E3 2005: Killer 7
Article by Chris Carson
I spent a lot of time with Killer 7 at E3. Almost all of my time out of the Zelda booth was spent ten feet away at the Killer 7 kiosk. To be honest, for about half that, I was simply playing it because, more than anything else, I was confused and desperately trying to wrap my mind around just what it was. But the other half of the time, I was loving every second of it. Id like to take some time to detail just what I loved so much. Describing Killer 7 is no easy task and will require me to speak often about presentation. The game oozes style, from its cel-shaded visuals to its extreme gore and twisted storyline --- at times even relying on that style to carry the gameplay.
The plot goes a little something like this. A cult rises, known only as "Heaven Smile." Heaven Smile members may appear perfectly normal to the naked eye, but when seen with special vision, they are revealed as the terrible zombie-like creatures they are -- characterized by their horrific smiles. They cut a swath anywhere they go, destroying anything in their path, and are apparently equipped with the ability to overtake the minds of their victims. An attack on America is launched. The U.S. government, threatened by the rapid growth of the cult, has contracted an absolutely prolific assassin to take care of Heaven Smile for them.
You are that assassin: Harman Smith. So you're probably thinking, "Another game where you play a badass killer...," right?
Not quite. Harman is 65 years old, crippled, and requires constant medical care. However, he has a rather unique ability -- multiple personalities. Seven of them, to be exact -- who, together, make up the Smith Alliance. They all have very different personalities, to the point of being entirely different people. And each of them, unlike any multiple personalities you might have, is entirely real. Not only that, each of them is a talented killer by themselves. Given that Harman can move freely between all seven, describing him as a competent assassin isnt doing him justice.
Not just the Smiths will be around to help you, mind you. Youll also meet up with a few ghosts along the way who will advance the storyline, offer advice, tips, and come in handy in other ways (though usually mild). Your servant Iwazaruscof, Iwazaru for short, will drop down on a harness and rope in strange red ninja garb to offer advice. Though, he mostly just says, "Were in a tight spot, master" which does get irritating pretty quickly. Also around is Travis, the ghost of someone Harman killed on an earlier job. His job seems to be to advance the plot. Hell pop up to tell you information about who Heaven Smile are. And lastly, I met Hoon-Yun, who carries a strange mask with him. Shooting the mask will cause him to offer you hints to the puzzles you may otherwise be stuck on at the price of thick blood (Ill get into blood in more detail later). The Smiths are the most important tool youve got, though, so lets spend a bit of time on who each of them are.
The Smiths
Garcian Smith:
Garcian is the leader of the Smith Alliance. A black suit and a briefcase make him look awfully professional, but not much like a killer. And honestly, as far as combat goes, hes the least useful member. Armed with a small pistol that has no real strengths, hes the last personality youll want to be in if there are foes around. He carries a briefcase with him containing equipment for revival, and should you ever die as another Smith, Garcian is the only one capable of bringing you back by infusing whats left with blood. He had no special ability in the demo.
Dan Smith:
Dan carries a fairly powerful large caliber revolver. He is reasonably fast with the gun, reloads quickly, and packs a pretty decent punch. Distracting to watch as most of the Smiths are, he actually runs with his gun behind his head, almost resting on his neck, for no apparent reason. He had a "charge shot" special ability in the demo -- something a few of the characters had -- which consumed thin blood to fire a more powerful shot.
Coyote Smith:
You want power? Coyotes your man. He looks and plays like a souped-up version of Dan. His pistol, in fact, even looks like a modified (and more powerful) version of Dans revolver. Unfortunately, firing with so much power causes two major problems. One, you fire much slower than Dan. And two, your accuracy takes a blow. The backfire from every shot is so powerful that it moves your aiming cursor. Have fun re-aiming after every shot, even with stationary targets. Fortunately, you dont have to hit them very many times. For reference, his reload is a carbon-copy of Dans, so still quite quick. He also had the 'charge shot' special ability, in the demo.
Con Smith:
Probably my favorite of the Smiths, Con always wears headphones and runs hunched over. Hes blind, but has amazing hearing and uses that to "see" his enemies. He has two full auto pistols, and hunches sideways to stack them on one top of the other whenever he fires. Because of this dual setup, he unloads bullets into his foes at an absolutely unbelievable speed. However, neither of the pistols is very powerful, and due to his fighting style, hes fairly inaccurate. Though his reload might be the coolest thing Ive ever seen: he tosses two full clips at the ground before kicking them back up and into his guns. This also takes him about 0.4 seconds to do, causing his reload to waste almost none of your killing time. He had no special ability in the demo.
Kaede Smith:
Kaede is the only female member of the Smith alliance. She wears a short white dress which is stained with blood across its entire front. Kaede is also armed with a modified pistol equipped with a scope (which the demo insists is a rifle, but a booth babe assured me that its likely a translation error. Hopefully that kind of thing is fixed by release.) Her gun allows her an almost perfect accuracy, and is reasonably powerful. In fact, she had the ability to use a zoom feature which allowed her to hit enemies long before they even knew she was there. But if you play as her, use that accuracy well. Should you be forced to reload during battle, you will almost surely die while you watch Kaede fumble with her clip for what seems like ten seconds. She had no special attack in the demo.
Mask De Smith:
The most powerful of the Smiths, Mask wears a strange wrestling mask that he gets his name from, and he carries two grenade launchers. Quite simply, if you hit your foe, they will die. However, he has to reload after every shot, and his reload isnt exceptionally fast. He makes it easy to take out one Heaven Smile or two, but a room full of enemies will eat him alive. His special attack in the demo was the charge shot, again.
Kevin Smith:
Kevin is an albino, and a bit of an outcast within the Smith Alliance. Unlike the other Smiths, he carries no gun. Instead, he fights with knives. Kevin will throw an endless barrage of knives at his foes, which, while doing very little damage, allows him to never have to reload as he has an unlimited number of knives. He also has the ability to start slashing, if an enemy gets close enough. Kevin is the only Smith able to engage in hand-to-hand combat, which works wonders as a last frantic attempt to avoid contact. He had no special attack in the demo.
The Demo
As the demo begins, Garcian Smith walks down the street and enters a warehouse. His cell phone rings, and a voice tells him there are no more than 14 Heaven Smile in the building, and that he is to destroy their headquarters and exterminate all but their leader, who they want kidnapped so they may learn more about what youre up against. He enters the building, and as a security camera pans by him, he flashes brightly and we see that Dan Smith is suddenly standing in his place. A young boy runs by Dan, warning him not to continue. He says his friends were all killed and that hes running. He says its far too dangerous to continue. He then walks past Dan, leaving your back turned to him. You hear a strange cackle and he becomes a Heaven Smile. Dan, without even flinching, fires his gun behind his head, never even turning to acknowledge the transformation. "Shit, theres more than fourteen. Theyre duplicating." The demo begins.
The first thing I had to adapt to was the controls. Theyre a little more than odd. First of all, the most important thing for you to know is that its a rail shooter. You simply hold down the A button, and your character runs forward. When you reach a junction of any kind, the different directions you can go are presented to you by naming each place (East Hallway, Harmans Room, and Parking Lot, for instance) and by selecting a direction and pressing A, your character will continue along that rail. If you come across any of the NPC characters, a junction will come up on screen to either speak to them or run along the path youre currently on, placing one of the options as, say, Iwazaru. In addition to running along the rail, pressing the B button will turn you 180 degrees, allowing you to return in the direction you came.
Pressing R aims your weapon, switching you into first person mode. While holding R, L scans the area. When Heaven Smile appear, they are transparent and are entirely impervious to all your attacks. They must first be scanned before you can see what they truly are and harm them. Pressing A fires your weapon while aiming. Y uses your special ability. And thats really all youll ever need to know for the controls. Interesting stylistic choice: When your character has to reload, it will jump out of first-person and show an in-game cinematic of sorts showing them reloading before snapping you back into first person. It works fairly well, but only because the reloads, for the most part, look very cool.
When you begin the demo, you will not be able to play as just any Smith. Each personality needs to "wake up" first, which they do as you kill more Heaven Smile. For instance, accessing the Smith menu might tell you Mask De Smith will wake up after 11 more Heaven Smile have been killed. Once theyve woken up, they are accessible to you unless you die as any of them. Should you die, you will be asked to choose another Smith and will begin as them at the last save point. By returning to the spot you died as Garcian, you may infuse blood into your fallen comrade to revive them. And at any time you wish, you can enter the pause menu and switch between any of the Smiths you have available.
The demo is quite fair in trying to teach you how to play and is generally kind enough to only throw one enemy at a time at you. This gave me the time to notice a few things. Every member of Heaven Smile has a glowing yellow spot somewhere on their body. If youre a good enough shot, hitting that spot will vaporize the enemy in one shot with nothing but a yellow burst of particles left behind. This is where Kaede and her accuracy are useful once you get a little bit better. Otherwise, it often takes a very large number of shots to kill. The interesting factor there is the ability to dismember your opponents as you kill them. Multiple shots to the arm will remove that arm. A headshot will entirely decapitate them. A shot to the knee will remove their leg and drop them to the ground, forcing them to slither towards you. (Just keep in mind, they slither bloody fast. This isnt a stalling technique by any stretch.) When you do get the final shot in, blood will spray from the enemy in every direction before they too vaporize, though this time leaving a red burst of particles instead of yellow.
When you kill a Heaven Smile, you will be rewarded with blood, which youll need to collect. Thin blood is consumed by the use of special abilities such as the charge shot, or is used from the pause menu to heal your characters. Thick blood can be concentrated into a serum in one of Harmans Rooms along the way, which you use to power up one of the following four attributes: Power, Speed, Waver, or Criticals. These affect damage you do, the speed you fire at, your accuracy and the frequency of "critical" one-hit kills, respectively.
Continuing through the demo, youre soon taken to a parking lot where an egg-laying Heaven Smile (hanging from the roof) drops foe after foe at you, slowly wearing you down as you realize its supply is limitless. It does, however, have a strange yellow circle very obviously separate from the rest of its body. A few shots to the weak-point and the egg-layer will vaporize. Travis is waiting for you just beyond it, and tells you it was a duplicator. After telling you to find the queen if you want to eliminate Heaven Smile, he gives you a strange bullet called a "Soul Shard" and tells you the gatekeeper will want it to let you advance later. I guess youll be collecting these as you go on.
Advancing through the demo, I then came across a chain of puzzles which reminded me more of Resident Evil games than anything else. I had to flush a toilet to rust through a pipe so I could get a coat of arms which was in the pipe, for instance. In the laundry room, a severed head was waiting for me in the dryer with a fire ring in his mouth, which, when equipped, allowed me to light the candles that opened the secret shelf in the library with the strange crest that worked as a key to the control panel. What you have to do from the control panel or where you go from there, I dont know. I never did get a chance to play any further than this.
Youve all heard that Killer 7 is a strange game, but I swear its seventeen times stranger than you think. The gore is unbelievably over the top, and story is so twisted and just jumps right into being messed up without really explaining much. (Though I suspect this is somewhat due to the demo being in the middle of the game. It claimed to be mission 33.) The concept of a shooter on foot, which is also a third-person on rails and first-person whenever you aim, is more awkward than I can begin to explain, and with all of this stacking itself up, I nearly gave up on the game the first time I had a controller in my hand.
But Im very glad that I didnt. As soon as you get past all that, youll be taken in. This game deserves a really fair chance from all of you just because its so incredibly artistic. The cel-shading is absolutely gorgeous, and with an almost flawless presentation, everything plays out more like the an awesome Japanese anime than a video game. And with seven different characters to play as -- each of whom will be necessary to use in different places to solve different puzzles and overcome varied objects, and all of whom will be entirely useable for the rest of the places that dont require their abilities, allowing you to make choices that cater to your own specific style -- there should be more than enough to keep you from getting bored. Gaming is an art form, and Killer 7 is proof.