Review: Killer Is Dead Nightmare Edition

 

Get ready for some seriously stylish action from renowned designer SUDA51. In this exclusive version for PC, players will be slicing, dicing, and shooting as the suave executioner Mondo Zappa. Prepare for the thrill of love and kill in KILLER IS DEAD!

Pros:

• Graphics are proper lush Sin City looking dark noir comic book style visuals. Every character on the screen pops and the levels themselves are just pure eye candy.
• Full 360/pad support and is the best way to play it.
• Includes all DLC that has been released. Which may be be small in quantity but for game length it adds many hours and is of a high quality.
• Every cut scene can be skipped so if you have double dipped, You can feel safe that you wont have to re watch anything.
• Easy control scheme/layout and is quickly learned.
• Hints will pop up as you unlock new things and you have a opening level which acts as a tutorial and shows you the ropes.
• The music is banging and really elevates the whole experience. Its trippy, its loud and its in your face.
• Levels are split up into episodes and presented on a world map. You can unlock side missions and any mission can be replayed by simply navigating the map to it. Before you start each level it will show a brief description of your mission, and any previous scores you may have.
• Unlock side missions by finishing story missions and by finding triggers in levels themselves. Finding a particular person in a mission could open a side mission for example.
• Gigilo missions can be unlocked and are of a sexy perspective. For your mission is to seduce women, buy them gifts and shower them with compliments. Bit of a pervert angle is introduced as you don a pair of glasses that allow you to see through womens clothing.
• Complete a level and get a summary screen giving info like time completion and more importantly an overall rank.
• Combat is a combo style affair, String together moves with your bionic arm and sword. All in glorious HD gory style!
• Defeated enemies will drop items that are used to level up your stats and health bars.
• The game plays out very much as a part brawler part shooter as some sections will see you using your bionic arm as a gun and shooting enemies.
• Destroy objects to find extra items.
• You can stun enemies and then do an adrenaline burst move which changes the screen to a black and red colour scheme and sees you cutting enemies clean in half! Think Mortal Kombat finishing moves and you get the idea.
• When you perform a combo over a few hits, You can finish enemies off with a final judgement move which sees you picking a button and finishing an enemy a particular way, More importantly the option will give you one of four bonuses like heal you or drop extra shards etc.
• Huge array of enemy characters with some seriously huge over the top brutes.
• Story is just as crazy as the game play and you have to play it to believe it.
• Online leader boards which can be filtered to friends only.
• Buy new items from the in game shop and buy new outfits for your female friends.

Cons:

• QTE and button mashing events are clearly insane!
• Slight slowdown in areas where you have a lot going on.
• The pacing of levels vary and you can find a few levels really quite flat.
• You may well feel confused a lot of the time, story, combat and even level navigation.
• Game is locked at 30fps.
• The actual story is very short with just a dozen or so story levels on offer.
• You have a lot of information to take in at the beginning.

In Summary, The game is absolutely mental and I mean it in the nicest way possible. It felt like Sin City meets Kill Bill with a crazy story only a porn film director could love. The fighting is tight and fun and flashy but the rest of the game can feel quite slow and long winded. The game can easily be finished in a few hours but its all about the journey. The journey will have you experiencing amazing highs and a lot of WTF just happened moments. You wouldn’t expect anything less from SUDA51 and he stays true to his own unique style of game making. Completionists will have hours upon hours of fun with all the side missions and level ranks to beat, Whilst casual players will feel a little short changed at the games overall length. Its still worth a look and a hell of a lot of fun to boot!