Many years ago, Dara O’Briain did one of the only good standup routines about video games. Video games, O’Briain argued, are the only entertainment medium that actively tests the observer, withholding their content behind challenges of mentality and dexterity. Albums, television shows and films will carry on regardlessly from the moment you press play; sections of a book that prove hard to read can be flipped past; but challenging sections of a game have to be bested or even mastered in order to progress. Want to see what happens next in Dark Souls, but can’t beat the Capra Demon? Too bad. Heard that Through Time and Space is one of the best video game levels ever, but can’t grapple with The Witcher’s inventory management and combat systems? Tough shit.

While there’s an amusing honesty to the bit, it kinda belies an uncomfortable truth about video games - that the parts where you’re moving the joysticks are likely to be the only moments of intellectual stimulation that most video games have to offer, with cutscenes more or less functioning as rewarding soap opera spectacle. It’s hard to discuss this kind of thing without sounding like a wanker, but it’s just a fact that even prestigious “adult” game-fiction like The Last of Us or God of War still rarely stirs anything more than an acknowledging “huh” in the players who’ve deigned to step outside the cultural borders of electronic entertainment and other mainstream media. Games narratives still tend to rely on cinematic cutscenes to convey information and drama, and most of the time said information or metatext is barely worth parlaying to the player - $10 million spent on comic book writers telling us “man is the real monster” or “depression is bad”. At their very best, our prestige video games are still just doing replicas of better movies.

killer7 differentiates itself from this convention in a number of ways. It’s a game that makes no concessions for those who expect a linear, event-driven narrative, peppering weirdo pseudo-plot and thought throughout map layouts, door keys (ever thought about what the Soul Shells are?) and helpful hints from dudes in gimpsuits who are prone to taking left turns into Baudrillardian philosophy while directing you to the bathroom. Textual and subtextual ambiguity reigns supreme. The gameplay (on Medium, at least) is unlikely to challenge the player all that much - aside from a few head-scratcher puzzles, it’s more or less a case of walking from point of interest to point of interest to open doors and shoot zombies. And, in a strange inversion of the problem outlined above, it’s the cutscenes and character dialogues that will tax a player’s brain far harder than anything that involves clicking buttons.

I think killer7 is a work of profound ridiculousness. Or ridiculous profundity. Something like that, anyway - I’m not quite sure of the precise term I need here, but I think Suda and Mikami are pulling from the playbooks of guys like Thomas Pynchon and David Lynch with this game - keep throwing potentially meaningful ideas and images at the screen, both within and outwith the realm of the cutscene, and let the true ones stick - the viewer will be too busy grappling with the good to remember the bad. It’s a technique that surprisingly few games dabble in, despite the supernatural properties of the medium and the obnoxious, inhuman lengths that most games require a player to play for.

So what are the good images here? Well, I guess it’s a function of the temporal, political and personal preferences of the player. Like abstract paintings, surrealist movies and post-modern novels, killer7 is wholly open to interpretation through your own kaleidoscopic lens. Unlike most game narratives that more or less bluntly prescribe a story and some associated themes (if any at all), killer7, like most Suda games, seems content to spray blood against the walls and do some interactive Rorschach testing with your psyche. Sure, there’s talk of American-Japanese relations and terrorism and borders and killers and the valise of our personae, but there’s nothing proscriptive or particularly didactic here - it’s more or less a presentation of post-9/11 realities that the player is asked to order and interpret as they see fit; a balancing act of feelings versus facts in opposition with fictions. Hand in killer7, the companion book for killer7, even (deliberately?) contradicts the facts of its own reality within the first ten pages - as if to highlight how pointless an endeavour Making Sense of it All is, especially in our Fukuyama/Fisher-influenced End of Capitalist-Realist History-Present.

By complete coincidence, I played through this game in parallel with the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, and finished it on the same day she was convicted - so Target 03: Encounter (Part 2) - where the Killer 7 head to an Epstein-pre-Epstein prescient-simulacra of Little James Island to take out an organ trader and implied child molester - held particular relevancy to me. The Jeffrey Epstein case and its relevant co-conspiracies are probably the best examples of what I’m prattling on about above - get ten, twenty, or a hundred people in a room together, and you’ll probably get a hundred interpretations of what the inner sanctum of Epstein’s reality really was - a whole smoothie bar of blended facts, news, fake news, Facebook news, speculation, fiction, fact and fuck knows what else. killer7 is often lumped together with The Silver 2425 as part of the “Kill the Past” series, and I think this info-meld of history in the melting pot of public consciousness is one of the chief relationships the games have with each other. Ironic that games about removing the past would so thoroughly realise the future of our present.

How did Suda51 know that the word’s top players would conspire to send an assassin after a sanctioned private ally of the United States government, a living evil who trafficked young girls with both personal and ulterior purpose? And how did he know a global pandemic would (temporarily) return humanity to a road-faring race? As is often suggested with Suda51 (see also: The Silver Case, No More Heroes) he may be one of gaming’s top producers of prophetic works. “Prophetic media” has been in vogue since March 2020 - references to media-elite paedophile rings in mid-2000s Nickelodeon cartoons; references to coronavirus in mid-2010s K-Dramas; references to Tom Hanks getting sick in mid-1990s episodes of The Simpsons. Wow! How do they pull it off?! Well, as with killer7’s imagery, I think it may be down to volume of produce rather than accuracy of content. The Simpsons is able to predict so much shit correctly because every ‘incorrect’ prediction isn’t even recognised as a prediction until it comes close to resembling some form of the truth we want it to be. The same applies to the images that Grasshopper’s games create.

Is this the secret to making remarkable, meaningful art and cultural commentary? Just keep producing, producing, producing until your images become resonant by virtue of the typewriter-monkey principle? That’s maybe underselling what Grasshopper achieved here - the foundations killer7 are built upon are more or less rock-solid. The cel-shaded mono-colour aesthetic is timeless, and the chosen palette for each Target is fittingly eerie. The control system, while initially awkward, is ultimately a solid compromise for a game that distills a gameplay fusion between Mikami’s Resident Evil series and Suda’s Silver Case adventure games - and it feels even better on PC, where 90% of the game can be played with just the mouse.

Although often cited as unconventional, I think the gameplay style of killer7 is a fairly logical compromise for these two creators, who seem more concerned with tone poetry and 2000s-exploration than providing a compelling and practical gamefeel. Anyway, it’s sometimes more important that a game feels good in the brain than on the hands moving the controller. killer7 is a game that locks its content away inside your mind, with progress often being made many hours after you’ve stepped away from the console and allowed your third eye time to process the images your two eyes have seen. It’s all in your head.

Master.
I shit my pants.
I shit my pants really bad.
Stinky.
In the name of Harman...

"You ever meet the kind of people that log into this backloggd website? These dudes, have got energy to SPARE. we're talking guys who beat off four times a day!!" haha gotcha nerd okay but please read the rest of my review

Maybe it has to do with having finished it literally four minutes ago but i'm so fuckin HIGH on this game dude. This is my first Suda51 game and I've been told for years by The Internet to expect it to be hostile, wacky nonsense, so obtuse as to be meaningless; stylish but shallow; and to top it all off a bad, experimental shooter with weird controls and boring design.

Instead I found a relatively straightforward game that is densely packed with imagery and ideas but also loudly shouts a lot of what it wants to say at you. I mean, if you talk to every npc then the game is constantly sitting you down for these huge exposition dumps that either detail the state of a bizarre (and, frankly, very funny) alternate history or have a character just tell you "HEY MAN THIS IS THE THEME OF THIS LEVEL."

And despite really clicking with the shooting and puzzle solving here I DID stop and talk to Travis and Iwazaru and everybody else whenever I got the chance to because this game does have a lot to say!

It's a game about America's imperial relationship with Japan and the immutable cycle of violence that has erupted from that relationship and countless similar ones throughout history; how it's very cool to say Fuck a lot; a game about agency, who has it, its value in a society where greater forces overpower and dominate us as individuals beyond our capacity to ever resist, and the philosophical importance of individualism in the face of that futility; how guns make cool sounds when you shoot them; how luchadores are fucking rad (they are); and, to some degree, a game about how you're kind of a dumb nerd for trying to read all this shit into it and hey what if shit just LOOKED COOL and SOUNDED GOOD

and the game looks fucking cool and sounds really fucking good

i simply cannot overstate how absolutely incredible every aspect of the presentation of this game is, from the visuals to the music to the sound effects to the editing to the direction to the introduction of different animation studios to match the tone of the stories for individual chapters are you fucking kidding me??? in 2018 cory barlog said "what if our game emulated one long take for no reason and looked like shit" and we were pumping this shit out in 2005???? What happened to us????????

I haven't played anything this funny or cool or thoughtful or electrifying in what feels like a long time. It's my first Suda51 game and now I can't wait to dive into more.

"But will anything change? You expect some revolution? Well, a dog can't do shit. Has a dying country ever created anything worth its salt?"

You open the door and hear the telltale giggle of Heaven Smile off in the distance.

Take aim.

Shoot.

Reload.

Turn the corner.

Another Heaven Smile.

Take aim. Rinse. Repeat.

Killer7 is a 2005 railshooter/adventure game about the titular Killer7, a group of assassins hired by the U.S. Government to foil a plot by the UN to place the world under Japanese rule; while also dealing with a rouge terrorist faction of mutant suicide bombers known as the Heaven Smiles. What ensues is a political drama the likes of which defies all explanation honestly. In between discussions about Japan's lack of autonomy as a nation, the long-lasting ramifications American imperialism has had on it's allies, and the cyclical nature of conflict, there's shootouts with an anime girl cosplayer, bullet headbutting, and a chapter dedicated to a super sentai hitsquad. It's this delicate balancing act between the absurd and the profound that makes Killer7 so inherently compelling.

The on-rails control scheme is somewhat obtuse but once you can get used to it you will find one of the most audibly rewarding games you will ever play. The sound design in Killer7 is top-notch: guns sound incredible to fire, the ambient background noises in each level really sell the mood of each location, the telltale laugh of a Heaven Smile is masterfully mixed, letting you know exactly where and how close they are to your location. That little guitar lick that plays every time a puzzle is solved? It's better than sex! It's an utterly engrossing experience that must be played to be believed. Every single sound has been hand-crafted to feel incredibly satisfying to hear, it's insane!

Killer7 is a game that I know I'll still be thinking about for a while. It's a culturally relevant game that burns with indignant anger at the world and it's ways, at the constant empty promises of change, and at the lingering, faceless, agency-lacking shadow of a nation left behind due to the actions of men who do not know how to curb their excess.

"Harman, the world won't change. All it does is turn."

I've been sitting here just honestly trying to figure out how best to put words to this game after finally finishing it with my girlfriend. There's just nothing like Killer7. Even the few things I've played Suda was involved with post Killer7 aren't like Killer7. Killer7 is Killer7.

Killer7 has dug its way deep into my core and deeply affected me. Like taking some mishmashes of Resident Evil and older adventure games to create something so wild to tell a story this all over and about shit like the US war machine and its consequences with our allied nations (especially Japan), the CIA and government in general doing shady shit and selling people "the American Dream" ad nauseum while committing another warcrime atrocity at a country not too far away that has a resource that shithead fascists want, the way that art speaks to reality which speaks back into art with a cyclical kind of neverending spiral.

It's crazy, it's bombastic, it's fuckin special. Everything about this game, aesthetically, emotionally, textually just fuckin meshes together so perfectly. Every aspect of this was just going so absolutely perfectly. The sound design, the music, the aesthetics, the gameplay is so considered fuck.

The personalities and quirks of the titular 7 shine so spectacularly as a result. Everything about this game oozes charm, pizazz, style and depth that outside of the context of a video game just wouldn't work the same way at all. Even apparently unfinished it still strikes as hard and as strongly at all of its aspirations that it is trying to.

It leaves so much for you to take in, interpret and sit with and I absolutely adore that for it. I didn't get everything within Killer7. The second playthrough I end up doing for a video will probably help some things I missed better click into place. But even with the things I didn't fully get or understand, so much of it clicked to such a perfect degree. This game just settles in the brain as a true fuckin standout, a once in a lifetime experience. It may not be for everybody but to me I will always see it as an absolute achievement that this team constructed together.

I wish I could play this for the first time again. This is fuckin kino.

It's amazing how much you can get done with just a little bit of unconventionality, isn't it? Killer7 dares to take the mere act of walking from one place to another and render it unrecognizable. What's usually a two-stick process is now mapped almost entirely to the "A" button, denying the player control over both the camera and the path your character takes. This game's tutorial mission scrambled my brain- not because walking is at all complicated, but because it's such a radically different approach from everything else I've played that I couldn't comprehend it at first. Hardly ever being responsible for the direction that your Smith goes in makes it that much more difficult to create a mental map of the area, even when frequently consulting the actual in-game map. Trying to decipher spacial layouts in Killer7 is as tricky as trying to decipher the game's overarching plot, and I often found myself stopping to take aim when there weren't any enemies around just for a more orthodox camera perspective. And, clearly, this was a deliberate trap. In the collective mind of the Smith syndicate, the world only makes sense when viewed through the scope of a rifle, a detail that's communicated entirely through gameplay and embellished through audiovisuals. The simple geometry and basic color gradients of every environment seem to mock you, claiming that they're not as complicated as you think they are, and the haunting laugh of every Heaven's Smile adds that extra bit of disorientation. Given how effective this one facet of the game is, then, it's such a shame that the rest of it is just so conventional. I shoot enemies in their glowing weak spots. I solve puzzles that I'm given the answers to. I'm never tasked with managing the mutual vitality of the Killer7, nor do I even choose my Smith based on the situation that I find myself in. Conforming to the standard structure of ending most levels with a boss battle is the most poorly considered of these decisions, as the lack of any mobility whatsoever means they're all simultaneously painful yet far too easy. The one exception is Andrei Ulmeyda, who represents an exciting chase through an arena that was actually built to take advantage of how moving around works. Ulmeyda Intercity, in general, seems to have been lifted from a much more cleverly designed game, mainly due to how it reevaluates how horror should operate in the context of Killer7. It's pretty unconventional for a game's scariest level to be its least confined, isn't it? Unfortunately, this game isn't all that weird, despite how desperately it wants to convince you otherwise. Samantha, for instance, abstractly transitions between various erotic fantasies and/or stages of adolescence whenever you see her, and only allows you to save your game when she's an adult-slash-French-maid. Leaving such a vital part of the game to an unreliable character is a stroke of genius, especially when you consider how much of a relief finally reaching a safe zone in a stressful game can end up being, but it's all rendered pointless by the fact that the map tells you where you can and can't save, allowing you to ignore Samantha's whims entirely while planning your path. But, I suspect, fans of this game will consider any non-thematic analysis of Killer7 to be equally pointless. I won't pretend to be smart enough to fully get what Suda is ultimately grasping at, though I will say that fate and control are far and away some of the least interesting themes for video games to cover, even back in 2005. Nor will I pretend to care all that much- thematically rich or not, the game's still boring, and in my eyes, anything that demands a deeper look is obligated to contain more replay value, not less. I've almost certainly only been made dumber by the amount of times I've heard Leon S. Kennedy's corny one-liners, but I'm not sure if I'll ever return to this (according to Suda acolytes) incredibly intellectually rewarding work. For better or worse, I no longer get that DS feeling...

"Master! We're in a tight spot!"

Man, I'm so disappointed. Not in the sense that Killer7 fell short of expectations or that it failed to meet them, that there has never been a game that feels interesting and unique, to which I can't seem to play. Born from the Capcom 5, Killer7 is nothing more than a weird and feverish cult classic born from the spirit of Suda himself. The Kill the Past series, or what I've played so far, is so innovative in itself. Flower, Sun and Rain, for example, unmistakably changed what it meant to be a walking simulator and had the story to tell the message to destroy the burden of your past. The mundane loop and gameplay , though tedious at first, hits slow and the game ends with one of Suda's strongest works in an outstanding series.

And Killer7?

I honestly don't know, I'm having a hard time getting anywhere far in the game. Weird Rail shooter/survival-horror-esque gameplay is probably not my thing. I don't like doing pausing and having to take my shots anxiously, I've always assumed this game to have fast and smoother action. The puzzles, in my opinion, do not match my assumed mood of Killer7. Weird, must-haves of survival horror are known their puzzles, Silent Hill 2, Resident Evil the works..I don't know, maybe I'll go back and try playing this. This is not a review or criticism of itself, in fact you should go install it and at least try it now. Just frustration that I can't seem to enjoy it as much as I wanted to. It sucks, everything surrounding the game is captivating and it tries to draw you in, but god it's a challenge to see this game's wonders. Just sadness, but nothing but respect for this title. Unsurprisingly, one of most bizarre works by Grasshopper and a style, direction and story that can never be replicated again. There will never be anything again like Killer7.

Except Hopper7.

Or Killer8.

"In the name of Harman..."

How can a game be so mindboggling, charming, terrifying, frustrating, and intriguing at the same time? I don't even know myself, but the way killer7 can be all of these things and still serve as a completely fresh experience is beyond me.

Just playing this game is an absolute joy, while also being a nightmare as well. At first, the odd control scheme can throw people off at first. I mean, how would a game where you press one button to move be interesting? But as you finish that same first chapter, it feels like second nature, and has engraved its way into your muscle memory.
The sound design is absolutely chilling as well. The Heaven Smiles have devious laughs, sounding childish, but also very creepy in a way. There were too many times where their shrieks caught me off guard, and even made me jump out of my chair sometimes. But you know what's even better than hearing the smiles?

Killing them. Never has shooting something with a gun ever felt so natural, so addicting. At many times, it feels like ecstasy. The voices of the Smiths add to this as well. For a GameCube game, the voice acting is phenomenal. Hearing classic lines like:

"This is too easy..."

"Fuck You!"

"Son of a bitch..."

"Hurts, doesn't it?"

God, it sends chills down my spine every single time.

There are way too many confusing elements in this game, and I think that adds to its overall fear factor. The story has many gripping moments that will have you baffled but also enticed, the fact that you can barely see the heaven smiles until you scan the room for them adds a nice layer of dread while moving through the buildings, the many ghosts you find throughout the game with their jumbled up speech patterns are - interesting to say the least, the visceral cel-shaded visuals that have quite a simple look to it, these all just make the game so chilling and unsettling to playthrough, but they also just add to the game's uniqueness and hook you on to its freaky vibes even more.

I could go on about this game - the story (especially near the end) is a big clusterfuck containing politics, (and it's a big shame it was never fully finished) the bosses are really awesome, there's just too much to say about it. I'm kinda sad there's no other game like this, but I'm also glad there isn't, because this is one that will definitely stick with me for a very, very long time. wow.

This has been a long time coming. I've always called myself a Gamecube ride or die, and yet I've never touched any of the essential games that were part of the Capcom 5 (well, 4 in the end). Of course, most of the games in the Capcom 4 ended up not actually being exclusive Gamecube games, but they're still very important to the console's DNA and style, and I feel bad for neglecting to play any of them up until now. At the same time, the release of No More Heroes 3 this year, along with me joining this website and seeing all the people I follow who deeply admire Suda51, has caused me to go on my own Kill the Past journey through his catalog. Before this year, if you asked me how I felt about his games, I would probably say something like "they're probably good but not for me". But now, at my 500th game played on Backloggd (let's pretend this is the case and it's not actually the 501st), there's no doubt that these games are extremely For Me.

Now so far I've spent this review not talking about the game and that's because I'm kind of intimidated by the idea of doing so. I don't just wanna sit here going "the themes are good and the graphics are nice", something as incredibly dense as this deserves more than that obviously, which is why I'm thankful for the people I follow and their great reviews of this game. Like previous Suda games, there's a lot of details to get lost in, different factions and figures with different interests all coming to head, a fully-realized world just as complicated and really only slightly more absurd than ours. No one really tells you exactly what is happening or why, and that's because they have their own interests to protect and people to control. Its commentary on the war on terror and international relations, specifically that of the U.S and Japan, remains sharp and unmatched, and it also has a lot of characters doing really cool stuff and saying cool shit.

Like The Silver Case, the way this game played felt so different to me at first that I almost considered dropping it. It's not just the unique control scheme and on-rails movement, but all the different terminology and mechanics thrown at you, the whole cast of characters just kind of dropped on your lap with their own unique abilities. The game provides tutorials, but you have to read them yourself, and there is a lot of reading. It's intimidating, but I understand that the team behind this game probably thought having to go through a prolonged tutorial at the beginning of the game for every single thing in the game might have been a bit much and would have broken the pace of the first level and any other level with new mechanics. The thing is, after the first level the whole process of this game became second nature to me. Like, to the point that I would go to other games and hold A to go forward.

Previous Suda games have been so not-action that it's a very pleasant surprise to get to this game and actually really enjoy the action here. It never stopped being tense, the process of entering a new room, hearing a laugh, pulling out your gun to scan for anyone in the room and reacting quickly to whatever enemies appear. Despite always having a good amount of blood vials to recover health, it's very easy to get combo'd by two or three Smiles to death, and it honestly gets pretty terrifying at points. When you scan only to find an enemy three feet away from you, or one of them hauling ass from behind you and you stop them right before they hit, it legit got me as good as an actual horror game would hope to. It doesn't help they let out an incredibly loud scream right before they blow up in your face.

I really love the blood system in this game and how it encourages play that I would normally avoid. In order to level up your characters and have blood vials to recover health, you need to kill enemies. Not just kill them though, but find their exact weak point, which usually requires some precise aiming and distancing from the enemy. It all really comes together in a beautiful way, and it helps that every character is honestly useful and worth keeping alive and leveling up. Characters I wrote off as being uninterested in like Con ended up proving themselves very helpful and fun later on. I also really like the way levels will give you only a certain combinations of Smiths to start off with, which also encourages trying out guys you may have looked over, and being able to unlock other characters serves as a good reward for performing well as those characters. It becomes pretty clear as the game goes on that Dan is easily the most powerful and will probably be most people's preferred choice, especially as he gets upgraded, but I never really wrote off the other characters. Also, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with one character being better than others in a single player game, in real life there are lot's of people better than me so it makes sense. (Side note: I think the solution to Donkey Kong 64's character management problem would have been to make it like Killer7's. Obviously this game came after that so it's a dumb suggestion, but I couldn't help but think about it).

Visually, this game is unmatched. Every part of it looks immaculate, and the use of fixed camera angles is genius. I've realized as time goes on that games with fixed-camera angles weren't like that by accident, it wasn't because they didn't figure out how to be Mario 64, it's that it allowed deliberate camera movement and composition. I have a new found appreciation for it. While I'm talking about presentation I might as well bring up how good the voice acting is, because I think it's incredible. I feel like this is the kind of game that if it released now the voice acting would be a lot more generic and more typical of Japanese games with English dubs, but the performances and cast here is perfect for this game. Just going through the character select TV and hearing each Smith's voice line is enough to prove this.

At this point I'm just saying obvious shit. "The music is good", "The gibberish voices are good", "The use of different art styles in different chapters is fun", "I want to own every Travis shirt", it's all been said and done. But seriously, playing this game was a level of pure enjoyment I haven't had in a while, I tried to stretch out my time with it as much as I could because I didn't want it to be over. It's good to know I'm still able to have these sorts of experiences with a game.

what does it mean to be a creator? well, obviously it’s to make a work, something that is yours. but, what defines the line between being a creator or not? as a (self proclaimed) photographer i question, am i a creator? i create photos but i do not necessarily create the world within the confines of the photo. being able to maximize the impact of said world within the limits of a photograph is what i believe to be a key part of being a photographer.

bound by the chains of corporate demands and strict time windows, suda had the vision, the world. all that was needed was mikami to metaphorically snap the photo, and capture suda’s visions in the most substantially compelling way possible.

photographers are as much creators as a painter or musician is. they may not be the direct source for what they produce, but what artist is? everyone has influences and points of reference for their work. photographers have… just a much larger reference is all, a pre-painted canvas if you will, where they can do what they see fit with this canvas to create.

all that was left was the final touch, a soundtrack to accompany this creation. like how memories and stories can extrinsically loom in a photograph, a soundtrack looms throughout a video game. takada is, putting it bluntly, a damn genius when it comes to this field. he knows exactly the right drum beat, the right guitar riff that can emotionally intensify a scene.

im not going to go into what killer7 means in-and-of itself, rather what it means as a work, a creation. to explain what in the fuck goes on in this game is fruitless, much like suda’s prior works honestly. the thrill of kill the past is in its absurdity and broad ideologies, both never ceasing to be thought provoking in one way or another. there’s an endless amount of perspectives you could assume to try and narrow down what it all means, but personally i find it almost futile. don’t get me wrong i love discussing suda’s works in the context of their deeper meanings, although honestly i’m okay knowing i don’t completely understand games like flower sun and rain, 25th ward, and killer7. people are typically infatuated with what they do not comprehend, and are infatuated with wanting to comprehend. i am infatuated with suda because of his willingness to deliberately create something that people won’t comprehend. that itself i respect and it’s always a treat when these incomprehensible creations end up becoming flat out masterpieces.

and now it is complete. through the collaborative genius at grasshopper manufacture, an overwhelmingly artistic work both before and ahead of its time has been created. killer7 is both dated and timeless; both the worst, and best video game ever made. a game such as this will never be created ever again.

i’ve spent the past few minutes rereading what i’ve written thus far wondering how to conclude this concisely in a manner that ties everything together. it’s hard. i was thinking of talking about the gameplay but everybody knows the gameplay. everybody knows that no matter what, the instant bloody combustion of a heaven smile always feels good, and that the sounds that accompany the firing and reloading of your weapon always feel good. killer7 feels good.

i’ve realized that killer7 doesn’t really conclude and nothing ties together, but that’s the beauty of it. you’re left satisfied despite this, left with ideas and thoughts that boil. and they will continue to boil. killer7 will never end. as long as video games exist, killer7 will always have the last laugh.

The day he stops smiling is the day we remember his smile.

when you think about video games, reducing the form to the most simple level, it will be an experience where you press a button and things happen on screen: it's the so-called interactivity. when you think about buttons, the most important one, the one that is buried deep into your mind, next to some pop music from the 2000s that you listened to a lot as a kid but don’t remember the name and don’t want to (the magic will be gone!) is the “action button”, the button where your character or the game cursor or whatever is the representation of your actions in that world, does the most iconic mechanical thing he can do. you jump with “A” on super mario bros., is also the button which you select things on menu. is the most important button on that game -- not because the others doesn’t matter, you need to walk and run, but because is the button that defines the most important thing about super mario: mario jumps, we like mario because he jumps, we like mario because it feels good seeing him jumping with all his inertia through an alice in wonderland-like level, falling into the head of a apparently-innocent-goomba. perhaps we like mario because he kills? i don’t know, and it doesn’t matter either!

in killer7, your “action button” -- A, on the gamecube -- is the button which you walk and shoot. run and gun. movements and kills. the 2005 goichi suda’s masterpiece is a “on-rails” videogame -- not exactly what you expect from it, since you do move the character on this game, but your exploration is limited to where the game allows you to be, with options to go to corners and rooms popping up on screen and you, of course, selecting where you want to go with the action button. yes, you do utilize the other buttons a lot as well: there’s the R button, where you change the perspective of your character to first person in order to kill enemies, but not before you press the L button to scan them. you choose the place you want to shoot movementing the control stick, that is also used to choose things in the game in general. but still, the most important button is the one that you use to do what an assassin should do: localize yourself in a field and kill enemies. the game is so focused in letting you feel the viscerality of being an assassin and fighting biological terrorist weapons (heaven smiles) that don’t let you go to places you don’t have to, you just need to concentrate, to don’t let your guard down, doing what the game wants you to do. doing what the government wants you to do.

the group “killer7” is a group of assassins (or better, a multi-personality-body-something) leadered by harman smith, ordered to do the “dirty job” to the usa government under the covers, in a age where, until the heaven smiles appeared, world peace has been achieved. of course there is some questions about the validity of the usa, as well as a whole west vs east fight. the thing is: the usa, the country, can explode japan or any other country with, guess what, an “action button”. is a country to have fear of, if you think well, they have nuclear weapons, they have the most powerful marine, they are the most powerful country. and with a simple button they can explode a whole other one. politics are just like videogames: you have a lot of mechanics and tools, but there’s one, acessible with a simple button, that is the most important of all of them and, oh boy, can do a lot of damage.

the “action button” is also the button where you press the trigger of the gun. to what? to kill the enemy. what is the enemy? the past. killer7 is a videogame where the past always haunts you -- the ones you killed appear as “remnant psyches”, giving you advice or thanking you for killing them: they are no longer stuck in the past, they are free to move forward. even in politics, if you don’t kill the past, you will probably turn into a fascist. so what are you waiting for? kill the past, jump over the age, they say. press the “action button” to begin the game. press the “action button” to move. press the “action button” to shoot. press the “action button” to kill. kill the heaven smiles. give me blood! blood thirsty. oh no dan is dead, press the “action button” to revive him - give it life! press the “action button” to kill. kill the past.

killer7 may be the first game where I've actively sought out analysis of the plot and themes beyond just basic examinations; it reminded me a lot of NGE where it's pretty digestible once you lock down the core concepts but still rich enough to make exploring various interpretations worthwhile. part of this is because of how the game expresses its ideas both from a modern political context as well as a timeless, cyclical myth. on top of all of that, it's a fun adventure/light gun game in its own right thanks to having a consistent design language and an expansive amount of hints. suda has called this his crowning achievement, and in a lot of ways I think this may be a perfect expression of his narrative ideas with his unorthodox gameplay design.

it's hard to go over the plot without getting into spoiler territory, but I'll try my best. the plot details the affable combat between a set of idle demigods who frequently dabble in world politics. meanwhile, around the turn of the millennium, a new semi-communal world order is established that cements continual peace and anti-terror initiatives within the tight grasp of US hegemony. as a new sect of spiritually-enhanced suicide bombers (the Heaven Smiles) begin wracking havoc across the world and as japanese political forces convene to secede as an independent nation, the US government influences paranormal assassins Killer7 (also known as the Smith Syndicate) to intervene on the side of pro-globalist japanese operatives to promote US interests. in a series of vignettes in the middle of the game, Killer7 are tasked with continuing to deal with downstream effects of their prior operation as well as previous US overreach both public and private. as the game draws to a close, the true nature of the powers of Killer7 are revealed to its members as well as their long-reaching ties to political apparatuses within america.

an interpretation I'd like to discuss is the messaging on east-west relations presented in the game. while the context is lopsided (both in-game and in parallels to the US's vulgar displays of foreign power irl), I don't see this as a game explicitly singling out the evils of western powers over those of eastern ones. I originally had this interpretation myself until I reached the ending, upon which I realized the futility and perpetuity of conflict between sides as presented in the final scenes. with that in mind, the game uses a real-life context familiar to those of the early 21st century (a single global superpower and an exceedingly violent anti-terror movement) to contextualize an evergreen tale of nations jockeying for supremacy. the game does an expert job of dissecting the death drive the individuals involved have for power at any cost. virtually every character is deeply entwined in the existing power structures, and those who are not desperately claw their way into new ones (see Ulmeyda's cult/corporation during the Cloudman episode). the mortals and their grasps at legacy, relevance, and pleasure contrast nicely with the reincarnated demigods who walk among them and absent-mindedly reorient the world order at will in a sort of "long dark tea-time of the soul" to pull a phrase from douglas adams. this is all not to say the game doesn't indulge itself at all - far from it - but the underlying currents of the plot are grim towards the coexistence of different powers even in a globally-enforced peace arrangement.

as others have pointed out, I did want to briefly mention the mid-game sag that makes the plot a little hard to follow. as mentioned previously, there's three chapters in the middle of the game that are self-contained intersituals centered on dangerous forces within the US. the Cloudman chapter is definitely the best of the three, thanks to how it draws parallels between religious cults and the cult of personalities around business tycoons (a too-easy real world example: elon musk's following vs the sketchy finances of his company tesla) all being seasoned to taste by the US intelligence community. a lot of this is conveyed through animated sequences as well, which are in a western style that reminds me of older Korn music videos for better or for worse. the Encounter chapter covers an organ trafficking operation as well as Dan Smith's backstory, which is fascinating with context from the supplementary material but doesn't cover much interesting ground in the game itself. finally, the Alter Ego chapter tosses some interesting ingredients into the mix such as government involvement in private media and corporate exploitation of creative works, but without enough time to simmer these threads feel too underdeveloped to analyze in detail. this chapter is animated in a more traditional anime style, though everyone's faces are lopsided in an exceedingly ugly way that I'm not sure was intentional. this middle section is very playable so it's not an immense drag on the game, but I feel like I have to bring up the faults as well as part of my honest opinion.

on the flipside, the gameplay is pretty easy to parse thanks to a nice heap of quality of life features and smart design decisions. as everyone probably knows, this game is controlled on rails with one button moving you forward and another moving you backwards. while it takes a bit to get used to, it's mapped to W and S on k+m as if it were WASD controls, and at the same time it keeps everything important directly in your path, keeping the player from missing an important item or objective. this also allows for creative camera angles when it isn't locked in the classic grasshopper manufacture worm's eye view perspective. in your way moving between areas are plenty of Heaven Smiles, which you can deal with in a first-person aiming mode reminiscent of a light gun game. enemies are initially invisible but have distinctive laughter that let you know when one is in the vicinity (a godsend considering the odd camera angles), and each can be scanned to visualize them and find weak points. I was surprised by the variety of enemies in this game, many of which encourage experimentation to determine the best way to take them down. minibosses can get annoying here or there, but once the mechanics are learned and you have a good grasp on your combat options it becomes more rewarding to encounter new enemies.

one of the big draws here are the switchable characters, both for puzzles and for combat. there are six that can be swapped between at will via the menu as well as Garcian, who is mainly used to revive other characters when they are killed. by sitting through all of the optional tutorials you can find out the ins-and-outs of each, though I did not do this and found that I was able to sus out their differences just from organic trial-and-error. each one has a unique method of combat that goes beyond simple differences in stats and instead alters the gunplay for each. getting a handle on each character's abilities is key, as most of the chapters lock some personalities behind a set amount of kills that you must meet, though generally it isn't difficult to unlock whichever ones you're missing. I personally focused on coyote in the early game thanks to his wide applicability to puzzles, fast reload time, and solid damage, and I eventually branched out to the others. dan is powerful in combat thanks to his collateral shot charge special, while kaede and mask are situationally useful for certain enemies that require precision aiming/large explosives respectively. the only one I didn't get a lot of juice out of is kevin: he can easily skip large groups of enemies with his invisibility but is rarely useful in puzzles and lacks the firepower of the other characters. then again, I can't fault the game too much for this considering that it was more personal choice that I chose not to use him.

beyond understanding the above mechanics, most of the game really consists of learning the language of the design concepts for each puzzles. when I first played this briefly on gamecube I was quickly confused by the abstract language, frequent codewords, overwhelming amount of abilities, and the unfamiliar combat. on returning though, I feel like I understood how each in-game mechanic maps to a classic game mechanic pretty well, ie thick blood = exp, thin blood = mana pool, warped guitar riff = unsolved puzzle, soul shard = plot coupon, gimp suit guy on wall = soul shard nearby, and so on. learning to separate out the random musings from the side characters from important puzzle hints is vital to getting by, though the puzzles aren't that hard to begin with. the majority just involve using the correct character ability or ring in the right place, and which you should use where can generally be figured out just from whether a given object is interactable or not. more complicated puzzles generally involve passcodes or tiny quizzes or other things that don't really take mental gymnastics to figure out, and there's a built-in character who will give you clear hints in exchange for thick blood/EXP. I'll mention the bosses here as well because they're all puzzles to some extent: they're hit and miss, but nothing terrible. a couple times I got a little confused on the mechanics of a given fight, but none of them are strenuous to the point of being frustrating. some of them are straight-up scripted, and the rest should be easy to deal with as long as you keep your characters leveled up.

some other quick bullet points I wanted to mention:
+so many people have already mentioned it, but I gotta bring up the sound design. the soundtrack is great front-to-back, sound effects are vibrant, and you can even pinpoint enemy positions thanks to the clever stereo panning at play here.
+upside of the steam port: this game feels really natural with k+m controls. downside: all of the FMVs are super compressed and look pretty ugly to be honest.
+the chapter selection menu is really fun, and I love the way that you shoot each target when the chapter is selected and they explode into particles.
+definitely read Hand in Killer7 after playing, it helped me organize my thoughts on the plot and it adds a lot of context that didn't make it into the final game
+the remnant psyches are all a joy to talk to, though I wish I could clicked through the dialogue at my own place sometimes. I initially thought they had animal crossing-style babble, but it seems like they actual speak from an alternative engrish script through a modulator? hard to tell, but neat nonetheless.
+I like the way the mad doctor holds his hands up while cooking up serum for you to level up your characters with, and how he bangs the machine when it stops working aka when you've produced as much serum as you can for a given level.

it's a singular, unique game that goes down smooth while also packing a lot of punch thanks to the amount of depth in its story. after my mixed experiences with no more heroes I think this is the game that really made me appreciate suda's work. I already want to hop back onto my gamecube save just to get that experience, and I'm excited to play his other early games that I've had sitting in my backlog for ages. none of them may unseat this game for me, but anything even approaching this level of quality would be worth playing in my book.

Assassination. Government conspiracy. Terrorism. Human trafficking. The weaponization of the human body. The gratification of murder. The unceremonious silence of death. The expression of one's own humanity through the suffering of another.

Why must the world be this way? What is it all for?

Killer7 asks all these questions and provides answers to none. It is a vessel for reflection and wandering through the unimaginable horrors of the mind. It's not that it has nothing to say, but that it presents you with an unfinished puzzle, and lets you use the loudest pieces to fill in the rest of the picture.

Games as a medium have spent so many long years trying to understand what it means to 'tell a story' and to 'be art'. Decades of writers trying to give 'the right answer' to questions while fumbling over their own cynicism, egotistical tendencies and unchecked cultural biases. We are so concerned with the desire to be perceived as 'artful' that we lose sight of making anything with truly unique meaning or power.

I don't have a damn good answer to what needs to be done differently, - I'm the most out-of-touch, lost-in-their-own-head numbskull on the planet - but if I had 1 call, we definitely need to step back and remember the strength of letting players write their own endings. Games spent their first several decades owning the vagueness of their own format, right down to the dirty FM patches and choppy polygons. There's a lost art to the ability to 'allude' to things instead of just 'showing' them, and letting the process of trying to compute the missing links be part of the game too. Everything's a tasteless puppet to specificity, excessive details, and borderline machine-generated design philosophies.

Killer7 was a note that we have so much room to grow as not just an industry, but as designers. So much untapped potential. So many strengths we haven't even become aware of. And damn, a lot of room to mature in regards to how we treat real-world tragedy and sociopolitical issues.



I couldn't think of a smart way to integrate Dan Smith into this so here's a funny

I've grown to hate the word "weird". Despite having often been referred to as someone who likes "weird" things, I bristle these days when it's slung around. When used in discussion about art, it typically flattens work down into a differential equation. Rather than the work being judged on its merits and meanings, it's framed against its contemporaries and whether it fits within their models of normalcy.

It pains me to say it, but killer7 is weird. Pretty much everything about it is weird. Mechanically, it's a blend of rail-shooter and survival horror. Solve puzzles. Shoot things. It's a little rigid and takes some getting used to, but it surprisingly works. Its narrative is utterly all over the place, too (I will elaborate later), and it's audiovisually singular. Even it's development seems to be an aberration. It's surprising that this game even exists.

killer7 is my first Grasshopper game. It won't be my last, I don't think. But I don't think I'm wrong in saying that this game was a lot of people's introduction to SUDA51 and his millieu. A lot of tonal and narrative flourishes are immediately noticeable: the punkish dialogue, the fragmented storytelling, the love of blood, the esoteric lore. While I think the story might implicitly be its most enduring legacy, it's also beloved for it's ~vibes~, and rightly so; this is simply one of the best looking and sounding games of its generation, steeped in style. But as the credits rolled, both as Garcian comes to his revelation, and as the explosions roared, I struggled to care much at all.

I want to be unambiguous here: I enjoy killer7. It looks and sounds incredible. I like the wild swings it takes both mechanically and narratively. I respect its ambition deeply. But the problem is that this game is in many ways inseparable from its massive cult status. So the question I keep finding myself returning to is: do the majority of these fans love killer7 for its cryptic political themes and psyschotropic theatrics? Or do they like it because they think it's "weird"?

I'm not saying killer7 is "weird for weird's sake". Far from it. It's clear that there's depth here. But stop: what is meant by depth? Never forget, as Samuel Beckett wrote, that "the danger is in the neatness of identification." This phrase haunts me still. We can identify what is occuring in the game, who is who, what is what, why is why, but this brings us no closer to interpretation. We can manage to figure out the lore of killer7 but that doesn't mean we understand it. Even identifying a symbolic framework, say, declaring Harman Smith to be God, and declaring Kun Lan to be the Devil, does not really bring us closer.

To stop myself from making an ass of myself, I looked to analyses and criticism of killer7 to see if they could shed any light on it. And frankly, I don't think they did. This at least assuaged my concerns that I'm just an idiot. Well, actually, I am an idiot sometimes, but not because I wasn't paying attention. This is not to dismiss anyone else's work as unimportant or bad. There was a lot of enlightening information. Rather, I mean to say that there seemed to be no puzzle pieces I had missing in my understanding of killer7 that would have shattered my overall opinion. Maybe I'll read Hand in Killer7 and feel differently. I would say the main thing I've seen laid out that I didn't pay as much attention to was the theme of government control and instruction. And that definitely is an important element of its story. This game has been analyzed to death and I doubt I can bring anything new to the table. If I wanted to speak broadly and succinctly, I would say killer7 is a game about nations, control, and violence. But there's so much to say! I could write about cameras, about televisions, about my disinterest in the game's psychological thriller elements, about violence in video games, about interpellations and ideology, and so on, and so on, and so on. But let me slow down.

My main takeaway from killer7's themes (particularly it's political ones) is as a piece about nationalism, democracy, and globalism, but most distinctly as a response to Fukuyama's "end of history". Fukuyama theorized that history had reached it's end, that events would still occur, but a grand narrative of societal evolution was over. He later ate his hat, and admitted that he was wrong. He pointed to Islamic extremism as something he underestimated. September 11th, 2001 might have been the rebirth of history for Fukuyama. Despite being set in the U.S., killer7 is very much a game about Japan, too. The future of Japan, the nationalist spirit, is at stake. In the game's alternate history, international conflict has supposedly ended, with nuclear warheads being detonated outside the atmosphere (this would totally work in the real life) being remembered as the symbol of everlasting peace. But then the Heaven Smile appear, an infectious virus that transforms humans into weapons. They throw themselves at you and blow themselves up. Sound familiar? Suicide bombings became a trend in the 2000s. Terrorism, I am told, tends to move in these trends: hostages, mailbombings, mass shootings. Horrible stuff. There's more. Election manipulation, human trafficking, cults, the list goes on. These are not harbingers of war, but rather the conflict itself. It's an endless state of disquiet; peace does not exist. Democracy is a facade. Our actions are interpellated. Nations are fragile. The violence continues. This isn't chaos. This is order. So says Kun Lan.

Suffice to say, I do think there is depth to killer7. Hopefully I've proven I'm not just a moron. It wears the mask of weirdness, but it does have things to say. Whether or not I agree with its propositions is a different conversation. Instead, what I question is whether or not the average killer7 enjoyer is even interested in that. Because it's not exactly easy to get to. When I first played Hotline Miami, a similarly "weird" game, one Goichi Suda apparently quite liked, the core themes passed straight over my head. Only years later, seeing others' criticism, did I begin to understand its critique of violence and media. For me, it was a frenetic stealth-action hybrid with a bumping soundtrack and animal masks. Surely, I wasn't the only one, and surely, there are people like this with killer7. Maybe if I had played it at the same time as when I played Hotline Miami or some other formative year (lord knows my parents would never have let me played it when it came out), it would have affected me the same way. Make no doubt about it, "weirdness" can be dazzling and enchanting, even if it is superficial.

I want to be perfectly clear: this did not make my enjoyment of Hotline Miami any less valid. Nor of killer7. And if you like killer7 despite being perplexed by it or not delving into its arcane mythology, that's valid, too. Guess what? I like it, too! Aesthetics and presentation are a part of art, and if you love something for that, and hell, even if you love something just because it's weird, fucking go for it. Love it all you want. Don't feel compelled to justify that affection with empty analysis and identification.

I will not give in to astonishment. I will not say, "well, it's weird, gotta hand it to 'em". I know I risk outing myself as a plebeian who doesn't get it, but I refuse to become Homer Simpson, nodding as he watches Twin Peaks saying, "Brilliant, heh heh! I have absolutely no idea what's going on." I suspect killer7 will be a game I like thinking about more than I liked playing. I look forward to thinking about it more; I already feel myself working into a shoot as I ponder it. This was only written in a flurry after finishing it then taking a nap. Who knows? Maybe I'll grow to love it. But in this moment, I will not accept my lack of "getting it" as an excuse to give into smiling along, because I do get it on some level. And I like it. It's just that I'm not as excited as everyone else. And that's okay.