Killer 7

review by GCNMatt

rated M for mature

I’ve been playing a few weird games for the past couple of months.  For example, I was blowing through the DS microphone, and shaking my handheld like a dork with the latest Warioware iterations, as well as, running over cats and small children with a giant adhesive ball in Katamari Damacy.  More recently, however, I’ve been collecting blood and solving the puzzling hints of puzzles from Capcom’s Killer7 for the GameCube and PlayStation 2.  There isn’t really much of a difference between the two versions, just that the PS2 version has longer load times, and the GameCube version uses two discs.

 

I’ll be reviewing the GameCube version of this anime-like action thriller.  In order to enjoy this game, you’ll need to be very open-minded to the unique dialogue and control scheme.  The story revolves around an old assassin named Harman Smith, who is the leader of a group of assassins called the Smith Syndicate.  The Syndicate is trying to stop a new terrorist group called Heaven Smile, who has predicted various attacks on the world, and surprisingly, the predictions came true.  The leader of the group is the ominous Kun Lan, who can turn anyone he has touched into a Heaven Smile, a mindless zombie-like monster that explodes when coming into contact with a person.

 

The Smith Syndicate, who ends up being the target for Heaven Smile, later in the game, consists of seven members, thus giving them the name of the Killer7.  The first member of the group is Dan Smith, who was my favorite, and I used him most of the time.  He reminds me somewhat of Spike from the anime, Cowboy Bebop, with his badass attitude, and sharp-shooting revolver.  Spike, or I mean Dan, can also fire an “uber shot” at enemies, which is imperative for destroying the Heaven Smiles that reproduce. 

 

However, using this shot requires three vials of thin blood.  You gain blood as you defeat enemies, and blood comes in two forms; thick and thin.  Thick blood is kept in a separate vial that carries up to 1,000 deciliters of blood, which is then taken to Harman’s rooms which are located all throughout the levels.  Once you get to one of Harman’s rooms, you can make serums out of the thick blood you’ve collected, which can be used to increase your characters’ skills, for example, their firing speed or the likelihood of them scoring a critical hit on an enemy.  You can also switch among the different characters in these rooms, or save the game, if Harman’s maid, Samantha is up to it.Thin blood, on the other hand, doesn’t require the ordeal of finding Harman’s room to use.  It can be used as soon as a vial of it is filled up, and it’s used for recovering your health, or for initializing a special action or attack.

 

Some special moves don’t require the use of thin blood, like Kaede Smith’s ability to contact with a spirit and destroy special barriers that obstruct your progress.  Kaede, is the only female of the group, and is a major heart-breaker.  She uses an automatic rifle that includes a scope for zooming in on enemies and taking them out from a distance.

 

Then there’s Kevin Smith, who I didn’t really care much about, since he never talked, and I didn’t learn much about his story.  Unlike his accomplices, who all use guns, Kevin uses throwing knives, which can be used for special situations like cutting the wire of a blow dryer that has fallen into a bathtub full of water, and you need to pick up an important item inside the tub.  There are some parts in the game where you have to get past security laser devices, and the only person that can do this is Kevin, with his ability to become invisible and slip through security undetected.

 

Next, there is Coyote Smith, a former thief, and athlete.  He uses a custom handgun that he fires at an awkward, downward angle.  Since Coyote is a thief, he can pick at locks and unlock doors, which will make getting around the area a lot easier and quicker.  Coyote can also reach areas other characters couldn’t access, due to his increased jumping ability.

 

Even though Coyote is very athletic, he is nothing compared to the speedy Con Smith.  Con was born blind, and he wears a bandana-helmet device that also increases his other senses, like his hearing, which allows him to detect supersonic waves.  This is necessary for this one level in the game in which you had to travel through a maze of back alleys and you must follow a noise to make your way out.  Con can also activate his psychic powers that enable him to run really fast and avoid enemies.  He uses two handguns that he fires quickly, so if an enemy gets too close for comfort, switch to Con and take them out briefly.

 

The inverse of Con’s speediness is the bulky and slow Mask de Smith.  Mask was a former professional wrestler, and uses his incredible strength to lift heavy objects, like a giant semi-truck that blocks your way.  Mask also packs a pair of grenade launchers that are needed to destroy cracked walls, and are also the only weapon that can damage a specific class of Harman Smile, Predator Smile.  Throughout the game, Mask de Smith will be upgraded three times, in my opinion, the second time was the most dramatic of the three, but I won’t spoil it for you.

 

Finally, there’s Garcian Smith, who is pretty much the most important member of the group.  He’s a cleaner, and his duty is to resurrect any fallen members of the group.  When a character dies, there will be a fairly lengthy death scene that blacks out the outline of your character falling, and then it returns to the television screen in Harman’s room.  You can only switch to Garcian when inside Harman’s room, as opposed to the other characters that you can switch to on the fly.  When playing as Garcian, you must run to where your character died, which reminds me of my days of corpse runs in World of WarCraft.  If and when you get there, you can resurrect the character by rapidly pressing the A button to give them life; the more life the character has, the more button pressing you’ll have to do. 

 

There is a catch to playing as Garcian, however, since he is the only person that can revive other people, if he dies, no one else can revive him, and so the game will end, and you’ll be forced to restart from the last save point.  Garcian is armed with a silenced pistol that will protect him from most enemies.  This whole aspect of keeping Garcian alive so that you can revive the other characters reminds me of this one game from elementary school P.E. called Doctor Dodge Ball.  It was dodge ball, but when you got hit, you lie down where you got hit, and there was one person on each team that was the doctor, and when they tagged the fallen team mates, they could play the game again.  But if the doctor was hit, the team would be screwed because they couldn’t get back in the game if they were hit, so then it was a matter of picking off the rest of the team.

 

Yeah, I’m retarded for reminiscing over grade school games, but that game was easy to learn, unlike the controls for this game.  At first, the controls will be very difficult, since they aren’t what you would expect.  You don’t directly control your character with the analog stick, instead, they’re on a preset path, and you press the A button to make them move down that path.  When you reach a point in the path that is split in multiple directions, for example a 4-way intersection, the screen will display wedge-shaped blocks that correspond to the destination and destination of each path.  You choose which direction you want to go by tilting the analog stick in the desired direction, and the game is very picky on which direction, since there will be some junctions in which there are two or three paths all overlapping each other and you may go in the wrong direction.  If you do make a wrong turn you can press B and you’ll turn around and you can go back to where you need to go.  The movement is very complicated, and this was pretty much the best way I could explain it, without referring to dodge ball.

 

The combat, on the other hand, is similar to that of Resident Evil 4’s combat system.  You’ll press the right shoulder button which brings up the first-person view and you shoot and aim like in any first-person shooter.  You can’t normally see the enemies in this game, but that is fixed when you scan the area, and you’ll know when there’ll be enemies in the area by hearing the Heaven Smiles’ disturbing laughter.

 

The Heaven Smile laughter is the main thing you’ll be hearing in the game, and they hysterically laugh after getting killed, this will leave anyone bewildered as to why they’re laughing.  Over all the laughter and gunshots, the music is hardly noticeable.  The music was quiet and had the general creepy themes that you would find in a Survival Horror game.  The only theme I liked was the music you hear when going up the stairs to the colosseum area that was near the end of most of the levels in the game, it was like a techno victory dance rave remix.  Other than that, the music wasn’t really appealing to me all that much.  However, the voice acting for the cutscenes was fantastic.  The dialogue and characters really brought out the story making it feel like one of the anime from Adult Swim Action. 

 

The anime-influence is even stronger when you look at the amazing cel-shading graphics for the game.  The game looks like a manga comic that came to life.  There are also several anime cutscenes that make for the half-ass teasers we got from Tales of Symphonia.  There’s even a whole level in which all the cutscenes are anime, which became one of my favorite levels in the game.  With the addition of a boss battle that features a standoff with the eight members of a superhero team that resemble the Power Rangers, what couldn’t you love about that?  The boss battles in the game are unique, but they are by no means complex, due to your limited movement.  The battles consisted of running around and waiting for the enemy to open up their weakness so that you could kill them.

 

When going through the levels, you’ll speak with many different characters, all of which you’ve killed before and they give more information on the story as well as useful hints; hints that you must figure out in order to figure out the puzzles.  These characters aren’t really speaking dialogue, they are more or less speaking gibberish, and so you must read what they’re saying.  The voices sounded like fast-forwarded recordings from robots.  I wasn’t too impressed with the supporting characters’ voices, and I would have preferred if the voices weren’t even in there, but the main characters made up for the annoying robotic voices.

 

In closing, I recommend Killer7, but if you aren’t quite sure about the game, rent it first, or wait for it to drop its price in a year.  Don’t play this expecting an action-shooter game, this game is more or less an adventure game that uses a wide range of puzzles, and only the craftiest people will be able to understand the story, since it won’t exactly be given to you on a silver platter.

 

-GCNMatt

 

Graphics: 9.4 (Cel-shading that resembles anime.)

Sound: 7.7 (The voice acting is great, music isn’t.)

Controls: 7.2 (Takes some time to get used to)

Gameplay: 8.5 (Solving puzzles and shooting zombie wannabes.)

 

 

Overall: 8.2 out of 10

 

*Syllabus based on The PSP Mag