A while back we at PopMatters played Suda 51 latest creation, though only in a writing capacity this time, Killer is Dead. The studio sent multiple codes, so I got one and we decided ‘hold a podcast on it.’
I expressed my thoughts on twitter on beating the game, and later repeated them on the podcast, as “thoroughly mediocre.” I think it might be the most apt way to describe the game. While it does have interesting points, plenty to grab onto for a discussion and absolutely dripping with Suda 51′s artistic self all over the place, it just meh. Part of the problem is in that trying to subvert a lot of tropes it ends up not being coherent and lacks any clear meaning. He’s reaching into a toybox and pulling out whatever he thinks will be interesting. It’s interesting to look at sure, baffling even. We spend much of our time trying to parse it through.
Despite being middle of the road, I do think it deserves some attention if not accolades. For all the words written about the big bombastic safe releases of the industry simply due to their popularity and therefore a reflection on culture, I feel it a shame that some of that didn’t get transferred to this outing. It may not be good, but it is interesting.
We touch on quite a bit and our discussion of the game goes all over the place much like Killer is Dead does. Give it a listen.