A lot of flash but little substance.
posted by Emoney244 (SACRAMENTO, CA) Sep 8, 2013
Member since Sep 2012
Quick review of Killer is Dead
The Good:
- Graphics and art style look great. Fantastic art direction and presentation. The lighting is superb. Heavy shadows and bright lights give it a unique look despite using the Unreal Engine 3.
- Some of the best music in a Suda game. Yes even better than No More Heroes. Some of Akira Yamaoka's best work.
- The combat is bloody and fast. Seems limited at first but opens up once you upgrade Mondo.
- Interesting locales. One of the stages takes place on the freaking moon!
The Bad:
- Nonsensical story. It never explains it self well and barely opens up and makes the player infer too much by the end.
- Bad localization. The dialogue and writing sounds awkward and makes little sense.
- Poor voice acting. A lot of the voice actors have little emotion and awkward delivery. This could be contributed to the bad writing. The only stand out performance is Liam O' Brien as David but is given bad lines.
- Weak characters. The characters are given very little back story or personalities.
- Gigolo Missions. For me personally I don't mind how the women are portrayed. It is done in a humorous fun way but these missions are not fun to play and add very little to the game.
- Poor side content. The side missions and challenges are quite frustrating with difficult requirements and lack of direction on what you should be doing and they last for far too long than they should be.
- Cut content. One whole level was cut out of the game to be sold as DLC later. The events of the DLC is he even mentioned in the main game.
- Camera Issues. The game occasionally has camera issues and the lack of a lock-on function does not help it.
Killer is Dead could have been Suda's best game but falls short in some aspects that makes it fall to just a mediocre hack and slash. If you are a fan of Suda's style of presentation go for it, you are okay with skipping it. Go buyNo More Heroes or Shadows of the Damned instead.