It takes something truly special to turn a game developer into a celebrity. Shiguru Miyamoto created the most lovable characters in history with Mario and Link. Tomonobu Itagaki brought on shameless sex appeal with the Dead or Alive games. David Cage made emotional roller coasters that weren't afraid to rip players to shreds. The same can be said of Goichi Suda, better known as Suda51, who gained celebrity status by just being REALLY friggin' weird. With games like No More Heroes, Shadows of the Damned, and Lollipop Chainsaw, Suda51 managed to create fun action games that were so bizarre in their look and tone that players are often left scratching their heads and asking themselves, "What the hell did I just play?". I found myself saying that a lot after playing Suda's first big release Killer7.
The story revolves around attacks by a terrorist group that's using a virus to mutate people into suicidal psychos. These attacks threaten a peace accord between America and Japan; so, the US sends an old fart in a wheelchair to sort it out. Luckily, this decrepit old man named Harman Smith has a condition that not only gives him seven distinct personalities, but he can actually transform into those personalities. On top of that, all seven personalities are insane master assassins. As you can see, the game starts at "WTF???" levels and only gets weirder when the side characters pop up. The game has major tonal shifts, switching from chilling to laugh-out-loud hysterical in seconds. While the absurdity can be a turn-off for some people, I absolutely wanted to see where this insanity went.
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The gameplay is equally as off-kilter. It can best be described as part point-and-click adventure and part light-gun shooting gallery (without the light-gun). Movement is almost completely on-rails. The A button moves forward, the B button turns around, and the thumbstick chooses directions when you come to a fork in the road. Despite the track-based movement, there is too much backtracking due to the game's penchant for putting key items and the puzzles for which they're used far away from each other. The shooting mechanics are reasonable. Each personality has his/her own weapon and life meter. It's actually fun to try them all. However, I can't help but be disappointed that the story isn't changed by which personality you use and when. Though it may have been a nightmare to program, it would've been awesome if the story altered based on whether a target was taken out by Mask or Coyote.
The aesthetics are still impressive even now. Suda's cel-shaded look that he gives most of his games is on full display. The characters look fantastic though only using single-color blobs to show the enemies is rather lame. Most of the characters talk with a distortion effect that actually started to give me a headache after a while. Unfortunately, muting the TV is out of the question since you need to be able to hear when enemies are approaching.
Killer7 is the definition of a Suda51 game. Its story, characters, and tone are all over the place. However, unlike other Suda games which have relatively standard gameplay complementing the insane story, the gameplay here is bizarre, too. Hours later, I still don't really know what to make of it. It was definitely good, but it's definitely not something for everybody. I would say it's worth checking out just to see how insane a developer can get.
