Review- Killer is Dead

      Here we are. Again. Another year, again a game Suda is like, what Executive Director on at this point? This time, from 2012 to 2013, it's sorta better and then sorta not. Kinda like 2012 to 2013.

"But on the real, we do it big in the club, gettin' all the groupie love." - Video game

       Killer is Dead is another game by Grasshopper Manufacture, the folks behind stuff like Killer7, Shadows of the Damned and most recently Lollipop Chainsaw. All around cool guy Goichi Suda returns to write the script this time around, and we get to see a guy try to direct a Suda 51 game without the guy actually being Suda 51. It follows amnesiac assassin Mondo Zappa, whose only defining characteristics are that he likes soft boiled eggs and has a robot arm, as he kinda does contracts. Maybe a couple, but mostly goes to the moon because this game has like nine missions that aren't two minutes long and he goes to the moon. Twice. The game does see you carrying out some more interesting contracts in the second half, however short lived they might be. There's an evil train, a yakuza with a ghost tiger, and a blue guy who wants to steal music. Or something. One of the bigger issues this game has is padding for length, which it shouldn't need considering how short it is. About a quarter of the game is spent in Mondo's dream sequences, which just dish out exposition to you on a heaping platter. For a fast paced action titles like this, a break in the action can be a breath of fresh air, but by the third time I started to wonder if this yearly release schedule Grasshopper is on really lends itself well to super fleshed out action games. (Note- it doesn't.)

This should've happened more instead of flashbacks. Probably. 

                    

      So I'm making it sound like I really thought this game was schlock, but that was actually just a clever tactic I was employing called get-the-worst-shit-out-of-the-way-first. The first thing to give this game props for is that it's a kinda orgasmic sensory overload in a pretty major way. The harsh shadows mixed in with vibrant colors calls back to Killer7, one of the most visually amazing games in the past fifteen years. It's stuff like this that really shows how art design trumps graphical power any day of the week. The game falls into the trap of occasionally making you fight in a pretty boring, grey area, but it's smaller touches like a view of the snowy mountaintops from on top of a train or the purple and red sheen from your opponents that really brings the scenes together. Although it is pretty perplexing that the most visually interesting area in the entire game, an apartment turned MC Escher-style candy house, is the first major area of the game, instead of being saved up for later. The other issue with Killer is Dead's visuals apart from some sometimes boring scenery is that the game suffers from some pretty serious screen tearing, which is very apparent whether you're in combat or not. Ex-Silent Hill composer and now in-house Grasshopper go-to music guy Akira Yamaoka really delivers this time around with an  interestingly eclectic mix of catchy electronic tunes occasionally infused with some strong bass, frantic drums or warbly lyrics. It's something I've never really seen him branch out into, usually staying with more traditional instrumental work, and it's exciting to see. The music in Killer is Dead stirs old memories of Grasshopper's previous, and just as talented composer Masafumi Takada, which is always a good thing.

The game's antagonist David is like a glitzier version of Prince.
 Assless chaps actually included.

     The core gameplay of Killer is Dead is pretty standard hack and slash fare. You have one main button for all sword strikes and one button for fist attacks, which are usually used to break an opponent's guard. There are very few moves available in the game so it instead relies on a simple albeit fun combination of timed parries and dodges for any sort of combat depth. There are a few sub weapons (hint- they're all some kind of gun, unless they're a drill), but they can't be strung into your combos as they could in say, Bayonetta. This renders them mostly useless barring a few enemies which your sword can't reach, and it makes you wonder if it was too much trouble to implement these weapons better into the combo driven gameplay, for the sake of variety if anything. This game actually includes a cancelled feature from Shadows of the Damned, the 2011 Grasshopper release, called Gigolo missions. These have been stirring up some controversy online, but lemme give you the rundown. You have drinks with a girl and you give her presents and you get a trinket to help you in game. These barely factor into the game at all and it seems strange that they'd play such a large part in the marketing of the game, except in an attempt to break out of the niche Grasshopper has in the market and into a much wider(?) audience of people who buy videogames because they want to see ladies.

     Killer is Dead is an odd duck. In an industry mostly conscious of Grasshopper's games, it seems like this game was being marketed on oddity alone, like Suda51's name plastered on the marketing should count as a brand. Previous games such as Killer7 and No More Heroes have thrived on their own type of weird that I think a lot of us can respect. They don't try to prove anything to anyone, and they certainly don't flaunt it on the box. Killer is Dead's story comes off as trying really hard to capture that "Suda style" without understanding the core ideas of it, the underdog appeal that breaks through the mold of this saturated-to-hell market. As the credits slammed onto screen after a strangely standard ending as a punk song blazed through the speakers, I couldn't help but miss Shadows of the Damned's more subdued, quietly weird closer, with a song by the actual group The Damned. It's a real sign of how quick the industry changes when you can wish for something from just two years ago, but that's the nature of games in general. But at Killer is Dead's heart is a team of people that really care, and when everything comes together, it shows you can still catch that Grasshopper lightning in a bottle one last time, no matter how fleeting it may be.

                                                                    7.5/10

Check Your Privilege- But With Video Games This Time!

     So this was kind of a lax week for actual industry news. Next gen console release dates are in November and the XBONE can hook eight controllers up to itself at once. Which is really great-- if you want to split your goddamn TV into eight separate tiny squares while you play. So I did have something I want to talk about, because I've been trying to rush through Killer is Dead for a review and finding it longer than I'd expected. An issue has come up with some people online about a few games recently, before said games had even come out, Killer is Dead being one of them. I don't really enjoy arguing about any kind of -ism whatever, but when White Knighting is pushing its way through into my game deal, then I figure it's an alright topic. Sexism accusations have been cast on Skullgirls and the visually striking watercolor game Dragon's Dogma pretty recently, but I want to focus this more on Goichi Suda/Grasshopper Manufacture's games, because I feel like that's something I really know about and can more easily cite examples.

     All the way back to No More Heroes, Suda has been getting flak from bloggers saying that his games feature unfair portrayals of women and should be taken of the market. No More Heroes is a game about a loser guy meeting a contact to the Assassin Underworld by the name of Sylvia Christel, who changes his life dramatically, for better or for worse. She's shown to be incredibly competent in an industry widely populated by men (Albeit a honking murder industry) and her seemingly hoity attitude and untouchable doesn't define her character, but rather her ability to deal with angsty yet charming goon and pivotal guy Travis Touchdown as she starts to become more of a character. (Starting to see the parallels with the game industry?)
                                                                 

Sylvia doesn't take any shit yet doesn't come off as pandering

     Shadows of the Damned, the next game by Suda's development team, Grasshopper Manufacture, was a huge twist on the damsel in distress trope, and Lollipop Chainsaw, which I reviewed a year ago, had you in the role of cheerleader Juliet Starling, a character who the industry was sold on before the game even dropped, a rarity for a new IP. There was no clear division of importance between the sexes, and the game focuses entirely on the interaction between her and her decapitated head boyfriend Nick, instead of poking fun at her with typical degrading cheerleader jokes. Killer is Dead's sexist claims come from the game's "Gigolo Mode" in which you take girls out for drinks and ogle them, but the reality is the actual content in the game is far from objectifying women. It's still the same varied and interesting cast Grasshopper games have been known for. I'm not trying to discount the argument against sexism in gaming, because like every hugely popular entertainment medium, there are definitely less women featured, but in this specific instance, it's like voice actress Erin Fitzgerald said, the real sexism in the industry can be found in titles with "Hundreds of male characters and a pittance of female characters."

      Suda's games may be childish at times, but it's more to appeal to the youth in all of us than to discriminate, and the joke is never on a specific demographic. I'd like to offer up the opposite argument, and put it out there that Grasshopper Manufacture's varied casts are helping to push the industry forward much more than they're getting credit for. No More Heroes is one of the few games to feature a black female main character, and while it might seem like a no brainer to feature racially diverse women protagonists in games, it's something that's rarely done, instead going for the white, male protagonist. (Who is usually bald. And has a gruff voice. Usually.) So with this post firmly planted in my history, I'm never touching anything like this again. I just had to shoot out my thoughts on this. Without white knighting. Working through Killer is Dead to review it, and I'm pretty excited about getting to that. My bones are aching to review. My bones. I have like 200.

Cool Dude New City

     So for my first post back I might, y'know, make a list of the best games of 2013 thus far or review 2005's Killer7 in honor of Killer is Dead releasing on the 27th, I've really been meaning to do that-- Oh, wait, I'm being told right now that Nintendo did something. They did a very bad thing.

That one right there, officer, that's the one who threw my common sense out the window

   I would like, for a moment to just think, because I feel like there is a possibility that Nintendo already has a 2D handheld platform on the market (That being a the DS and its many, many iterations). Oh! But they do have a 3D machine. Oh gosh, what if I don't want to play a game in 3D? There couldn't possibly be a slider on the side of the screen that can remove the 3D? Oh, wait, there is? Huh. Well, maybe someone just really want a handheld device that looks vaguely like a slice of cake. Or something. So Nintendo might still have 100 billion in the bank to do crazy stuff like release a system that doesn't actually close, but I have to stay strong in my own heart and not actually get involved with it, because right now it's reminiscent of a handheld game you would get at a Burger King in 2006. As for all the iterations of the 3DS, this is a lot like the Gameboy Micro, which was probably the size of the palm of your hand. Except the Gameboy Advance didn't have a slider on the side that turned it tinier. So I've come to the conclusion that this is for kids. That a flat-ish, hingeless thing could only serve as a pricedropped device an eight year old could try to persuade their parent into getting them. So there's that. Alright. Alright.

    So forgetting that for a moment, this has actually been a huge month for games. Pretty much right off the bat we had Dragon's Crown, Vanillaware's handpainted brawler, then Saint's Row 4, Volition's DLC turned full game, which apparently turned out all right. I've actually been able to spend some time with Killer is Dead, and while I'm not super into a developer- especially one I really like, doing an annual release schedule, it actually seems like it turned out pretty alright so far. Not a lot in the way of games in September, really, besides GTA V, which is seeming more and more like it's going to be worth the five year wait after GTA IV. Plus it has a song from Drive in it. I mean, what's not to love, right? 

Goldbumania

      So the XBox One requires a daily sign in to the shitty online service for single played games. Cool. So the final add-on for Borderlands 2 was announced, hopping on the crazy DLC train with an in game D&D campaign type thing (Sorta). So at E3 2011 the fine folks at Insomniac Games (The people behind Ratchet & Clank, Resistance, etc.) put out a CG trailer for Overstrike, what would be a whacky tale of four dysfunctional secret agents doing secret stuff. There wasn't much news on it until recently. but it was reborn as FUSE, and this week it came out. Guess what it sucks. The original Insomniac humour was apparently removed for a wider audience third person shooter. Because shooters with funny, irreverent heroes never do well. Like Uncharted. What a failure, right? Now a moment of silence to mourn the fallen project. Which had The Hives on the soundtrack.

I call it Lost Wages

     So Microsoft has revealed their new console that's going to push them into the next generation after what has been possibly the longest console generation in history.  Apparently they're taking it as a joke because they've marketed the damn thing as the 'XBOX One'. You'll be able to play great games like... Halo 5. And Call of Duty Ghosts... Y'know, that thing that also comes out on every other platform every single year. A constant connection to the motion controlled Kinect is required, which essentially means you might need a ten foot space between you and your TV to even use the console. All games are installed from disc, after which all subsequent users of the disc must pay a fee to install and use it, essentially killing a portion of the used games market. What a world. But oh, don't worry. You get a dog in Call of Duty. Unless any major changes or announcements are made about this thing soon, I can't see things looking good for Microsoft. But y'know.
                   

For everyone who wanted to play games on a VCR

Diego Brando

     So the next game in the Shin Megami Tensei series is coming out after ten years, as Shin Megami Tensei IV on the 3DS. The folks in charge of that, Atlus, have had their budget kinda cut so here's hoping that does alright. Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon and Deadly Premonition Director's Cut were released to some(?) fanfare. New trailers for GTA V and Call of Duty hit the masses. Here's a hint, one of those games looks good and it doesn't start with a C and end with 'all of Duty'. Dead Space 3 has officially failed, according to EA. No surprise here considering mass market appeal and actually entertaining gameplay don't always go hand in hand when it comes to survival horror. What I'm saying is Dead Space 3 is Arnie's Commando with space zombies and that's schlocky. So yeah.

Hip crews only.

Diamandis is not Crash

    Surprise a new Call of Duty was announced, who cares. Moving on. So the fine-ish folks at Konami are releasing eight Metal Gear Solid games as a collection later this year, because they really had to stick it to everyone who bought the previous collection they released a bit over a year ago with half that. Nintendo will apparently not be making an appearance at the next E3, which doesn't sound very assuring of their future. The trailer for the next Bethesda-published-but-not-Bethesda-developed-game, The Evil Within is out, and it's just maybe a little bit unconventional. It's the next game from the exiled creator of the Resident Evil franchise, and here's hoping it's... y'know, better than Resident Evil tends to be lately. Also some next Microsoft console announcement on May 21st okay yeah great.