The blood flows smoother than ever in Killer7's new PC remaster trailer
Deep weirdness in high-res widescreen
Surreal murderventure Killer7 is a hallucinatory experience, and one that will be all the more vivid when it arrives on PC. Grasshopper Manufacture and NIS America have released a new trailer, showing off their upcoming PC remaster in action. Unsurprisingly, its razor sharp art direction holds up well at high resolutions, and a boost to framerate and an expansion to widescreen gives it a slick new look. Check out the video below, and see what Garcian, Dan and Kevin Smith (no, not that one) can do against the howling Heaven Smiles.
To this day, I'm still not entirely sure what to make of Killer7. How much of its fractured story was allegorical and how much of it is meant to be taken at face value is a question I keep returning to. A team of oddball gunslingers are called in to stop a terrorist organisation named Heaven Smile, who may also be freaky technicolor mutants. There's a lot of bloodshed - some self-inflicted - involved and at least a few layers of contemporary Japanese symbolism. Also some sharpshooting.
At this point, my one real concern for Killer7 on PC is that mouse aiming, if included, will create its own issues. It'll either make the game comically easy, or necessitate a new difficulty setting designed around the pinpoint aiming that should be possible. Not that Killer7 was an especially hard game to begin with, but unless the occasional Heaven Smile gets right up in your face, you're missing out on some of the fun, plus a bunch of up-close finisher animations.
That minor concern aside, I'm just glad that more people will be able to go on the trip that put Goichi "Suda51" Suda on the map, even if he never quite delivered on the promise people saw then. Killer7 really is quite unlike any other game - it's like if David Lynch was suddenly inspired by the world of grungy FMV rail shooters after an all-night untranslated 90s anime binge session.
Killer7 will be coming to PC via Steam sometime this "Fall", and Autumn for the rest of us. No firm release date or price has been announced. The PC version is to be published by NIS America, and Engine Software BV are helping with porting.