Whatever I was going to say about Killer is Dead had been completely pushed out of my mind by a single, infuriating thought - in order to beat the second boss, I had to do that thing that video games sometimes make you do where you push the button really fast or else suffer some deadly consequence. I managed to succeed eventually, but my finger is killing me.
This has always been a problem for me. At least since the drinking contest in Chrono Trigger, if not before. There's something about the motion that feels very unnatural to me. It always makes me want to give up in frustration. This latest time was so bad that I actually had to look up a youtube tutorial on how to rapidly push a button. The video said to keep your finger close to the button and vibrate your whole arm. It worked, but the effort to reward ratio was so out of whack that I'm not entirely sure it was worth it. It must be a mechanic with some constituency, though, because designers keep putting it in games. And they wouldn't consistently reuse the same legacy mechanic for 30+ years if they didn't have a good reason, right?
Whew, I'm glad I got that off my chest. I was a bit disappointed to learn that Killer is Dead is going to be another slow finish for me. Not because it is bad (pointlessly physical QTE notwithstanding), but because t is probably the most singularly NSFW game I've played since Sakura Spirit. And seeing as how I do the bulk of my gaming at work, you can see how that might be an issue.
Where to start. The biggest offender is the non-pausable, non-skippable cutscenes. I work alone on the night shift, so I could probably get away with the game's disgusting violence and gratuitous male gaze, but not if a customer can randomly interrupt me and possibly be exposed to disgusting violence sounds or the sultry inanities of any random female character.
Which segues nicely into my more general first impressions of the game.There's a thing I've noticed in other Suda 51 games, and the trend seems to continue here, where I can't quite shake the feeling that the game is taking the piss out of me. Or, more accurately, that it's taking the piss out of the person it thinks I am. It's like it's saying, "hey, you couch dwelling manchild with the obsession with violent media and the brittle heterosexuality, I'll bet you like cyborg katana duels and sexy ladies with no personality, right - well here's something flashy and aggressively dumb for you."
And yet, for all its obvious self-awareness, it also feels like it's trying to have it both ways. Like, there's this "romance" minigame where you have to . . . and I swear I'm not making this up . . . discreetly ogle the ladies until you build up a "guts" gauge enough to give them a present and if you do it quickly and subtly enough and give a good enough present, your paramour's heart gauge will fill up and she will reward you with . . . I don't know, the loading screen said it would be a weapon, which is considerably better than some of the alternatives, but I'm willing to bet there's going to be a gross PG-13 sex scene (or at the very least, some heavily innuendo-laden dialogue) to go with it.
On the one hand, this is one of the dumbest things I've ever encountered. It could not possibly be this dumb on accident. I'm trying to work out what the hell is going on narratively, and I can't even. You need to cast surreptitious glances at your date's crotch so you get horny enough to act boldly, and that impresses the ladies somehow? It is, in fact, so dumb that I think it may swing back around to genius. It's like the distilled elemental essence of every romance minigame you've ever played. Imagine, instead of picking the correct responses from a menu to seduce Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams, all you have to do is stare at her tits a predetermined number of times. The only way it could be more on the nose is if you got a sex trading card afterwards.
On the other hand, if you think too hard about the thing where you look through your magic glasses to check what sort of present the ladies might like best, and at the same time their clothes disappear, you begin to realize that the game lets you (hell, encourages you) to leer at these lovingly-rendered virtual dolls in their skimpy underwear. I may feel like I have to cultivate a protective layer of irony to create some distance between me and this skeevy, juvenile business, and I'm almost certain that this effect was intentional, but it's still skeevy and juvenile, you know.
And that's the thing about Killer is Dead. I knew from the second I heard its funky opening soundtrack that this was going to be a game that put style over substance, but it wields the male gaze like a drunk with a sledgehammer. The first level has you hunting monsters in a house belonging to a woman whose cleavage takes up roughly half her body, and it's obvious from the first time you meat her that she's going to be the level's boss. But when the boss fight comes, the real enemy is a parasite that bursts out of her neck and proceeds to . . . wear her like a scarf. You're fighting a giant bug creature, but whenever it faces you, you're looking straight down this dead woman's astounding cleavage and to by the sheerest coincidence, the boss's weak points are hidden inside her splayed legs. It was disgusting and exploitative, and I don't know, is this what art looks like?
Is this art?
Certainly, the next boss fight, the one that gave me so much button-mashing trouble, is with David, the gold-lingere-clad king of the moon (aspiring) and the camera is not shy about putting his ostentatious codpiece right at eye level. And that couldn't be a coincidence either. Maybe Suda51 thinks sex is something you do with your eyes.
I feel like Killer is Dead is trying to say something. You don't break the fourth wall in the middle of a boss's establishing cutscene to say (and this is literally a quote), ". . . we'll get tons of complaints from the gamers. Isn't this supposed to be an action game?" unless you're trying to make a point. The problem I'm having is that every time I try to get a handle on what hat point is, the best I can come up with is "video games are beautiful gibberish - surrender to your id, loser."
From a blogging perspective, it's thrilling to have such a challenging game at such a late date. I was worried the bulk of my future posts would be some variation of "continuing to play strategy game X - strategy is sometimes weird, and also hard." Yet if I were playing this purely for my own enjoyment, I'm not sure how I'd feel about it. I like spectacle, but it's got to have heart. I get the feeling that this game regards heart as something that gets in the way of a good orgy (either the traditional kind, or of violence, take your pick.)
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