Writing about something like killer7 new PC port is a bit weird. On one hand, this is very much a revisit of a game from 2005, originally on GameCube and PlayStation 2, that I have played (though never finished) back in the day. Making this a bit of a retrospective post, like my O tempora series. Yet at the same time, this new PC port of the game, despite not bringing big changes, can play so much differently, that it’s hard not to approach it as if it was a new game entirely. So I will try to look at the game from both perspectives – as a replay of a cult classic game from 14 years ago, and as a completely new title you might’ve never heard before and might want to check out. May the lord smile and the devil have mercy.
killer7 is a game from Grasshopper Manufacture and, more importantly, from Suda51 (Goichi Suda) himself. To some people, this alone can peak their interest and the reason for that is pretty simple – Suda51 is known for making games that are unlike anything else in terms of style, storytelling and gameplay. Which doesn’t necessarily mean that the game is fun to play, mind you, in fact in many cases his games are well known for being rather clunky and annoying mechanically. But the spectacle, the sheer inventiveness, intentional breaking away from any traditions and rules are usually enough to make you interested in at least checking his games out, even if you don’t end up enjoying them. There are usually lots of comparisons thrown around when it comes to his games, from “punk aesthetic and ideology” to being “Quentin Tarantino of video games” and things like that. And all of the interest, at least internationally, started with killer7, as it was originally released worldwide by Capcom (and produced/co-written by Shinji Mikami of Resident Evil fame, of all people).
Anyway, let’s start again. killer7 is an action adventure title, which mixes on-rails shooter/light gun game combat mixed with traditional adventure game puzzles and has a plot that can switch between horror-influenced terrorist threat, anime superhero satire, musings on economics and religious cults and political conspiracies with world shattering revelations in a matter of seconds. Oh and you are a team of several people with different abilities, except maybe that’s just one person transforming into others, but we don’t really know. See? Told you you’d be at least interested in at least checking out what the hell this game is.
What always worked in the game, even back in the day, are the story and audio/visual design. Unlike so many games from years ago, it’s relatively easy to make killer7 look good today, since it has mostly flat shaded 3D with next to no texturing or any other rasterized elements that look worse when upscaled. In fact, simply running the original game in an emulator at 4K can produce amazing results, though, of course, this PC port went farther than that. You get native 16:9 resolutions (with the ability to enable original 4:3) support, without any notable issues, though it is worth saying that some of the framing in scenes in widescreen looks a bit different, and some of them, I would say, look more visually interesting in 4:3, with a tighter more claustrophobic crop. All 2D elements looks nice and natural in widescreen as well, and all of the textured objects received visual updates. Game looked amazing and stylish in 2005, it looks even more amazing in 2019, to the point where I’d say that a lot of it is looking even better than a much newer Killer is Dead, which had a similar visual style.
Music is as fantastic as it used to be and still kicks ass, with the composer, Masafumi Takada, now also being known for the Danganronpa soundtracks. And the story is… oh boy… It’s brilliant on one hand, and completely nonsensical on the other. There are lots of serious topics brought up, often very competently, yet at the same time it’s never shying away from showing you something really stupid or hand waving a plot point with a “it’s a video game, so who cares”. As it often is with Suda51 games, the world of killer7 feels like an alternate version of our reality that you’d dream about after watching/reading lots of information on certain topics. So you’d have lots of elements that don’t actually make any sense in real world, but in this world everyone reacts to them as if it’s all working as expected and everything makes total sense. It’s a story that you experience, have a feeling that you understood it until you try to remember it and analyse it, just like what happens when you wake up from a dream. And I’m saying all of that in a very positive way, because this is done amazingly well in this game.
But I have been avoiding the topic of gameplay mechanics… If this was a retrospective post and I have been examining the original console versions from 2005, I would’ve described the gameplay as incredibly clunky. Aiming never feels right, some of the enemies and enemy placement is cheap. Controls can be frustrating. Switching between 7 personas is slow. Most of the puzzles are a complete joke, while a few are so incredibly obtuse it’s hard to figure them out without an explanation (that you might not find in the game itself). And sometimes there are obstacles and challenges that seem obvious, but you might not know what exactly you should do, what button to press and etc. And you can keep this experience very close to the original in the new PC port, if you want, by playing with the gamepad only.
Or instead, you can use the keyboard and mouse controls which make this game so much more fun to actually play. Granted, since this game is a light gun shooter designed for controllers, mouse makes the game easier. But thing is – the “difficulty” of the original game was never a fun type of difficulty, rather an annoyance. And now, even with the mouse aiming being more floaty than it could’ve been, most of the shooter-part issues are simply gone. But the updates even make the adventuring parts better as now you can have quick switching to other personas tied to numerical keys on the keyboard, and interact with some elements of the puzzles via mouse, which makes them so much faster and less annoying. Puzzles themselves are the same, so there are moments in the game that are still genuinely annoying. And there were no other modernizing features like automatic saves, so you still have to save manually at specific rooms (though, as a survival horror player, I’m fine with this). But playing killer7 as a PC game in 2019 is actually really fun.
I suppose, there are always little and bigger things that you’d wish would’ve gone into this remastered port. You might wish Hand in killer7, released by Capcom in Japanese only in 2005 would’ve been made available as bonus content here. It was a book full of supplemental information on the game, including a lot of the behind the scenes story that is supposed to complement the story of the game (but sometimes contradicts it), and lots of information on making of the game, with early game story prototype ideas and art. You might wish some of the scenes in widescreen were re-framed to better fit the original vision of the 4:3 ration, instead of making the view wider. You might wish there was a way to get original quality animated sequences to go along with this remaster, instead of the very low resolution ones from the original retail release that had to be used again, slightly upscaled. But, and I’m sure the team behind this port/remaster actually tried to do all of the above, it is not to be. And we still get some nice new additions, like the ability to have full English subtitles for all text, not just garbled speech of ghosts, and the ability to play the Japanese version of the game, simply by switching language in the configuration, which does include the original Japanese un-garbled “Engrish” speech and other little differences. And the soundtrack, which has been slightly remastered with some edits to the tracks and new tracks added, is now easily available for purchase as a DLC for the game, which is an amazing addition.
Whenever you have heard about killer7 before and always wanted to check it out, whenever you played it and liked or disliked it, or whenever you have never heard of this game before, killer7 on PC is an incredible, stylish and memorable game that must be experienced. If you’re still somewhat unsure if this crazy mix of ideas can work, give this supergreatfriend’s Let’s Play of the game a go, since even if you plan to play the game, SGF covers all of the supplemental materials ever released for the game that can be hard to find and aren’t available with the PC release. If it never starts looking like something you’d want to play, I urge you to at least watch the LP until the end. But if you start feeling excited and wanting to explore the game at your own pace, grab the PC version and enjoy the crazy world of killer7. Kill the past, jump over the age.