DrowZ: You should play Killer 7 (Also hey, there's a Discord!)
Since I graduated College in the fall of 2018, I spent the time that I wasn't using to job hunt and spiral in existential terror to discover and revisit media from the past that I hadn't thought about, or just missed out on entirely. In College, I spent the bulk of my leisure time playing fighting games with friends, and I still do. But it has been pretty nice to get back in touch with my inspirations, or finally experience something friends had recommended to me countless times. I missed out on these personal experiences. Some of my favorite discoveries have been short, animated shows like FLCL, Samurai Champloo, and Bojack Horseman. At some point, I'd like to write about each of them, but right now, I'd like to focus on something I experienced a bit more recently.
I had my 24th birthday in quarantine. I spent it in a Discord call with friends, replaying Goichi Suda's No More Heroes series, which was one of my favorites and continues to be to this day.
To the uninitiated, No More Heroes is an insanely stylish, Nintendo Wii Beat-Em-Up about lightsaber-wielding anime lover Travis Touchdown and his journey through the ranks of an underground bloodsport. Developed by Grasshopper and directed by the aforementioned Suda 51, No More Heroes is a crude, punk-inspired romp through the fictional city of Santa Destroy. Its gameplay is kinetic and messy, as is the plot.
It's a dumb game, stupid in a way that's emblematic of the era it came out in. It's full of Scott Pilgrim-esque gaming references and sprinkled with 00's era misogyny. Whenever Travis and a woman are on screen, it's going to be awkward and horrible. Suda has a losing track record with women in his games, to be honest.
Back in the late '00s and early 2010s, I was obsessed with No More Heroes and its charismatic director's gameography. I combed through forum posts, interviews and YouTube videos analyzing every corner of the games. It was an obsession. Travis Touchdown was a stand-in for "the Gamers," the bosses represented other video game genre, Travis also represents Suda himself.
In actuality, it really wasn't that complicated. Many others have covered this type of thing in great detail, I don't really care enough to do it myself. A younger me would, for sure. Now I'm older, and with that comes several skills, like object permanence. 14 year old me saw No More Heroes as the Memento of Video Games when in actuality, it's more of a Japanese Step Brothers.
I like unabashedly dumb things; it's my favorite flavor. Other people seemed to as well. After No More Heroes, Suda wound up getting snatched up by big-name publishers. Following his role as an executive director on the second No More Heroes, Suda's games garnered a lot more fanfare. Shadows of the Damned, Lolipop Chainsaw and Killer is Dead would all try to capitalize on No More Heroes' success but would wind up falling short of expectations.
During this time, Suda's works would slowly slide into the back of my mind, my fandom waned. There were new Suda games, packed with his usual style, but there was usually something missing that kept me from touching them. It just wasn't the same.
The world wouldn't see another No More Heroes game until 2019, with the aptly named Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes. I wound up picking it up late in the year- it was a smaller side title in the series.
Without getting too deep into it, Travis Strikes Again is a return to form for Suda, and his self insert. It's a fun little two-player beat-em-up with some of the strongest writing to ever come from him. It's interesting and introspective and, while my perspective is questionable as I am not a woman, I found none of the sexism that crept into the other No More Heroes games. It goes on sale semi-frequently, I recommend you pick it up for $20.
Playing this game is actually what inspired me to revisit those old games. Predictably, I got swept up in those old emotions again. I dug up the grave of my old fandom and absorbed the knowledge of the universe. Again, I wanted more o this distinct style. I knew of Suda's other games, The Silver Case, The 25th Ward, Killer 7. Still, they were all so muted compared to the boisterous No More Heroes for me to pursue them. Not to mention how rare those games were in 2010. Today, you can get those other games on PC, but most of the No More Heroes series is stranded on old hardware.
I streamed my playthrough of Killer 7 to friends, just as I did No More Heroes. I already knew a bit about the game since I combed through fan pages back at the height of my fandom. It was fun to experience it with someone who had never even heard of the game before, even if our reactions were largely the same.
Killer 7 is weird. I described the game as "a Gamecube era rail shooter where you play as an old man who is also seven other guys, and its kind of a survival horror but not really, it's more of a paranoia simulator. It's also kind of an Evangelion and sometimes when you shoot people they turn into kanji," almost verbatim.
I'll try to break down every part of my statement in a way that makes some sense.
Killer 7's gameplay has almost nothing in common with the games that came before and after it. In No More Heroes, you slap your enemies with your totally-not-a-lightsaber. You fight dudes, that's it.
The Killer 7 are a group of assassins who are all the alternate personae of their leader, A wheelchair-bound old man with a very large sniper rifle. You'll rarely play as him - his appearances are usually saved for cutscenes and boss fights. Instead, the role of the main character in Killer 7 falls to Garcian Smith, voiced by Greg Eagles, who famously gave life to Metal Gear Solid's Gray Fox and The Grim Reaper in The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. He doesn't use a Jamaican accent here, don't worry.
Garcian Smith is cool, and not even a dumb kind of cool. He's just action movie cool, and you get to play as them. Garcian and the other members of the Killer 7 each have their own unique abilities and weapons. Dan Smith can power up his shots to clear rooms and obstacles, Mask de Smith is a luchador with grenade launchers, Coyote Smith can jump and so on.
Your enemies in Killer 7 are mostly invisible, and the only way you will know they're around is by the sound of their laughter. Hence why I called it a paranoia simulator - the laugh is unmistakable, but that just tells you they're around, not where they are. Once you know they're about, you can switch into the first-person perspective and scan the area to make your enemies visible. It sounds easy, but the environments are rarely just empty boxes, so you'll have to keep your eyes peeled and your head on a swivel.
Now, you're probably wondering what I mean by an "Evangelion." I've never seen Eva, I know it's that weird show with the giant robots, and at the end there's a bunch of orange juice. I know what happens in Eva, but I'm just using it to describe Killer 7's peculiar writing.
Killer 7 takes place on an alternate earth where world peace has been achieved, all of the world's nuclear missiles have been disposed of, and the internet has been banned. Then weird, mutant terrorists attack and throw the world into chaos. Turns out, the mutant terrorists are in league with a weird Dracula-looking guy who wants to bring about a new age or something - yes, the game is about the war on terror.
Your enemies are invisible, and your job as the Killer 7 isn't to save the world. It's doing whatever the shady US government wants you to do. At no point in the game are your characters considered heroes; if anything you just wind up uncovering government conspiracies.
Similar to No More Heroes, Suda spins this tale from an unmistakably Japanese angle. You probably won't be able to make sense of any of it, I sure couldn't.
Ultimately, the plot of doesn't really matter. Like the games that would come later, its plot quickly falls apart once you tug at either end of it- it's also innately difficult to parse. Killer 7's strength is an invaluable experience that is truly unlike any other in a video game. Killer 7 will confuse you, it will disorient you. It's also kind of hilarious.
At one point, a governor challenges Garcian to a game of Russian Roulette. If Garcian wins, the governor will tell him the secret to picking up women, if Garcian loses, he'll have to kill the President of the United States. At another point, Mask de Smith walks in on a kitchen covered in blood and asks the only survivor, an armed chef, if he's okay. The chef shoots at him, so Mask headbutts the bullet out of the air. And not to mention the part of the game where a comic book artist draws a group of sentai-heroes to life, only for them to murder him for some reason. Also, Dan Smith sounds like an Irish trash can, and every line he has is hilariously bad.
If you don't enjoy the gameplay of Killer 7, you're doing yourself a disservice by not at least watching the cutscenes. You will have a good time.
I had my 24th birthday in quarantine. I spent it in a Discord call with friends, replaying Goichi Suda's No More Heroes series, which was one of my favorites and continues to be to this day.
It's a dumb game, stupid in a way that's emblematic of the era it came out in. It's full of Scott Pilgrim-esque gaming references and sprinkled with 00's era misogyny. Whenever Travis and a woman are on screen, it's going to be awkward and horrible. Suda has a losing track record with women in his games, to be honest.
Back in the late '00s and early 2010s, I was obsessed with No More Heroes and its charismatic director's gameography. I combed through forum posts, interviews and YouTube videos analyzing every corner of the games. It was an obsession. Travis Touchdown was a stand-in for "the Gamers," the bosses represented other video game genre, Travis also represents Suda himself.
In actuality, it really wasn't that complicated. Many others have covered this type of thing in great detail, I don't really care enough to do it myself. A younger me would, for sure. Now I'm older, and with that comes several skills, like object permanence. 14 year old me saw No More Heroes as the Memento of Video Games when in actuality, it's more of a Japanese Step Brothers.
The Japanese part is vital. No More Heroes emulates American culture through the lens of a foreigner who is enchanted by it. Its main character, Travis Touchdown, looks like Jackass's Johnny Knoxville, and Suda has admitted that it was intentional.
No More Heroes is a video game satire that both celebrates and mocks the medium and its audience. It does a lot of this clearly, but while its characters are unabashedly American, their actions and words are extremely Japanese. It adds to the flavor. You are playing as a lightsaber-wielding anime fan, so the odd dialogue makes it feel strangely authentic.
I love this kind of stuff; when describing this type of thing, to friends I've started calling it the "absurd mundane." Someone way smarter than me probably has a better name for it, but that's what I'm rolling with. It's the essence of that one YouTube video of the kids larping in the corner of a mall parking lot. It's the best kind of stupid to me.
Why does he say cosplay like that?
(Footage from the BossFight Database Youtube Channel)
During this time, Suda's works would slowly slide into the back of my mind, my fandom waned. There were new Suda games, packed with his usual style, but there was usually something missing that kept me from touching them. It just wasn't the same.
The world wouldn't see another No More Heroes game until 2019, with the aptly named Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes. I wound up picking it up late in the year- it was a smaller side title in the series.
Without getting too deep into it, Travis Strikes Again is a return to form for Suda, and his self insert. It's a fun little two-player beat-em-up with some of the strongest writing to ever come from him. It's interesting and introspective and, while my perspective is questionable as I am not a woman, I found none of the sexism that crept into the other No More Heroes games. It goes on sale semi-frequently, I recommend you pick it up for $20.
Playing this game is actually what inspired me to revisit those old games. Predictably, I got swept up in those old emotions again. I dug up the grave of my old fandom and absorbed the knowledge of the universe. Again, I wanted more o this distinct style. I knew of Suda's other games, The Silver Case, The 25th Ward, Killer 7. Still, they were all so muted compared to the boisterous No More Heroes for me to pursue them. Not to mention how rare those games were in 2010. Today, you can get those other games on PC, but most of the No More Heroes series is stranded on old hardware.
With the time this quarantine has afforded me, I decided to finally jump into some of the games that were so mysterious to me in the past, starting with the enigmatic Killer 7.
Killer 7 is weird. I described the game as "a Gamecube era rail shooter where you play as an old man who is also seven other guys, and its kind of a survival horror but not really, it's more of a paranoia simulator. It's also kind of an Evangelion and sometimes when you shoot people they turn into kanji," almost verbatim.
 |
| This is the first thing you do in the game. |
Killer 7's gameplay has almost nothing in common with the games that came before and after it. In No More Heroes, you slap your enemies with your totally-not-a-lightsaber. You fight dudes, that's it.
Killer 7 has more in common with those light gun arcade games like Time Crisis. Enemies pop up, you blast them and say a cool line and run onto the next group. It's just that in Killer 7, you have the God-like ability to turn 90 degrees in the other direction.
 |
| Footage from the Pure Gameplay Youtube Channel |
Garcian Smith is cool, and not even a dumb kind of cool. He's just action movie cool, and you get to play as them. Garcian and the other members of the Killer 7 each have their own unique abilities and weapons. Dan Smith can power up his shots to clear rooms and obstacles, Mask de Smith is a luchador with grenade launchers, Coyote Smith can jump and so on.
Pictured: Me at a job interview
Now, you're probably wondering what I mean by an "Evangelion." I've never seen Eva, I know it's that weird show with the giant robots, and at the end there's a bunch of orange juice. I know what happens in Eva, but I'm just using it to describe Killer 7's peculiar writing.
Killer 7 takes place on an alternate earth where world peace has been achieved, all of the world's nuclear missiles have been disposed of, and the internet has been banned. Then weird, mutant terrorists attack and throw the world into chaos. Turns out, the mutant terrorists are in league with a weird Dracula-looking guy who wants to bring about a new age or something - yes, the game is about the war on terror.
Your enemies are invisible, and your job as the Killer 7 isn't to save the world. It's doing whatever the shady US government wants you to do. At no point in the game are your characters considered heroes; if anything you just wind up uncovering government conspiracies.
Similar to No More Heroes, Suda spins this tale from an unmistakably Japanese angle. You probably won't be able to make sense of any of it, I sure couldn't.
This happens.
At one point, a governor challenges Garcian to a game of Russian Roulette. If Garcian wins, the governor will tell him the secret to picking up women, if Garcian loses, he'll have to kill the President of the United States. At another point, Mask de Smith walks in on a kitchen covered in blood and asks the only survivor, an armed chef, if he's okay. The chef shoots at him, so Mask headbutts the bullet out of the air. And not to mention the part of the game where a comic book artist draws a group of sentai-heroes to life, only for them to murder him for some reason. Also, Dan Smith sounds like an Irish trash can, and every line he has is hilariously bad.
If you don't enjoy the gameplay of Killer 7, you're doing yourself a disservice by not at least watching the cutscenes. You will have a good time.
(Addendum: 7/6/2020 I feel it's irresponsible not to note that there are scenes of sexual abuse in this game. Honestly, I forgot when I was writing this. It's not the most graphic but it'd better to be more aware than not.)
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Thank you for reading, or if you just scrolled to the end, thanks for the click. It gets us closer to that sweet ad money.
I wrote this piece as kind of a way to introduce myself to you all. This is also the post I'm going to use to formally announce the start of The Cement Mixer and its corresponding Discord.
Join in to chat with me and some friends, it's still getting started, but I want it to be a creatively minded place where people can plug their personal creations and interests, some of which we might even cover here on the blog. For the time being, I'll let anyone ask to be featured on here- next week I'm going to start tackling indie projects, so stay tuned!
-DrowZ (I'm still not sure what I should go by.)
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