Colonel Sanders in space!
In Killer is Dead you will find yourself playing as Mondo Zappa, a man whose job it is to make killers dead. The story is pretty surface level despite its best efforts to convince you otherwise, and for a game with such a basic story there sure are a lot of cutscenes. So many that at times you will be watching more than playing, which has worked for some games in the past but in Killer is Dead it only serves to annoy. The gameplay droughts are especially irksome because at its best the story is nothing more than pretentious, using dream sequences as smoke-screens to hide the utter banality of its plot.
At first I thought perhaps the story suffered from a slow start as do many games, but unfortunately that bit of optimism ultimately proved to be fruitless. There's no clear beginning, middle, and end to the story, you just kill guys until you get to kill the last guy you kill. The only reason Mondo has to complete the missions is that it's his job, which would be fine if the act of playing the game was fun, but it isn't.
The combat is like a broken version of the combat from the Arkham games. The X button is to attack while The Y button is to stun and when enemies are about to attack you can press B to counter or dodge. The problem is that with counter and dodge being the same button I often-times found myself dodging when I meant to counter and vice-versa.
Before you go assuming that I was just bad at the game let me tell you that the game is incredibly easy. Any time you lose all your health your assistant Mika jumps in to save the day, prompting a mini-game in which you tap the X button repeatedly until your heart-rate reaches 100 at which time you will be revived and continue playing from exactly where you died. Not only is the mini-game pointless but it ruins any challenge the game might have hoped to offer. My best guess is that this feature was implemented to help relieve any frustration the broken combat would have caused but it only made playing the game feel that much more trivial.
The camera doesn't do anything to help the games situation either. It frequently zooms in too close and makes crowd-control an almost impossible task; it's hard to counter or dodge an attack when it's coming from off-screen. It forces you to break away from the fighting and reposition the camera to get a better idea of your enemies' locations so you can launch a more successful attack. This slows down the combat and adds to the players building animosity for the game.
These camera issues annoy even further because of how goddamned pretty the game is. Killer is dead is seriously one of the best looking games available on the Xbox 360 and it's a real shame the camera doesn't seem to want the player to see just how beautiful the game really is. The camera is at its worst when you are performing executions or pulling off especially cool looking moves. It zooms in to show you how great the animations look, but it usually come in too far or turns on a strange angle and blocks your view of the move. The visuals are the best part of killer is dead and the game works to make sure you can't enjoy them, but when you do get to really appreciate the graphics it isn't because they are technologically impressive, but because it has such a unique art-style then definitely adds enjoyment to the game.
Killer is dead also happens to be one of the grossest games I have ever has the displeasure of experiencing. There is a certain mission-type know as Mondo girls where the player is placed in a bar, staring at a woman in a first-person view. When the woman is staring at you, you get points for staring at her face. When she looks away you have to quickly stare at her chest, legs, or crotch for as long as you can then quickly stare back at her face when she looks back at you. As if this wasn't disturbing enough already, once you have enough points amassed you can give the girl a gift. After giving her enough gifts you win. What you are rewarded with is a sex scene between Mondo and the girl in question.
It really is a disgusting depiction of a womanizer and the games does not care to make him look bad for acting this way. It instead chooses to congratulate you with upgrades for your character. It's hard to believe that anybody would think including these missions in the game was a good idea. Not only is it blatantly sexist, but it also makes the assumption that anybody buying the game must be stupid enough to enjoy this sort of objectification. Grasshopper should be ashamed.
Killer is dead is an offensive game, it's a broken game, but it's still one hell of a beautiful game. It's hard to overstate just how much the visuals add to the experience. They're so good they even add an epic sense to certain moments in the story despite how boring it is. It's a game that I think everyone should see but nobody should play. However it is a short game(around 5-6 hours) so you won't have to put up with it for too long if you decide to play it to see the art-style for yourself.