manner. In between every assignment (episode? misson? level) you return to this trailer house as Garcian where you sit down and have your breakfast or walk around your trailer and enter a Harman room where you frequently see these bizarre scenes of the Maid abusing this old man (Harman?) its generally hard to piece together what the hell is going on, but damn if it isnt entertaining, and often very mature and disturbing themes, like towards the last half of the game you start hearing people tell you about how theres some guy whos a evil organ harvester and he kidnaps children and harvests their organs to steal on the black market or some shit, like what? Rarely do you see games going this dark and disturbing with the storyline. The story is thoroughly interesting, albeit almost nonsensical most of the time. At least its consistent with the rest of the game feeling largely nonsensical too, its like they hired some random schizophrenic psychotic dude and let him write the entire plot and even game design of this thing, yeah it might be hard to wrap your mind around, but at least its interesting as hell.
Theres about 10 or so separate levels all largely sharing a similar scheme, you go around these maps free to travel back and forth as you please between Junctions, new enemy types get introduced almost every level so its rarely repetitive feeling, theres always some new obsticle to overcome, you go around solving puzzles which are largely fun and intuitive once you get over the initial hump of the learning curve, theres even a npc character that shows up around puzzles that gives you hints, and if youre really stumped and need additional advice you can shoot a mask hes holding (at the cost of Thick blood, which I also struggled to understand until virtually the last few hours of the game) he will tell you more help. So the puzzles arent too annoying or stump you for very long they were pretty satisfying to figure out. The levels take place largely in apartment complexes, hallways, high tech facilities, hotels, though there are a few notable outdoors areas that play quite different than the rest of the game, almost feeling semi-open world where theres almost pedestrian style enemies running around that mostly ignore you (yellow shirt guys) where you have to explore this city area in the daylight. Theres another level that takes place in this like village maze area that has a part where you have to listen and follow the music, like something from Lost Woods in Ocarina of Time. The levels are well done and mostly distinct from eachother where you wont really be seeing the same thing twice or be confusing one mission with another, they all have separate themes and identities. Theres even one level that takes place in a theme park where you visit a Resident Evil style mansion and another part with a Killer fun house. One of the last levels is a 9 floor hotel that may sound daunting, but is relativiely fun and simple to explore and progress through.
Killer 7 is a game like no other, just the fact that its such a unique blend of genres, the wild narrative that keeps you wondering whats going on full of mystery and wonder, the horror influences with the enemy designs and the tension of listening for laughs as you press the scan button to find them, the sense of humor that deals with dark comedy, irony, sarcasm, and mature content, the music especially is varied and unforgettable in parts like at the end of almost every mission after you turn in the items to the Gatekeeper as you walk up the steps it plays this raving techno music cheering you on for the boss fights, everything comes together in this totally unique never seen before blend of an experience that I started to really appreciate what it was doing. The first few hours I was almost hating the game, condeming it, calling it the most frustrating incoherent obnoxious piece of shit I've played in a long time, but once the pieces started fitting together, and I had a few lightbulb moments, and I started understanding the UI and what the game expects from me, I really began to enjoy me wild ride Killer7 takes you on. The game isn't short, either, taking me almost 20 hours to complete. Maybe towards the end it was starting to drag just a tad too much, but considering that there has never been a sequel to this game, and there still probably isn't anything like it, it's hardly a complaint.
8/10
