Killer7 Review

The game's been out for a while and I did say I'd do a post about this a couple of days ago, so here goes. This game has received mixed reviews because of the amount of people that were expecting another type of game. Even though the game has been announced as being a rail shooter, a lot of people bought it thinking it was a first person shooter(FPS). And an FPS this is not.

First of all, Killer7 is all about style. The soundtrack, the art direction, the characters themselves, everything in the game was created with a lot of style. The game itself looks like a pretty animated comic book. The cell shading in this game complements the twisted story and fits the game quite well. Instead of using a lot of detailed textures like some other cell shaded games, this one uses very simple textures, which helps in keeping the comic book style. The death animations of the Heaven Smiles are pretty neat as well, making them disperse pile of blood spheres that streams accross the screen to your character. Everything is followed by some pretty good Sound FX and a very good soundtrack. Also don't forget the nice anime videos made by J.C. Staff that you will see during some levels.

The gameplay is what you'd expect of a rail shooter. Except you also have a 3rd person mode to run along the different paths of the levels where you'll solve the puzzles and find more Heaven Smiles. The 3rd person mode is pretty straight forward, hold A and you'll go forward, press B and you'll turn around. When you do know Heaven Smiles are nearby, you need to hold the R trigger to go in first person mode and that's when the fun begins. You have to press the L trigger to scan the area and be able to see the heaven smiles. Once that's done, you have to kill them before they reach you, and the easiest way to do so is to shoot their weak point. The weak point is visible as a yellow spot in one of the enemy's limbs. If you shoot the weak spot, it's dead. Every character has different weapon, and the ammo is unlimited. You will have to reload the clips though.

You collect two types of blood from the enemies, thin blood and thick blood. Thin blood is used to heal yourself during the level and to use charged up shots. Thick blood is used to create serum to upgrade your characters. Upgrading your characters makes them shoot faster, more accurately and also makes it easier to hit the critical parts of the enemies. Some characters have different upgrades than others, but the basics are power, speed, waver and criticals. When you level up those, you sometimes unlock abilities to help you kill hollows like counters and down attacks. Each character has a special skill that makes him invaluable for the different puzzles. In fact, some puzzles can only be completed when using certain characters.

Now to talk a bit about the story. I'm not gonna spoil anything, as it would make the game much less fun to play. The Killer7 are contract killers that are lead by Harman Smith. His right hand man Harman is the only one who speaks to him, and he is also the one receiving the different assignments from Mills. On assignments, Gracian can change to any of the other personalities at any time. The individual personalities each has their story, and you will learn about them through the game. You will also meet other characters that will show up regularly, like Travis who will help you along the way and the annoying Izawaru who will give you hints as you progress through the level. The story is hard to follow at first, but once you reach the final chapter, it starts falling in together and you will learn what you need to know about the story.

All in all, this is a good game. It has it's challenges, and the puzzles aren't too hard. I would definetely recommend this game, at least as a rental. This game is not for everyone though, so I'd say to only buy it if you enjoy these rail shooter type games or if you like collecting cool looking things.