Killer7

"An unexpected gem from the people who brought us Resident Evil 4"

Killer 7.....What a game. I was extremely skeptical at first, but ended up purchasing this game when I saw it for its reduced price. (This game hasn't sold well at all, which lead to an immediate price drop.) To my amazement, it was entirely worth it. Killer 7's a fun, addictive, and bizarre rail shooter that really stands out from the rest. With the likes of Resident Evil 4 and Killer 7, Capcom is really starting to bounce back after a fairly disappointing couple of years. Let's hope this trend continues, because when on top of their game, Capcom never ceases to amaze with their innovative software.

Graphics- This game looks decent. It definitely has its own style, but the visuals themselves weren't my favorite. Granted, I really like cel shading, but this game didn't use it in a way I particularly enjoyed. The environments are often bland and boring. The characters don't look too special either. But where this game amazes is in its anime cutscenes, which are frequent and very impressive. At one point, someone walked into the room as I was watching one of the cutscenes, and they thought I was watching an anime on TV. Sure enough, it looks very much like one. And these aren't tiny scenes, either. One anime cutscene I remember went on for at least 10 minutes. Keep in mind, however, that like the rest of the game, the scenes in Killer 7 may not be pleasant for those with a weak stomach. This is a violent game we're talking about here. Aside from the many enemies that you kill during the game, (all spurting blood everywhere,) the cutscenes can also be particularly graphic, with instances of blood literally raining down from the sky. The game, though, sees no problem in being quirky, and in one instance of raining blood, a character looks up at the sky, opens his mouth, tastes the blood, then casually identifies the body. That should give you an idea of how these cutscenes play out. Even scenes not created in the anime style can be rather violent, especially one near the end of the game, which I found to be a bit disturbing. I'm not criticizing the violence, just warning you what's in store. It's a game not afraid to push boundaries.

Visually, this game's extremely stylish, but Killer 7 wasn't my favorite use of the cel shading technique. The anime cutscenes look excellent, though. All this is brought to you with very short (although too frequent,) loading times. The framerate seems to be usually smooth, (although when you play as The Mask, you will occasionally run into framerate drops) and the environments in the game, although not very explorable, are often very expansive.


Gameplay- The controls of this game have been called "complicated" but I don't see why at all. This game was unbelievably simple to control. Just hold A to move. That's it. Press B to turn around.

That's how you move in Killer 7. You follow a set path. It's as if you are running on train tracks. You just hold A, and your character runs on this set path. When you reach forks in the road or different routes, signs will pop up pointing to the routes you can take. Select the direction by tilting the analog stick, and your character will face that direction. Continue holding the A-button to run in this direction. That's it. Very simple. It's a rail shooter, but in my opinion, this was one of the best things about the game, since it means that you are almost always on task, and there is VERY little backtracking. When you see enemies (which, in this game, are a group called the Heaven Smile, a terrorist organization made up of a bunch of crazed, suicide bombers) you simply hold the R-trigger to ready your gun, the L-trigger to see the enemy, (they are invisible without holding this,) and A to fire. You can shoot at them a few times to have them explode away from you, (otherwise they will just run at you, and if they reach you, they explode on you, taking away your health,) OR, you can shoot at certain small targets on them. This will kill them in 1 hit, and will send their blood into your inventory. Blood can be used as a healing item, but it is ALSO used in exchange for serum, which levels your characters up. As in Resident Evil 4, you can not move and shoot at the same time. You have unlimited ammo, but you have to take a couple of seconds to reload occasionally, which could make you vulnerable to enemy attack. Always reload (using the C-stick,) after fighting a group of enemies, since you never know when you will be surprised with another enemy attack.

And that's how you play Killer 7. You basically go through the missions shooting various enemies, solving some small puzzles, fighting bosses, and then watching some long cutscenes that progress the story before going into another mission. To solve puzzles, you sometimes have to change into another personality. In Killer 7, the main character has 6 other personalities, (7 total,) 6 of which are selectable during the levels. Each personality has their own special weapon and skill. The game often supplies hints about when to change to a different personality, and going to the map will show you exactly which personality will be needed for any given puzzle. Overall, puzzles are fairly painless, although there are a couple annoying ones towards the end of the game.

Killer 7's a very fun game, and at times I found it to be even better than Resident Evil 4, particularly because Killer 7 actually offers a strong storyline, which Resident Evil 4, unfortunately, did not.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of gameplay flaws. For one thing, Killer 7 gets off to a very rough start. They throw you immediately into a mission, and this mission is tough. It's a very long mission, there are a few annoying puzzles in there too. It's a very poor representation of the rest of the game, and I wouldn't be surprised if many people who rent this game simply give up during this mission. You will also be fairly clueless at the start of the game until you listen to the tutorial, which is always available in save rooms, and there's a save room right at the start of the game. Unfortunately, this tutorial is pretty terrible. Listening to it is an EXTREMELY long process, since the guy who tells you what to do speaks extremely slowly, and you must get each tidbit of info one by one. Many gamers will simply avoid this tutorial after only reading some of his advice, which is a bad move, since they will miss many important facts about gameplay. You just have to tough it out and listen to this 20 minute tutorial that ultimately makes a very simple game seem much more complicated than it is. The plot, similarly, doesn't begin until AFTER this first mission, which is unfortunate, since gamers who give up during the first mission will literally have no idea what they're missing.

Another flaw is the way Killer 7 handles getting a Game Over. When you die, you don't lose your progress. You simply select Garcian, your lead personality, whose job it is to revive a fallen character. He ends up at your last save point. You walk to the dead character, revive him or her, and then the character is back at the save point. (Although if Garcian dies, it's Game Over.) This feature is great during gameplay, since you can often do A LOT between save points, and it would suck to get a game over an loose all that progress. However, when at bosses, nothing's more annoying than dying AGAIN on a boss, and having to have a character start at the save point, walk to the boss, revive the fallen character, then walk THAT character back to the boss....it's just a bit frustrating and time-consuming in situations like this. Bosses should have simply had the option of a "retry" feature.

The other flaw with the gameplay is that towards the end, it starts to get a bit repetitive. You do a lot of shooting in this game, and while there are very many varieties of the enemy, it just gets somewhat repetitive, and the levels towards the end of the game start to rely too much on "collecting" quests. Luckily, the game ends before I got sick of it. This is a surprisingly long game. At least 15 hours. While it's difficult to tell exactly how long the game is, (unlike many games, Killer 7 does not have a timer that says how many hours you've played the game for,) I'd say from 12-20 hours seems about accurate. The game feels extremely short, though. Or, at least, it did for me. This is the type of game where I lost track of the time as I played it.

While a small feeling of repetition stops this game from beating Resident Evil 4's awesome gameplay, Killer 7 is a worthy opponent. Killer 7 presents a real storyline, and offers plenty of innovation. Anyone who liked Resident Evil 4's "stop-and-shoot" gameplay has a great chance of really liking Killer 7 as well. (Just don't judge the game by its first mission.)

Sound- The music is appropriate for each area, and while it's more background music than anything, it does a good job, and there aren't really any annoying tracks. The voice acting is fairly decent. Although very B-movie, (as is much of the dialogue) they definitely got some good talent, and you will recognize a couple of the voices if you play many RPG's or happen to watch animation. The sound effects, (such as the shrieking laugh that plays often to tell you that enemies are in the area,) is very important to gameplay, but really can get annoying after a while.

Plot- Killer 7's got one hell of a strange plot. It takes place in the present time, but is not like our present time at all. In Killer 7, all terrorism has been stopped, or so the people thought. Heaven Smile, a strange terrorist organization, bombed a UN peace conference, and the Killer 7, an assassin with 7 personalities, is hired to deal with this group. He's hired by an old man in a wheelchair, who gives out the missions. The plot basically unfolds from there. It's never overly focused, but it becomes very interesting towards the end, and the ending, I thought, was very well done. (Although an epilogue that followed seemed a bit pointless and kind of ruined the mood of the game's original ending.) Overall, it's a very interesting storyline. I wish more shooters had attempted this. Gameplay-wise, this game isn't always perfect, but it's the plot and the whole presentation that pushes Killer 7 into the "8" range instead of the "7" range.

Killer 7's a very unique, very stylish, and very weird game. If you liked Resident Evil 4, (or other games similar to that,), you really should give Killer 7 a try. It's got not only solid gameplay, but a very interesting storyline, and very cool anime cutscenes. The whole game really adds up to be worth a purchase, especially at its reduced price. I hope Capcom manages to find some success with this game, because it would suck to see all this hard work and creativity go to waste.

Content Advisory; Killer 7 is a very violent game, and I would not recommend it to anyone younger than 13. If you are between the ages of 13 and 17, whether you should play this game or not should depend on your ability to handle graphic violence and strong language. While the F-word is rarely used during the game's cutscenes, it is heard during gameplay very often. A few characters drop the F-bomb every time they shoot the enemy in its target, which will end up being extremely often over the course of the game. The game contains some references to various sexual activities, and a somewhat mild sex scene with a fully clothed woman sitting on a fully clothed man's lap. (This scene really has been made into a bigger deal than it deserved to be by Florida lawyer Jack Thompson, who demanded the game be pulled from shelves. But I guess for a game like this, any publicity's good publicity.)

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/30/05, Updated 12/12/08

Game Release: Killer7 (US, 07/07/05)