I’ve been a fan of Killer7 for a long while now (and other Suda51 games, in fact) when I heard that they were porting it to PC, I was cautiously optimistic; After all I was sure they would need to change some things here and there to bring this cult classic to computers, on the other hand I didn’t expect too much in the realm of bugfixes and other gameplay tweaks. I think I got almost exactly what I wanted, a modern version of Killer 7 that everyone can enjoy that doesn’t change a single thing about the gameplay, bugs and weird balance issues the game originally had.
I had technical issues when the game launched - I couldn’t play it at all - because my user folder had accented characters in it, but the devs reacted quickly and I was able to enjoy the game. The configuration settings are okay for a game of that style. I had to rebind most of the mouse/keyboard controls so everything played exactly like I wanted, but when I actually got to the game, it was really neat playing it with the mouse and hotkeys for a bunch of shortcuts that weren’t in the previous release. As a first person shooter on rails where you move on very well-defined tracks, Killer7 might feel a bit weird for newcomers but being able to look around with the mouse, heal instantly with a simple hotkey and change characters at the touch of a button makes the whole thing more palatable.
A small disappointment of course is that the changes are just skin-deep. You can switch characters on the fly but there’s no UI to show you which key changes to which character, there are no changes to the UI at all to display that you are on PC - it still talks about Y buttons and memory cards - and all the bugs found in the original Killer7 are there, unskippable Bloodysunday cutscenes and all. At least this time I can play Killer7 in french, something I have always wanted but never could.
But this shouldn’t stop you from playing this game at all. These are small issues I’m only having -because- I played so much of the original. This is a great version of the game running really well with enough quality-of-life improvements to feel refreshing, but otherwise a superb game untouched. I could get into the weird bloody mess that is Killer7, but I don’t want to reveal too much about it. Let’s just say that the story goes places, the gameplay is serviceable to support the whole thing, the design is pretty interesting and the music can get really good. More people should play Killer7!
May the Lord smile…
…and the Devil have mercy.
