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But, I digress. Killer 7 is the first Stateside release from an impresario of a game developer named Suda51 and his Grasshopper Manufacture studio. He and his studio are known for doing visually impressive but inherently bizarre games. Partnering with Capcom, Killer 7 is Grasshopper Manufacture's first major release. One thing I feel you should be made aware of before we continue is that there aren't any pictures of Suda51 where he's not wearing a Mexican wrestler's mask. No one really knows what the man looks like. I tell you this because I feel it will give you at least an inkling into how bizarre the man who is responsible for Killer 7 really is.

For me one of the best feelings is when you start playing a game and you can't figure out what sort of game it is. Is it an adventure game? Is it a first person shooter? Is it a role-playing game? What exactly am I playing here? Killer 7 is one of those types of games. The box would have you think you are playing a first person shooter, but inside of a few minutes with the game you know that's not the way things are. What you are presented with is gameplay that mixes a whole lot together with unsteady results.

The game is split into two distinct styles. The first is an exploration/adventure game where you have to explore the levels and solve the situational puzzles that hinder your progress. The puzzles remind me a lot of the fare you would find in a survival horror game. Sadly, a lot of the puzzles in Killer 7 are quite absurd and can be frustratingly hard to work around if you get stumped or missed a detail early in the level. The exploration is handled in a very streamlined linear way. You can only move backwards and forwards on a preset path, if you get to a junction of paths then your screen changes to allow you to choose which path you want to continue down. At first I hated the system because I felt it took away from me being able to explore as I wanted to, but in reality it helped focus what I was doing and let the camera angles be much more artistic.

The second aspect of the gameplay is a first person gallery shooter where you have to kill the enemies of the game, the Heaven Smiles. The Heaven Smiles are warped creatures that are invisible to the regular humans and who explode when they get to their target. Luckily, the members of the Killer 7 have some sort of scanner that allows them to see the Heaven Smiles, and aren't too shy about filling them full of lead. The only way that you know a Heaven Smile is around is by its laughter. Once you hear that laughter you've got a few seconds to pull out your gun, hit the scan button and find your target. The catch is that sometimes there are more than one of the Smiles at a time, and the Smiles have a few tricks up their sleeves. Some are very fast, some are extra tough, and some are tiny and easy to miss. There are boss fights strewn around each level that usually require you to learn a tactic to expose the boss's weak spot. You gain vials of blood from killing the Smiles that you can use to increase the power of the characters. You actually collect more blood when you blow off various parts of the Smiles' anatomy first, however sick that may sound. I found myself trying to dismember each Smile for the extra blood, and very creeped out at myself for doing it at the same time. Initially this format seems like a fine choice for the game, but the problem is that once you've beaten a room with the Smiles, that room's challenge is gone. You'll normally have to pass through each room a few times while you are running errands for your puzzle collection, so the fights end up degrading into tedium after a point. Having random Heaven Smiles placed throughout the game would have helped keep me on my toes.

The story behind all this is one of international intrigue, weird powers, crazy people, terrorism, pop culture, and is about as clear mud. You play the role of Harmon Smith, the "mind" behind the schizophrenic team of assassins known as the Smith 7. Harmon is an aging assassin who uses his 6 other personalities to do most of his footwork. They range from a Shaft-esque "cleaner" to a masked Mexican wrestler to a disturbed, blood covered Japanese girl. Each of the personalities has different skills that require you to switch out between them to solve certain puzzles and deal with certain enemies. The first time you do this it's a little jarring, since you explode into a bloody mist and recondense down into the new personality. The basics of the story puts the Smith 7 at odds with a shadowy figure from Harmon's past named Kun Lan. It seems that Harmon killed Kun some 30 years ago, but somehow Kun both came back from the dead and has acquired a mysterious power known as the God Hand. Kun Lan is using the God Hand to create the Heaven Smiles from ordinary people. From there the story dives deep into the metaphysical and the sociopolitical. There are struggles between characters that could be seen as symbols for God and the Devil, overt commentaries on war and enough vaguery to drive even the most hardened philosophy major up the wall. If you are into complex stories, this game has enough to satisfy you and then some.

However, if you're more of the aesthetically oriented kind of gamer you may find yourself scratching your head at this game. Killer 7 is done entirely in cell-shading that both works for and hurts the game at the same time. The cell-shading allows the Grasshopper team to create rooms that look like pieces pop-art instead of video game levels. There are rooms that are solid, heavily saturated color and then just gradient shadows over the color, no detail in the texture, no dynamic lighting, just the contrast between the shadow and the color to give you an idea of what's in the room. I'm sure it will turn a lot of people off, but it was just weird enough without going to far for me. The downside was the character models. Both the main characters and the monsters look horrible. Part of the problem with the using cell-shading is that it doesn't give you a lot of room to show detail, and characters who have a lot of screen time suffer because of this. The Heaven Smiles' texture makes them look like walking plates of spaghetti with different colored sauces. During the cut scenes the close ups on the characters made me cringe because I know a lot of effort was put into making the models look good, but the harshness of the cell-shading made it seem like I was watching something from the mid 90s. Choosing to go with a cell-shaded style is always a risky choice, and I am not convinced it was worth it for this game.

I have a lot of reservations about Killer 7 beyond the aesthetics. There is a lot at work here, and not all of it gets along with the other parts. The combination of adventure game and gallery-style shooter stand at direct odds with each other. The nature of only being able to move backwards and forwards makes combat very uncomfortable if you make a mistake, and aiming a crosshair with a joystick is never an ideal choice, at least for me. The quickly repetitive action makes me grit my teeth each time I hear the tell-tale laugh of a hidden Heaven Smile, but occasionally the game does pull out a memorable boss fight. The map that you rely on to help you figure out what to do next is confusing because you don't know where you are on the map or what direction the map is oriented in. And then you get the typos. There are lots of typos in this game, and that lack of polish really pulls the whole game down. A lot of the flaws make me think that Suda51 was spending way too much time trying to concept a story that was edgy and complex and not enough time working on making his game fun. In my opinion that's the wrong kind of choice to make if a game is going to be fun.

Killer 7 defies enough genres that I cannot easily recommend it to anyone kind of gamer. All I can really say is that if this review has made you curious about it, rent it. You may find yourself in heaven, but then again you could hate it. But, if you are the sort of gamer who doesn't care how what a game plays like as long as the story is amazing, then by all means, pick this game up now. It'll blow your mind. One warning about the game's content, the M rating is well-earned. There are massive amounts of blood and gore, and the dialogue is riddled with adult language. Plus, your "assistant" is a floating man in a purple geek suit with a ball gag in his mouth, not exactly all-ages subject matter. This one isn't for the meek or young.