Killer Is Dead

In 2022 I decided to only play hack and slash games, in whatever order i saw fit to connect any threads I wanted to explore. This is one of the games I played during The Year of the Hack and Slash! I’m porting over this post which originally appeared as a thread on twitter in 2022.

Killer is Dead is next up for the year of the Hack & Slash! The only thing I know about this game is that it is NOT part of the Suda51 “Kill the Past” series directly, but could be helpful to play through before jumping into Travis Strikes again and NMH3.

Right out the gate I’m devouring the tone of this game. It’s dialogue is vague, the visuals are often obscured in shadows and everyone is hot, but also odd and sad, like an Ingmar Bergman film. The combat is snappy and fun and seems to have a lot of depth to it.

This game RULES. The combat is ferocious and unlike Scarlet Nexus, it throws tons of enemies at you, letting you go nuts. When your combo gets high enough you move even faster and a prompt comes up for a finisher. Depending on your choice, you get bonus health, blood or xp.

Not unlike Killer7 (but not exact) you absorb enemy blood & use it for instakills and ammo for your cybernetic arm (blaster/charged shot/freeze/drill). The instakills are fast and responsive, allowing continuous use, causing you to fly around a room just splaying dudes in half.

okay HOLD THE GD PHONE. Hidden in the levels of this game are sexy ladies and you have to DATE THEM. Not only are you dating them, but you have creep on their bits when they aren’t looking in order to build up your blood and then you give them gifts. LMFAO this is one of the funniest mini-games I’ve seen in a HnS yet. And yes, if you get your love level up high enough than you go behind closed doors, so to speak.

Enough pervy bits (of which there’s lots!) I’ve got to talk about this intense boss. She clones herself & if you attack the wrong one it switches into the first person view OF THE BOSS KILLIN YOU with wretched hands. You still run around fighting, but the camera is the boss’ eyes.

This game has so much atmosphere built into it, I’m enjoying just soaking it up. The dialogue can be so vague for most of it but then you’ll hesitantly kill someone and Mondo will say something with a punch like “The moon is now full of malice” and IT MAKES TOTAL SENSE SOMEHOW.

I’ve used the term vague a few times to discuss the story and it’s really the most fitting. Everyone is floating through an Ambian sleepwalk, they aren’t listening to one another and anyone could start screeming at any moment, and it never feels out of place or forced.

I’ve rolled credits on this and while there are some achievements I’m still going to get, I’m going to call this one done. Killer is Dead will stick with me, from the action to the characters to the pervy bits. It’s made its way to the top of my list of games so far this year.