Killer Is Dead stars professional hitman Mondo Zappa as he… no, wait, lets take some time and really think about this. Killer Is Dead stars professional hitman Mondo Zappa. If the name alone doesn’t make you want to instantly play this game, check your priorities. They are wrong. Anyway, Mondo Zappa (yes) is a 35-year-old assassin working for the Brian Execution Firm, tasked with executing a series of dangerous criminals. He is aided by his boss, the Bond-girl-esque Vivian Squall, flatmate and assistant Mika Takekawa and chief of the Execution Firm, cigar-smoking cyborg Brian Roses.
Mondo sports not only a spiffy suit, but a sweet katana and a cybernetic left arm. A man of taste and something of a womanizer, when the shit hits the fan he becomes fearless and ruthlessly efficient. In short, the guy is a badass. One of his targets is Victor, a thoroughly bad guy who steals “musical talent” from musicians in order to play songs full of negative emotions, spreading throughout the world. Yeah. Can we just give this the best game ever award now? Gameplay looks to be along the
lines of other Japanese hardcoreaction games such as Devil May Cry or Bayonetta – frame-perfect controls and long combo strings aplenty, with Mondo’s robot arm morphing into a variety of forms to assist in the slaughter, like a gun or a drill. Copious doses of blood and dismemberment are a given, with Mondo making pretty damn sure he gets his job done, and not subtly. Absorbing the blood builds up an “Adrenalin Burst” attack, that when unleashed instantly decapitates nearby enemies. Nasty.
Suda’s eccentric touch is easy to see, even in these early stages. In a recent interview with Famitsu he detailed a stage where Mondo, on a motorbike, fights against a yakuza member riding a tiger. The battle takes place in Kyoto, with Suda saying, “I guess we felt like overseas gamers ought to see what
Kyoto looks like.” If we ever visit Kyoto and it doesn’t feature assassins on bikes fighting gang members on tigers, there is going to be disappointment. Mondo will also be able to flirt with “exotic ladies” in something called “Gigolo Mode.” We don’t think this game is going to win any awards for political correctness, but if it’s as tongue-incheek as Lollipop Chainsaw was, we don’t mind.
The graphics seem like a next-gen update of the wonderful cel-shaded style of Killer7 and man do they look pretty. Cel-shading is nothing new in these cynical times, but when done right it can still be breathtakingly good-looking. “We tried going for more realistic visuals at first” says Suda, “but it just didn’t produce the sort of unique expression we wanted. So we really pursued an art style that seemed
modern with our shading technology. There was a lot of trial and error behind what you see now.” The end result is simply beautiful, and these are some of the most striking screenshots we’ve seen in some time.
The game is apparently about 70 per cent complete, and Suda is hoping for it to release in Japan this summer. A Western release will soon follow, thankfully, as it’s already been picked up for Europe. Another quirky masterpiece in the making, then? We hope so. Grasshopper never lets us down.
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