Grasshopper Manufacture and Kadokawa Games have been relatively quite about Suda 51’s latest game, Killer is Dead, since revealing the existence of the title shortly before Lollipop Chainsaw‘s launch last year. Thanks to the latest issue of Famitsu, that long silence has now been broken and the first screenshots and plot details for the upcoming action game have been released.
As translated by Polygon, Killer is Dead takes place in a near-future setting and revolves around a 35-year-old man named Mondo Zappa. One day the Brian Execution Firm — which is run by the half-cyborg, Brian Roses — gives Mondo a job offer that has him travel the world on a mission to kill a number of assassins. The enemy assassins in the game are said to include both “cunningly evil geniuses” and others who are actually wanting Mondo to kill them.
To carry out his mission Mondo has access to two different weapon platforms. The first is a sword that he carries in his right hand and uses for anything requiring close-quarter attacks. The second is a cybernetic addition to his left arm that can transform into a gun, drill, or several other weapons obtained throughout the course of the game. It also has a nice secondary feature that allows Mondo to collect the blood from fallen enemies, which can then spend on an “Adrenalin Burst” attack that kills foes with a single slash from his sword.
Suda 51 noted that Killer is Dead is “the first game in the ‘assassin’ series that Grasshopper Manufacture has worked on in a while, a title that picks up where Killer7 and No More Heroes left off.”
“It’s the story of a man who doesn’t show himself much in the public world,” Suda 51 added, “but still worms his way into society and mercilessly eliminates the evil dispersed in it. It’s a personal story, not one that’s conscious of the chaos going on in the real world at the moment, but you might get more than a taste of that in the end anyway.”
Killer is Dead is scheduled to be released this summer in Japan on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, as more information is announced we will let you know. Until then make sure to check out some of the first screenshots for the game in the gallery below and see the full set at the Famitsu source link.
