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Stylish and unique, but definitely not for everyone

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 27, 2006
Author: Amazon User

It's not every day that a game like Capcom's Killer 7 comes along. Unique in both it's story and delivery, Killer 7 allows you to assume the role(s) of a multiple personality assassin. Each of the seven personalities has their own unique specialty: resurrection, invisibility, and even slitting their own wrists to uncover secret areas. The storyline is strikingly mature in it's tone, with a thought provoking (if not always coherent) plot filled with twists and political intrigue, and it well deserves it's Mature rating. The game isn't a free-roaming actioner which are everywhere today, but rather the character moves on designed "rails"; you only having control of which direction they go and not being able to explore the areas. Now this is the game's biggest flaw and will definitely be a turn off for many, but since Killer 7 relies on rails, the game's cinematic look saved, and boy does this game look great. The graphics aren't as sharp as they were on the original Gamecube release, but they still look great for a PS2 title. The controls can be tricky, but once you get the hang of it, Killer 7 is a breeze. All in all, Killer 7 is a stylish and unique gaming experience that is worth checking out, but be warned, it's not for everyone, and you'll either love it or hate it.

Killer 7

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 13, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Killer 7 is a game that some will love and some will hate. It's so divisive that it's rare to find someone who just finds it "ok", and perhaps this was Goichi Suda's, the game's creator, goal. In Killer 7 you go into the mind of an assassin and his multiple personalities. From the get-go, however, you realize how irrational and utterly overwhelming your world is. It's not purely fantasy as the locations are based in real life geographic locations of the country. But at the same time, the game is anything but realistic.

The art style follows the same cel-shaded technique that several other games have during this past gen. Unlike many cel-shaded games, however, its done in a way that makes it unique and elevates it from the mundane. The cel shading is on par with the type found in the Jet Set Radio series which is saying quite a bit in terms of quality. Instead of attempting to make the environments realistic, often times Suda will seemingly paint an entire hallway using just the gradiant tool. To those looking for a photorealistic experience found in games like Ghost Recon or even Max Payne, look somewhere else. Killer 7 is a piece of art first and foremost with Suda even admitting that the gameplay wasn't actually finalized until the art was. To some gamers, such an approach will either be met with disdain or with cheers. I happen to fall into the latter simply because of how well the art style has been crafted.

The story is so dense and layered that I'm convinced that it could easily fill the space of a 50 hour RPG or be dissected into a semester long college class. There are political themes, pop culture references aplenty, psychological constructs, moral dilemmas, etc. Each of the missions is so dense and esoteric that you'll "complete" it feeling as in the dark as you were when it began. Surprisingly, though, this isn't as bad of a feeling as one would imaging because of its memorable experience throughout. Each character is dynamic and unique and even with limited lines of dialogue spoken by most of them, they still have their own individual personality that oozes with style. There are no cliché videogame hand-me-downs to be found here which is a refreshing feature.

The game is on-rails, meaning that you have a limited ability to move around your surroundings. You can only run forward or backwards which is meant to simplify the gameplay so you can take in the art style. This allows for execution of certain camera angles that wouldn't work well if you had to fully control your characters. The levelling up system is basic but still solid. As you progress through each level, you pick up vials of blood which then get converted for the purpose of levelling up certain characteristics of each of the Killer 7 assassins. The Heaven Smile can be haunting at times with their psychopathic laugh. When initially playing the game, you'll be weary of moving because of the impending laugh that you'll hear, causing you to scan the environment to enable you to see the walking timebombs. Each level's final boss is also a real treat. Some are extremely difficult to beat while others are unusually easy. The game isn't concerned with building the reps of hardcore gamers or stroking their ego although the hard difficulty is just that.

The PS2 version is identical to the Game Cube version with the exception of slower loading times. While they're very annoying at first, they become tolerable as you proceed throughout the game. To anyone undecided about this game, I suggest you rent it first and then decide to purchase it later depending on your experiences with it. Anyone saying that it's mindless probably didn't get past the first level. To some it may be pretentious, gratuitous, esoteric - but definitely not mindless despite its confusing and disorienting story.

Not art-house, more like 1st year film student

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 07, 2008
Author: Amazon User

If you're here, it's probably because you've heard how great and underrated this game is. Perhaps you heard how arty and revolutionary it is. All you need to know, really, is this: it's only just barely a game.

The art direction is fantastic; it has an awe-inspiring look that is fully unified. The cutscenes and the gameplay are all very interesting to watch. Unfortunately, the look, it seems, was the most important aspect to the designers, and everything else suffers.

The gameplay is this: hold a button. Got it? Just hold that button, and you walk in the one direction you are allowed to. Then, when you hear a laugh track, stop holding it, and push another button. Then look around for an enemy, and shoot them. Then just hold that button again.

The only times you are able to change direction are at crossroads, which unnecessarily slows down moving around the game's endless hallway. The hallway is dressed up as all sorts of things, even the outdoors, but you might as well be in a 3' wide hall for all the movement you are allowed. Had the character had freedom of motion, this might have actually been a fun game, but as it is, it's a chore.

Finally, to get any information from your dead assistant who appears every few minutes, you have to click through him saying "Master", then "We're in a tight spot." After that, you can read what he has to say. This doesn't sound like a problem, but the 5th time you've had to do it in the space of 3 minutes, you'll do what I did - take the game out of the console, put it away, and never go back.

There have been games that had fantastic art direction and told a memorable tale, but they are remembered because they were fun to play as well. Play those games, not Killer 7.

Great Game!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 12, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I was recommended to this game by my best friend and I have never looked back. This is a game for those who want to play a very interesting game with a story that is unlike any other. And the game play is strange but can be adapted to. A must buy too have in a collection.

This game sucks ***

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 16
Date: July 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game sucks big time. You get killed the very first round, the controls you have to use are sucky, this whole game just sucks. Whoever enjoyed it must be on crack. It is a wasted 50 bucks

Lacks freedom of movement.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: July 15, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I got this game hoping for a great story as all the reviews were raving about it. But i got bored with the gameplay. This game is so linear that all your caracter can do is move forward, turn back, and shoot at first person view.

Most of the time you'll find your character walking forward until you see some sort of 'crossroad' which gives you options to manipulate objects, talk to people, or take corners and go into rooms. You cannot turn left or right in between, just turn back. When you come across an enemy, you must turn to 1st person view and shoot it (but you can't move while shooting). This game lacks the freedom of movement of most games. Even 2D games have more freedom of movement. This makes the repetitive comment of your assistant quite appropriate... "We are in a TIGHT spot." Gameplay feels old school (when comptuers aren't that powerful).

Anyway, kudos for CAPCOM for coming up with such a creative game. You don't see games that go away from the mainstream these days.

Kill The Series

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: July 15, 2005
Author: Amazon User

You'll just have to shoot first and ask questions later in Killer7, Capcom's self-proclaimed "surreal action adventure game" that lets you "step into the mind of an assassin." This is appropriate billing for a game that wears its edginess on its sleeve and might well leave you feeling cold at first, between its seemingly nonsensical storyline and its surprisingly simple mechanics. However, if you bear with this rather lengthy journey through to the bitter end, you'll be aptly rewarded as your mind is sent reeling. Killer7 is greater than the sum of its parts. It's pretentious and can be frustrating or tedious at times. And it's also one of the most unusual, politically charged, and thought-provoking video games since Metal Gear Solid.

The Killer7 is a syndicate of assassins...or it's possibly just one man with multiple personalities.
The title Killer7 refers to the name of the squad of assassins you control throughout the game. Apparently employed by a sharp-witted, crippled old man named Harman Smith, the Killer7 may be just the one man and his seven split personalities. At any rate, it seems the Killer7 have been charged with eliminating a terrorist threat called the Heaven Smile, which takes the form of various monstrous creatures that tend to blow themselves up while laughing hysterically. They're suicide bombers. And the world seems to be crawling with them. They're initially almost invisible, but the Killer7 members may scan their surroundings, causing Heaven Smile's operatives to materialize. In the game, you'll navigate through various environments, gunning down dozens of heaven smiles from a first-person perspective while also solving various puzzles and piecing together the storyline.

Killer7 unfolds confusingly and initially comes across like some sort of Japanese take on Fight Club and Memento, with some shooting sequences thrown in for good measure. Turns out there's quite a bit more to it than that. Central to the plot is a near-future political struggle between the United States and Japan. As you learn more, you start to notice what seems an awful lot like a heavy-handed political commentary on today's state of affairs. And in short, while the game deliberately seems to leave itself open to interpretation, it's safe to say that Killer7 is filled with metaphors. Different characters, themes, and situations are deeply suggestive, making little sense in the context of the game but nevertheless causing you to think. Killer7 juxtaposes this sort of feel with no shortage of absurd humor, including lots of poking fun at American and Japanese pop culture. This is subversive stuff. So just when you start taking Killer7 seriously, it throws some goofy humor your way, abruptly lightening the mood as if to keep you from getting closer to the game's version of the truth.

In other words, cappuccino-sipping, turtleneck-wearing academics looking to uncover all the hidden meaning and intention in all sorts of "works" would probably have a field day with Killer7, which has so many arbitrary stylistic flourishes in it that it ultimately seems intent on being a stupefying modern art masterpiece as much as a game--more power to it. Some of the game's posturing comes across as embarrassing, especially since the English dialogue you'll be reading throughout (all the ghosts of the Killer7's past speak in haunting gibberish, subtitled for your convenience) contains a number of elementary typos. But there are just so many simultaneous layers and subplots always going on in this game that it's sure to spark a lot of charged discussion among those who've played through it. Once you've spent the 15 to 20 hours necessary to get through the game for the first time, you'll be able to go back into the experience with a whole new perspective.

Of course, you might not want to. While it's impossible to extricate the story from the gameplay in Killer7, if judged purely on its merits as a fun-to-play video game, Killer7 comes up a little short. Your character can only move along a set path: You press and hold a button, and off he (or she) goes. This is very strange at first. Why doesn't the game just let you run around wherever you want to? For one thing, the locked paths enable a lot of pretty-looking cinematic camera angles that would be terrible for gameplay purposes. And for another thing, this technique makes it so that your characters never appear lost. They always seem to know where they're going, even when you don't know where you're leading them. It's an interesting trade-off that, in the end, makes sense.

The gameplay is one part on-rails shooter and one part adventure game, but there's much more to Killer7 than the mechanics of the action.
Another button lets you turn around 180 degrees so you can run back from whence you came. You'll also often come across junctions--say, a perpendicular hallway--and then you get to decide whether to continue running in one direction or the other. As you proceed, you'll frequently hear the heaven smiles' maniacal laughter. This is your cue to switch to first-person aiming so you can scan the environment. You'll spot the heaven smiles shambling toward you and may fire at will. Each character has a different weapon with its own characteristics, but regardless, the shooting action boils down to sniping. Your foes tend to have weak points--possibly on their thighs or elbows, not just their heads--that cause them to die instantly if hit. So you'll try to steady your aim and take those shots, even though a lot of the shooting takes place at relatively close ranges. The heaven smiles are creepy looking, and the first-person shooting has a pretty good look and feel to it. Still, it can get to be fairly monotonous, especially since backtracking through environments will often mean having to face exactly the same array of heaven smiles each time you go through the area.Thaks To Gamespot.

Boring, boring, & boring..........

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 21
Date: August 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

One thing a videogame can't be is boring. Killer 7 does that to you from the opening minutes; it bores the hell out of you. Running from one room to the next, and then back again, with excruciating load screens that give you seizures isn't my idea of a fun and exciting way to spend 50 bucks. I was pretty excited about this game too. I read some reviews that made me rush to buy this, instead of waiting like I normally do, for the price to drop a little bit. The Mature rating was also a pretty good selling point, since I usually like a good dose of ultra-violence. A little side note; I'm currently in Iraq where ultra-violence is rampant, so this game had a long way to go to meet my expectations. But the violence in this game was lame. The graphics didn't help matters either. I love cel-shaded animation, but this game looked like really early pre-vis stuff you see in making of documentaries.. XIII blows this game out of the water.
The controls were also kind of frustrating, but if the game were fun, I don't think I would have really given a crap. While boring myself running on the lame fixed path, I kept thinking, "It'd be easier if I could turn and run from this horribly modeled suicide bomber with the analog sticks instead of having to push the triangle button all the time..." But I've played fun games with horrible controls before. I just hated this game so much that my mind wasn't even on the game anymore after 10 minutes, so I just asserted my negativity on the controls.
I guess my expectations for murder and mayhem were too high and instead I got a thinking man's game. Sometimes you just wanna waste a few hours mindlessly murdering everything in front of you. I guess I'll probably need to go on a convoy here for that, because this game certainly didn't do it for me; a waste of fifty dollars indeed. I just hope I can resell it online and get at least half my scratch back. Siiiiiiiiigh...

Killer 7 is a must have if you own a PS2 or a Gamecube.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 7
Date: July 10, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Interesting graphics and a sick-and-twisted-yet-cool story make this one of the best games that Capcom ever developed. As 1 of the 7 "Smith Alliance", you have to run around, and killing monsters known as "Heaven Smiles". The controls are confusing at the beginning, but after a while, you should be able to get used to it. The fact that this game is railed means you will never get lost. Though some of you may find this to be boring. The puzzles are a little more interesting than the ones in RE. The ability to switch characters on the spot is a nice touch. I just wish that this game was longer.

Killer 7 = A Change From The Ordinary

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: July 18, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This is by far going to be the most debated game of the year. Killer 7 revolves around Harman Smith, a hitman, and his split personalities. But your not reading this review for the storyline, lets get to the game itself. First thing you will notice about this game are the controls. When i first started playing this game, the controls made me want to bring it back to blockbuster and cram it down someones throat (that soon changed of course). The third person controls for this game are very linear, the characters them selves run on a rail, which may be strange for some. First person view is a whole other story. When you go into first person view, you must first scan for previously hidden heaven smiles (the zombie-like beings you kill in the game) and then shoot the crap out of them. Voice actiang is overall good, and some of the cut scenes are visually STUNNING. That gets me to the graphics. They are beautiful cel-shaded graphics that perfectly fit in with the out of the ordinary storyline (and what a storyline it is, did i mention this game should not be sold to children, or anyone under 16...?) This game is out for PS2 and Gamecube, if you have a gamecube, i reccomend buying Killer 7 for it, there isnt any story difference, but the load screens are a bit shorterfor Gamecube. Overall, this is a great game, for someone who is a die hard conventional controls fan, you will hate it, anyone who plays it may hate it when they begin, due to the strange controls, but after you get deep into the storyline, you cant put it down. I reccomend Killer 7 to anyone (16 OR OLDER!!!) who is in the mood for a break from the ordinary.

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