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Killer 7

A severed head in a dryer holds a ring needed for progress in its mouth. Blood rains from the sky and Harman Smith controls his seven personalities via the television. Oh yeah, that severed head? It talks, too. The legendary film director Akira Kurosawa said that "in a mad world, only the mad are sane," and playing through Killer 7 causes me to recall that quote almost constantly. It's not just the setting that's bizarre, but also the music, the dialogue, the anecdotes told by various characters, and the tactics used to defeat bosses. Virtually everything you experience could have only been conjured up by a madman.

It's a good thing, then, that director Goichi Suda isn't a stranger to the notion that he's off his rocker. Capcom certainly won't hide it. "Crazy! Mr. Suda is crazy," says producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi. But if people can wrap their heads around the core gameplay of a title, then the rest isn't such a detriment. Fortunately, this is such a game, and once gamers become accustomed to the controls and set-up, even if Killer 7 isn't perfect, it can be a very rewarding and special title.

Killer 7 takes place in the year 2003, when the world is finally at peace. In order to stop terrorism, huge highways have been construced to connect the continents and airlines have been abolished. Spitting in the face of progress, however, is a new terrorist threat called the Heaven Smile and its gang of zombie-like suicide bombers. In an effort to keep the United States safe, the government hires the Killer 7 mercenary group to track down and destroy the terrorist network. The leader of the Killer 7, a wheelchair-bound man named Harman Smith, controls all seven assassins via television, and the assassins all have special abilities that they can use to finally rid the world of the Heaven Smile.

It all sounds simple enough until you actually get into the game. Playing through Killer 7 uncovers a maddeningly complex and intriguing plot filled with expertly done anime sequences and equally gripping real-time cut-scenes. Does it all make sense? No. Does any of it make sense? Somewhat. Each of the missions seem to have their own unique plot within the overarching storyline of the main game, and with new characters introduced left and right it's often hard to make sense of their existence. It is, nonetheless, extremely compelling to watch unfold and rewards gamers with plenty to think about as topics range from terrorism and politics to child trafficking and black market organ deals.

Gameplay-wise, Killer 7 introduces one enemy type after another and challenges players to figure out how to defeat each foe. Once you've figured it all out, different combinations of these opponents are unleashed upon you at once and the challenge becomes trying to take them all out in the most efficient way possible. It's a system that Capcom has used plenty of times before and allows players themselves to get what they want out of it. You can either blow through enemies in any way that works or take the game's system to the extreme and experiment in keeping a combo chain alive.

Fighting many of the Smiles is reminiscent of battling the Regenerators in Resident Evil 4: each enemy has a weakspot somewhere on its body and a shot to that area will bring it down instantly. Since enemies can't be seen (save for their shimmering skin), hearing their maniacal laugh is your signal to take out your gun and scan the room, making them visible and exposing their Achilles' Heel.

Once you bring an enemy down this way, you can start a chain combo. Multiple hits to enemy weakspots boosts the amount of blood that you can collect from them and increases your combo by one. Blood can then be used to perform special moves and heal wounds or to create serums that can boost your assassin's stats and earn new skills. This is the heart of Killer 7's combat and for the most part it's well done. The RPG-like element added by the level-up system brings a nice touch of character building and acts as an incentive to keep going for weakspots; however, since each level has a limit on how much blood can be turned into serum and enemies re-spawn every time you re-enter a room, motivation for collecting blood is certain to wane. Your collection doesn't roll over to your next mission either, and because backtracking is required you'll end up killing the same set of enemies again and again, resulting in tons of blood that you simply can't use.

Aside from the combat, Killer 7 boasts a wide range of puzzles. For the most part, they're rather simple, and no matter how odd it may be to grab a ring from a detached head in a dryer, it doesn't change the fact that all you had to do to get it is go inside the laundry room. Anyone who's played Capcom's games before will feel right at home. As you progress, though, the puzzles begin to get more challenging and thus more rewarding. If you get stuck, there's almost always someone there to help you out.

In fact, that's what's disappointing. Oftentimes the method to defeating enemies (even bosses!) and solving puzzles is divulged before you even see the obstacle before you. One option is to simply avoid speaking to those that give hints, but since they also reveal details about the plot and characters you're searching for, you never really know what they're going to say until they say it.

Easily the most divisive aspect of Killer 7 is the control scheme, which is built on what can somewhat be described as an on-rails system and offers no analog control. Players have no control over the camera and the dynamic angles are rather bizarre until you get used to them. Movement is controlled by the A button and characters follow a set path, with options to go in different directions when they come up to a junction such as a hallway or a door. In fact, if Killer 7 is thought of as a racing game it might actually be easier to make sense of the controls: Harman Smith controls all seven assassins, thus being the driving force behind them. In a racing game, drivers accelerate their cars through the push of the A button, and the only time you really use the analog stick is to change directions. That's pretty much Killer 7. Strange analogy? Perhaps. Then again, Killer 7 is a strange game.

The controls are streamlined for a reason, though: the game only lets you go where it wants you to go. And while that can be said about any game, the focus here is not on exploration or searching through all the houses and rooms you come across. Killer 7 asks gamers to give themselves up to its style and story even more than it does to its gameplay, and so the controls have been streamlined to drive the plot. Analog control isn't going to make exploring the locations any more fun since the environments just aren't built for it. Rooms aren't really rooms and doors aren't really doors; they're just there to make the setting more believable. What would have otherwise been slighted as boring and uninspired environments are instead compelling to traverse and Capcom should be commended for not tasking gamers with meaningless investigation of locales that yield nothing anyway.

Where Killer 7 truly shines though is in its presentation. The graphics shocked people when they were first seen and two and a half years later they're still just as stunning. Capcom has blended simple character and level design with remarkably gritty cel-shading and the result is a surreal world that's simply mesmerizing to look at and unlike anything seen before it. The game is also rather graphic in nature, as enemies explode into blasts of blood and a couple of opponents are even depicted with half of their heads hanging off, showcasing their brains inside. Then of course there are the oft-mentioned sex scenes. Yeah. Keep out of reach of children.

The game's soundtrack is just as unique and well-crafted as the graphics. Not too many games unleash European dance mixes on players right before they face bosses, but Killer 7 does and you learn that it just makes sense. But only after you realize this game is nuts. The assortment of tracks is exceptional and really captures the essence of each area perfectly. Voice acting is also top-notch as characters sound just as you'd expect them to. For a really old guy in a wheelchair, Harman's got to sound like he's one guy you don‘t screw around with, and he does.

This game gets an N-Philes score of B+.

It's tough to recommend that you buy Killer 7, especially when its own director and producer have said that the game isn't for everybody, but I'm going to do just that. If you were never interested in the first place, don't buy it. But for those who were and are intrigued, Killer 7 will be an experience like no other. The trailers we viewed while waiting showed us one thing, and it's that sometimes everything doesn't make sense, and that's exactly how this game likes it. Yet for all the insanity that Killer 7 pounds your senses with, the core gameplay is firmly within reach of any gamer, even for those who have only followed Capcom during their stint with Nintendo's GameCube. Dig past the gritty, cel-shaded graphics and audacious aesthetics and beneath is what Capcom has been doing for years. With Killer 7, Mr. Suda has taken the classic adventure genre, injected it with an incredible amount of hallucinogens, and put his own stamp on Capcom's classic design philosophy. It's a mad world in there; are you mad enough to enter?

Posted in: Reviews