There’s something to be said about how Grasshopper Manufacture has been able to put out a new console game every year for the past three years, something that feels a little unusual for a developer with their track record. There’s also something to be said that every time they do release a new console game, that’s my personal game of the year. And while I’m still struggling to collect all of my thoughts on the game, I think it’s safe to say that Killer is Dead has done it again for me this year. I mean, a friend of mine gave me his copy of the Last of Us which I haven’t touched yet, but I don’t think you have a mechanical arm with a drill attachment in that game, nor do you get to fight a giant alien kaiju. How could it top that?
What is it about Suda51 and his company’s games that keep me coming back for more? I think David Brothers nailed it pretty well in his own write-up on KID just a couple of weeks ago. It’s style as substance. I can’t think of a single triple-A title from the past few years that has the same punk rock swagger as No More Heroes, you know? Yet I was getting a little worried for a bit there. Shadows of the Damned and Lollipop Chainsaw aren’t QUITE as far out as NMH and Killer7 were, and that’s possibly due to the collaborative process involved, with Shinji Mikami on Damned and James Gunn on Lollipop. Still, I was concerned that my favorite screwball developer was being seduced by more mainstream sensibilities, however ridiculous that sounds. I realize it makes me sound like a dumb hipster, but the fear was there nevertheless.
Killer is Dead more or less puts those doubts to rest. It’s definitely their most stylish game to date, with the visual sensibilities of Killer7 and No More Heroes realizing their full potential. The graphics still aren’t necessarily the best, but a little bit of art direction can go a long way. Everything is bathed in shadow here, very much like Killer7, only not quite. The shadows aren’t deep black as you’d expect, but more of a blue/purple gradient. Occasionally irritating, but I’ve never seen anything like it before and am very tempted to give it a try in my own art soon.
The story is where most of my frustrations lie, but at the same time, it’s where I had a big sigh of relief. Shadows of the Damned and Lollipop Chainsaw barely had stories, and were pretty straightforward, whereas Killer is Dead recalls the obscurity and disjointed confusion of Killer7. Dark matter from the moon which is possibly malice given physical manifestation infects people (and on one occasion, a machine), turning them into cybernetic demons called Wires. A very body horror kind of thing, come to think of it, flirting with some of the ideas Shinya Tsukamoto tackled in his breakout movie Tetsuo the Iron Man.
(speaking of body horror: the first “boss,” Tokio? He’s definitely based off of James Woods as Max Renn in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome. The brown leather jacket and button up shirt are practically the same, and the gun arm he has is fused to him in a similarly creepy fashion, especially in the concept illustration that’s in the art book which comes with the game)
Our hero, Mondo Zappa (Mondo=World, and I’ll bet Zappa is a reference to rock legend Frank Zappa, though I‘m hardly familiar with his work and how it could tie into the game) is an assassin who is hired to kill targets, typically people who have been changed by the dark matter. He’s an amnesiac, but in an interesting twist he’s also the kind of guy who doesn’t care that he can‘t recall his past. You don’t even know he has amnesia until Dolly shows up, screwing with his dreams. Also unlike previous Suda51 protagonists, while he’s great at killing, it’s not something he has any passion for. All he cares about is seducing women. He has no real charisma, which is frustrating, and yet that also makes him interesting in how it permeates through every aspect of the character. I’m still figuring him out, especially because, as things are revealed through the story, they only bring up more questions.
And that’s good, because, even if it doesn’t give you any satisfying explanations for anything, it still makes you think, unlike nearly every other videogame coming out these days. I feel the same way now that I kind of did when playing Killer7 (to which this game is frequently referred as a “spiritual successor”), where nothing really makes sense and you’re just along for the ride. Not a single character is particularly fleshed out, but that feels intentional. Again, Mondo doesn’t give a shit about anything except looking at girls in their underwear, so it makes sense that that’s how he’d see people, right? He doesn’t bother getting to know anyone, even those who live with him.
Oh, yeah. The Gigolo Missions, which the internet has kind of gone nuts over. Awful. They’re a kind of weird inversion of No More Heroes. Travis Touchdown loves killing, but needs money for the execution missions with the awesome boss fights, and in order to get that money you have to do dumb job minigames like mowing lawns and picking up litter. Which makes sense, slog through the shitty stuff to get to the good stuff, and it served as a nice commentary on gaming in general, working your dumb job to make money to buy an awesome game that lets you kill people. But here, it’s different: Mondo takes on awesome assassination jobs in order to make money to spend on stupid gifts to give to girls in order to seduce them, but you have to work up the “guts” to give them these presents by…ogling them in their underwear? Suda has said these missions are supposed to be like when James Bond seduces ladies for information, but, but…it just isn’t the same thing. I don’t feel like some swank lady‘s man, I feel like some dumb nerd who doesn’t know how to talk to women, and makes up for lack of communication skills by buying them things and staring at their chest when they’re not looking. And then the game rewards you for that?
(Scarlett is the only exception: first you have to find her in each stage, then you have to do a certain number of her somewhat difficult combat challenges, THEN she decides to sleep with you. Presents don’t work, she wants you to tear shit up first, only violence turns her on, and I can actually get behind that…)
It’s degrading towards women, yes. It’s sexist and stupid. But…it’s just so goddamn dumb that it feels intentional? It’s lowest common denominator bullshit, appealing to creepy basement dwelling nerds who can only get off on anime girls or whatever, but it’s just so obvious that I feel like he’s trying to simultaneously point the finger at those people, trying to insult them, but it isn’t quite working?
I don’t know. No matter how you try to look at it, those missions are a total failure. Hopefully Suda and Grasshopper are aware of this and will do better next time.
Aside from Suda51 himself, Grasshopper also has another big personality among their ranks: Akira Yamaoka, who left Konami and the lucrative Silent Hill franchise (made popular largely due to his music and sound design) to join them. I always liked that he basically abandoned the series that made him a huge name in the gaming industry in order to be a part of a scrappy little team that cranks out weird games that will never sell as well as even the worst Silent Hill games. Like leaving a multi-platinum world famous rock band to join some punk band that nobody’s heard of. Since defecting to Grasshopper, he’s done some amazing soundtrack work, with Shadows of the Damned probably being his best to date.
The soundtrack to Killer is Dead, however, doesn’t quite feel like his stuff as much as that game does. I feel like it has way more in common with Masafumi Takada’s soundtrack to Killer7 more than anything else, which makes sense. The collector’s edition came with a CD that has 25 tracks from the game on it, and while it’s all good, none of it really stands out or does much for me outside of the game itself. When I’m playing, it’s perfect, it suits the game beautifully, but removed from the gameplay and visuals it loses a lot of its power. Still, it does what it needs to, and I love the softer, jazzier tracks, which I’ve never heard from him before.
This write-up is already way too stupidly long, so let’s just touch on some other things that I like about the game really quickly: while the bulk of combat is you mashing one button to hack things up with a katana, there is quite a lot more going on, with dodging and blocking being super important, and it feels a bit like God Hand in some ways. The way things go slow motion when you dodge at the last second is lifted straight from No More Heroes, but at least here they actually tell you about it and explain it. Moon River looks EXACTLY like Anne Hathaway, I think. Bryan was my favorite character. Nobody writes dialogue like Suda, and it felt good to have those talks between Mondo and each boss, even if they weren’t quite as engaging as the conversations in NMH. The one thing that amused me about the Gigolo missions was the whispered “MAGNIFICO!” you’d hear if you gave the girl a really good present, a callback to Shadows of the Damned. I liked Scarlett’s challenges, even though I couldn’t beat half of them until after I finished the game. They reminded me a lot of the side challenges in God Hand. Oh, and the “Please Stand By” cut in the Russia level on the train. Not the Zaka TV reference that’s in Killer7 and NMH, but I laughed so hard at that. Also breaking the fourth wall a good three or four times in the most casual way, I love Grasshopper for that.
I feel like if I replay Killer7 soon, I’ll be able to make even more connections between the two, because Suda emphasized that they’re close, but no one else has really brought that up in other reviews, so who knows whether there are more connections or not?
Someone on Tumblr did a nice batch of articles about this game too, one involving a couple of Freud’s psychological theories and how they apply to Mondo and David, and two about how the game’s characters relate to chess pieces. Way smarter than anything I’ve written, check them out if you’re interested.
Also if you're interested, I've written on this website about No More Heroes, first impressions for Shadows of the Damned, and Lollipop Chainsaw.