Killer 7 is a mind bending, tour de force, crazy and sometimes confusing action adventure game by Capcom. They have brought us many other successful franchises before, but does Killer 7 have what it takes to compete with the rest and stand up to the many high quality games that Capcom has provided time and time again?

Killer 7 is the story about a group of assassins that go by the name of The Killer 7. Are they one man or many? What is exactly going on in this stylistic and somewhat disturbing game? All this and more will cross your mind when playing and trying to put a stop to the terrorist group known as the Heavens Smiles. To tell you anything more about the story would be a great travesty as this game partly strives on that very thing to keep the player going. The experience this game brings to the videogame tables is one you're likely not to forget for a long time coming.

The gameplay is something not quite seen in a game before. Your character has a set path he can walk on by pressing the A button to move forward and hitting B to turn around. This comes off very weird at first but overall it just takes getting used to. While this limits the actually exploration aspect in a way, it really doesn't because there are many moments where you will come to junctions and have to decide whether to enter a door or continue down the hallways, etc. While exploring the various levels and trying to figure out the puzzles and exactly what's going on you'll hear one of the craziest laughs ever and that's the sign to pull your weapon up with the R trigger. Once in weapon mode the game switches to a first person viewpoint and the action parts of Killer 7 come into play. In this portion of the game you have to take on the various Heavens Smiles and figure out their weak points. Many of them have various strategies to destroying them and this keeps the action from becoming really stale. On almost every enemy there is a certain spot on there body that when hit will instantly be destroyed. In the process of killing the enemies you'll obtain thick blood and thin blood. One is used for turning into serum and upgrading your characters and the other is used for healing your character or using their special abilities. All the characters have attributes that can be upgraded. You can choose to focus on just one character or divvy out the serum to all of them. All the Killers have certain traits that make them suitable for getting by in certain situations. Need to pick that lock or jump to higher ground? Coyote Smith can do the job. How about needing to get through a cracked wall? Mask de Smith can easily take care of that with his grenade launchers. Each and every Killer 7 is used to proceed through the game at various times along with the other puzzles that you'll just have to use your brain to figure out.

While Capcom opted to go for a comic cell shading style I definitely have to say that this goes great ways to give this game appeal and style. It just oozes quality all around. Each character is designed differently and almost everyone will end up picking a favorite by the time they've completed the title. The backgrounds are mostly that and there really isn't any interaction with the objects that are around unless they are important to the overall flow of the game. Each missions has a very different look and feel to it as well. At one point you'll be in what seems to be a pretty empty town and in another mission you will find yourself at an amusement park, everything has a visual style that's hard to compare to anything else out there at the moment. The visual style does not disappoint and really compliments the game and its overall style. Also, it should be noted that each and every characters clothes changes between each of the levels, a neat little addition to keep the characters from growing stale on the eyes.

So when first booting up the game you'll immediately know that the sound is going to play a interesting role in this game and great thought was put into the implementation of the soundtrack. The moment you turn the game on, the company logos are flashed and accompanied by the sound of a gunshot and someone laughing. This fades into the Killer 7 title screen with a very odd pitched soundtrack. You select your new game option and hear a maniacal laugh. This then brings up the difficulty selection screen with basic normal and hard modes. When the normal mode is highlighted the soundtrack plays at a normal pace but switch it over to hard mode and the music one-ups and totally get a faster beat. Now while this is nothing really special it just really shows that this whole game as a package was put together wonderfully and I really feel that the developers of this game did exactly what they wanted to do with it. As for the rest of the soundtrack, the game has many different songs that play over the course of the game and while some are played again at times usually each level has its own style of different music. It could be said that the style of the music has a pseudo techno sound to it at times. The sound effects are also very clear and as minor as it may be each and every character has a different sound to their walking/running animation, which is just a nice touch. Weapon sound effects come out clear and easy to tell apart whether your using Con's dual pistols or Mask's grenade guns. The last thing that I should is the voice actors. They all do a wonderful job and really bring some of these characters to life. I might add Cam Clark does a wonderful job as a character in the game by the name of Ulmeyda. The words these characters say are definitely out this world and severely inappropriate for governors to hear. They throw the F bomb and many others out there in the process of the game so if you're prone to dislike cursing then this game is definitely not for you. This game is dirty.

Now there are a few things that people might not like. The first and foremost is the fact that the game is on rails, so to speak. Some people will just not be able to really get a grasp on this. Another small problem I noticed is that sometimes the camera would get stuck on the opposite side of the character and I couldn't see a thing ahead of me. This is easily fixable with a press of the Z button though and shouldn't be much of a problem to most. Other then that some might be under the impression that Killer 7 is a straight up first person shooter and they will most likely immediately walk away from this game with a bad taste. On another side note, the game is filled with so much mature subject matter that its definitely earned its mature rating with based off visuals and language alone. This one is not for priest, peaceful folk, or other easily disturbed people.

Killer 7 has been a long time in the making and a title that most were confused on how it was played for the longest time. It's a different approach to games and its something that's unique in a market filled with GTA's, First person shooters, etc. Killer 7 brings something new into the spectrum and I applaud Capcom for bringing out such a title. If your looking for a good mature action/ adventure game that makes you think in more ways then one, do yourself a favor and pick up Killer 7.

- - Justin Celani