Killer7 (2005)

The fact this debuted on a Nintendo console is insane considering how wedded to safety their games are. The controls take some getting used to, and there's certainly some tedium here and there, but this is such a statement that it's easy to overlook the minor issues throughout. Killer7 oozes with style and confidence, from the logos on boot to the final shot. What a way for Grasshopper to introduce themselves to Western shores.

Played as part of the 2026 Millennium Challenge (2005) (and incidentally the first Suda51 game I've actually played through, how exciting).

Opened up Steam to a killer7 update. What could they be updating in this 20 year-old game? Quite a lot, turns out. Some control changes, bugfixes, high resolution cutscenes... interesting.

Went to the store page and.. uh oh, what's going on?

Apparently the high resolution cutscenes are upscaled versions of the original gamecube cutscenes and they look rough.

I'm a bit conflicted about this game. On the one hand, I'd like to celebrarte its weirdness and uniqueness. On the other hand, the gameplay and general design is complete dogshit.

The gameplay itself is kind of boring and one note, encounters are either piss-easy or unfair (like enemies that get you even before you physically have time to start aiming and finish scanning) and the puzzles are basically "I bet you cannot figure out the code for this safe, which is 1234 and by the way, here's a weird guy holding a wrestling mask that will tell you that you need to put a combination to open a safe".

I've just finished the third mission and I feel that the game has blown its load in terms of weirdness and now all that was once strange is now mundane. "Oh, here's the disembodied head that will talk some nonsense and then give me a ring", "Ah, there you are, translucent dude in a red gimp suit, it's been a while". And now all that's left is the gameplay which, as I said, is dogshit.

I think I'll give it one more mission to grab me.

It's very hard to rate Killer 7.

Although I loved it, I just didn't understand absolutely anything about it!

The name of the game here is art style. Everything about Killer 7 oozes style over substance. The soundtrack is amazing, they nailed the atmosphere, level design is good looking, characters are very well designed and the story, although incomprehensible, looks... great??

The game just looks amazing. Even in 2022. It still feels modern and relevant.

When it comes to gameplay, style reigns supreme. At first, aiming and moving felt too stiff and, quite frankly, just very weird to my liking. Flash forward to halfway through the 2nd level and I just kept asking for more and more. As I gladly explored every nook and cranny of every single level, searching for clues, shooting Heaven Smiles and trying to figure out where to go next. Aside from the final level of the game, nothing felt actually boring, despite its clear limitations.

It almost works as an On-Rails Shooter. In fact, sometimes it felt like I was watching a good low budget indie movie. But it's even better than that. There's a feeling of "old Capcom DNA" that turns puzzle solving, shooting and exploring into something deep and enjoyable. It's still strange, for sure, but it works quite nicely, maintaining fun factor.

It actually surprises me how this game managed to work. Work so well, to the point of getting a re-release on PC. Despite how good the gameplay is, despite how well designed characters and levels are and despite how offbeat the writing goes, the game just works. Every character feels good to use. From the most useless ones to the ones that are clearly most important to the overall experience. Battle encounters are challenging and fresh. Exploration is limited, but well paced. And the story... although pure nonsense, has its moments.

Killer 7's flaws are almost all tied to the story. Gameplay is fine, even its quirky restraints, but when it comes to the story, it's just... ridiculous.

Now, to be honest, the writing, even though VERY cryptic, works. The atmosphere is very unique and managed to keep me interested until credits rolled. But, with all that said... DAMN! The whole story makes absolutely no sense! Dialogues are interesting, but mostly shallow. Nothing is explained and it gives you no room to think about things properly. It's basically freaky for the sake of being freaky. That just doesn't work. This game could've been SO MUCH better, but it decided not to give a shit.

I actually have a few gripes with other aspects. Like how some characters are way more useful than others. Or how some levels, despite inventive, look dulll and repetitive. Bosses are hideous, either being too easy or very unintiuitive. And the puzzles... my god, the puzzles are mostly bad. Add all of that to an artificial and pretentious story. You end up getting quite a missed opportunity of turning this game into a huge classic.

But... Killer 7 is a good game! Trust me! Definitely one of the most chill and unique experiences I've had in gaming. It's something necesary, regardless of how bonkers it is. In fact, being bonkers is half of the charm. That's the point (I guess)!

Hard to recommend, but easy to fall in love with. That is... if you are just as weird as this game requires you to be.

This game is equal parts inane and insane which results in a singular experience. You have a dude with his eyes stitched shut, a ball and gag in his mouth and wearing a giddy suite suspended in the air by a cable. The game feels like an acid trip fever dream with kaleidoscopic colors and beautiful cell shading that still holds up to this day. While some may seek and find substance in the creative decisions on display here, I can assure you this is pure style over substance. It's not a criticism because each decision made is more perplexing than the previous one and this kept my attention for most of the experience. Suda51 excels at characterization and not plot. He has never made a deeply profound character, but it's always so eccentric that it keeps my attention.

The game play will be the biggest turn off for most players and that's reasonable. A part of me appreciates the creativity that went into it, but it ultimately falls flat from a lack of polish and quality testing. It's part point and click adventure, walking sim and rail shooter. You move with the typical WASD config (I chose keyboard and mouse to have better aiming, though it was still clunky and probably fruitless), but only hold forward. You need to push another button to change the direction where forward key moves you, and whenever you get to a crossroads you get bombarded by a bunch of pizza slices that point to different cardinal directions. You then use the mouse to select the cardinal direction, or pizza slice visually, and you start running on rails in that direction. It's hard to explain because it is convoluted with a ton of visual noise.

Whenever you hear maniacal laughter, you need to mash the rail shooter button, then you pull up a gun and change to first person and haphazardly seek the Heaven's smiles. They are suicide bombers and the main enemy of the game. They have a bright glowing orb somewhere on their body that you need to shoot to kill them. Sometimes this is easy, sometimes this is unfair. This results in such a haphazard and inconsistent difficulty curve. Some enemies lumber slowly towards you, giving ample time to aim at the glowing orbs. Others will literally roll up in a ball and speed towards you, causing the orb to rotate rapidly with them, making it impossible to kill them before they collide with you. Another terrible moment are the giant smiles on a ramp. You have to shoot them in the eye to kill them, but you cannot aim high enough to do so when they are on an incline... great design. What makes this inept, from a design standpoint, is the controls are not designed for twitch skill shots. There is a sluggishness to aiming and you cannot turn fast while in first person mode. These rapid moving skill shot smiles should never have made it past QI testing... it's diametrically opposed to the control scheme.

The devs realized how inept the controls were and included a lock-on system. This is fine for weaker Smiles, but some of the bigger baddies require skills shots to take down.

There are boss fights which similarly have a very inconsistent difficulty curve. Some go down in one shot, while others are veritable bullet sponges that are designed for twitch based skill shooting, which is diametrically opposed to the control scheme.

There are puzzles, but they are either completely trivial (with the map literally telling you the solution) or obtuse to the point of feeling unfair. An example of the former are the rings. There's a fire, water, ect. and you are told when to use one to solve a puzzle removing any gratification from using it. I also never figured out what the power (I assume it boosted my damage?) and stamina (maybe it increased my hp?) ring did because the game does a horrible job of explaining mechanics. A great example of the later would be the execs boss fight.

The main gimmick to the game is the 7 killers. Each with a special ability. My biggest issue with this is how poorly utilized each character's abilities are. Sometimes it feels like the devs forgot about a character and throws in a sequence specifically for them. It's inconsistent and unfortunately the game literally spells out when to use a specific characters ability. The solution here would be multiple ways to solve a puzzle and not spelling out the solution. This is already in game, except it tells you the multiple solutions, so removing the tool tip would have gone a long way to add some challenge to the game.

About 3/4s through the game I started losing steam and interest. It didn't help that there were back to back terrible boss fights with a girl who zipped around like she was on meth and was a bullet sponge... but I am glad I finished. The ending is the best part of the game. It still feels vapid, but a cool twist.

The port performed well. It crashed a bit, but not as bad as No More Heroes. My only issue was they didn't restore the resolution of the animated cut scenes. They look terrible as a result.

As of this writing I've only played one other game by suda 51/grasshopper manufacture: (Killer is Dead) I had enjoyed that game and was curious to check out more, and since that time K7 as well as silver case had re-releases. I had been intending to check several of these out for a while.

Even by today's standards This game is extremely violent and has freaky moments (blood streaming out of orifices as mutants go down in maniacal eerie laughter). It also has a ton of foul language ("Fuck You!" expressed in different variations among the 7 playable characters when you land a critical hit is probably the best design idea in this game and is an idea so good that I wish it was pretty much an industry standard) I'm a bit shocked that this was on a nintendo platform, and I searched and to my disbelief was unable to find any information regarding censorship on the platform. From the violence, the language, the gimp suit to the fact one of the Player Characters is often described as a youth (and you roam through an elementary school in one of the levels) in addition to other violent depictions against minors, i'm a bit bewildered how this got out under their radar.

Oh yeah, the game is also bonkers.

Heh, despite it's edgy bits and nice aesthetic... The gameplay and control of this game are shoddy. It's a very experimental game and while impressive for it's day (and GCN platform) it's certainly not aged well (However, about half-way through it i began to get used to it.) It's not really an FPS and its not even a rail shooter (which is what it sounded like it would be from reading on it) it's more of a linearly-pathed third-person adventure game where you can go into different routes and double back and forth between them (a bit like an old text based adventure game) enemies will respawn over time and as you exit rooms so it has a Resident Evil survival horror feel to it even though there are not any kind of items to collect and base your survival upon. When enemies are around you hear them giggling and you must press a key to go into first person mode where you draw your gun and it plays out a bit like a kojima-esquae light gun shoot out scene. Kills earn you blood which works a bit like an XP based character upgrade system where you can boost your offensive capabilities among your 7 selectable playable assassins.

All-in-all nice idea on how to blend genres together but somewhat lackluster execution. It's still very fascinating to play this game (and you can see where latent Persona games got some of their inspiration from... Why even the TV interaction seems like a nod to P4) Again, it's experimental (and one of this guy's earlier games) It feels like it might be Capcom's response to some of Konami's games from the same era. At least, in some ways.

The game makes up for this at times grating gameplay (arguably) in terms of presentation and style. It's a very good looking game with a nice clean cel-shaded style and on PC the anti-aliasing makes this bit look absolute gold (Very much a bit like Persona before persona was even a thing!) All the characters have this very distinct kind of a japanese anime sense of style in how they posture and carry themselves. While there isn't a terribly amount of actual character development, they are still very cool looking (and sounding) characters. There are even anime cutscenes before and after missions that are interesting (but low res)

The game is still quite painfully flawed despite what good bits it has going for it. Respawning enemies with various quirks (you have to target weak spots and some enemies really are a pain in the ass) as well as some very cryptic item-gate puzzles make playing this game feel like a borderline chore. The combat is grating. the language/culture barrier is present which is compounded more so by some of the logic of these puzzles as well as the whole schizophrenic story-line. It hasn't aged well (and to some that would be an understatement). However, this is the perfect game to watch someone else play rather than play yourself.

Killer is Dead is similar in terms of aesthetic, and story(?) elements, and was a completely sound game with decent gameplay and overall it very much feels like a refinement of a lot of the ideas here.

While I did like it and was glad to play it. The game is a bit long-ish and I wouldn't recommend it because I'd think pretty much everyone could just watch a stream or a lets play of this and get the same out of it. If you play it, play it on normal difficulty and use a guide. Some of these puzzles are completely bullshit.

Also this was the PC version I played. Between the FPS increase, the nice resolution (with anti-aliasing) and mouse and keyboard controls that include a quick heal hotkey as well as using numbers to select between the 7 characters, i would very much recommend it. (Not bad port at all, NIS America!) The thought of playing the shooting scenes with a joypad sounds really bad. Fortunately with a mouse you don't have to mess with the lock on controls and can fire accurately. Even despite this, its fairly challenging to complete some areas and defeat certain enemies (I hate those giants)

Looking forward to other Grasshopper Manufacture games after this like GCN classic No More Heroes!

The first time I played killer7, I played through half of the first level and dropped it. An aggressive wall of complete nonsense and cryptic tutorialization that makes it harder to tell what you're supposed to do (saying "Watch out for Barefoot, Kaede!" makes me think that Kaede is not Barefoot, Iwazaru) combined with awkward, inaccurate shooting mechanics and braindead puzzling made me reach the second or third save point and put it down for months.

The second time I played killer7, I had zero interest on every level but aesthetics for the first half of the game or so - the wall of nonsense was still there, and there was so little sane dialogue and characterization to keep me interested, but the absolutely incredible eye for visuals and direction that suda51 has was enough.

When I first beat it, I was immediately disappointed - the final level felt odd, the final scene tacked-on, the level beforehand ending on a twist that seemed obvious.

And yet, this is one of the best video games I've ever played in my life. Replaying it with an idea of what to look out for, almost everything felt new again - being able to interpret what was happening and use this information to further my understanding of the game's events made me appreciate its narrative on a level that I haven't seen in another game. A Gematsu interview with Masafumi Taka said this about the soundscape:

For Killer7, I actively asked the programmer to implement the game audio, so as I played the game I made lots of adjustments. All of the sounds that I didn't want in the game were all omitted. I only kept the sounds that I thought were vital.

This exacting eye, this supremely controlled experience, underscores every aspect of this game from top to bottom. As an artistic experience, virtually every part of it ties into a cohesive whole after contemplation. The experience is akin to looking at a Jackson Pollock painting, but the image resolves itself into the Mona Lisa's after looking at it with a fresh pair of eyes.

If you can't tell already, this shit is incredible. Not quite a must-play on account of how niche it is, but it's definitely a must-try. It's been on my mind ever since I finished it, and it's only really appreciating in quality. It's one of the only Suda games I can give an actual numeric score for, and it's a pretty fucking high one.