SUDA51 is another one of those video game auteurs whose body of work looked really interesting to me, but aside from playing the first level of No More Heroes years ago before losing access to both my Wii and the game, I haven't been able to really get into any of his games. Much to my surprise, though, I managed to get access to Killer7, and while it only took a little over a week for me to beat it, I always looked forward to jumping back into the game and playing through it. Killer7 was a game that I knew was going to become my newest obsession long before it was over, and now that I've finished it, I can see myself thinking about it even more often than I already do.

Whenever people talk about Killer7, one of the very first things that gets brought up is its presentation, and for good reason. Pretty much every element of this game is unconventional in some way, but the cel-shaded artstyle, striking colors, energetic and stylistically varied cutscenes, and the superbly eclectic music by Masafumi Takada and Jun Fukuda made all of its different methods of experimentation come together naturally and beautifully. Killer7 features a stripped-down, minimalistic control scheme and on-rails-esque gunplay, and while it took me a bit of time to get used to how this game worked, I honestly loved how Killer7 felt to play. Not only did the combat itself feel great, but I also found myself switching between the titular assassins quite often, as they all had their uses while still being fun to toy around with on their own. Along with shooting Heaven Smiles and battling some really creative bosses, playing Killer7 also consists of exploring each area in order to solve puzzles and gain a better understanding of the game's world and characters, and this other half of the gameplay in Killer7 also really worked for me thanks to how it made exploration feel rewarding.

On top of having some terrific gameplay and an intoxicatingly chaotic style, Killer7 also features a fascinating, thought-provoking and thematically rich story about terrorism, violence, and Japan's role in American politics whose breadth of details and intentional obfuscation added to the game's neo-noir mood and over-the-top tone. Granted, I didn't grasp absolutely everything about it during this playthrough due to just how complex it was, but I still loved how the plot blended an international conspiracy with elements of surrealism, and piecing details together through details that I picked up on from the cryptic dialogue featured in both the cutscenes and the characters in each level made the experience of trying to understand the full picture feel that much more engrossing. Not only was Killer7 one of the best games I've ever played, but it was also one of the most wholly unique and idiosyncratic games I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing, and I don't think that the game industry will ever see anything like it ever again.