So….I Killed the Bad Guy While He Was Watching Porn….
Well hello kiddies! Are you looking for a fun game that marches to the beat of a different drum? One that allows you to use that big ‘ole brain sack of yours to punish the evil doers of the world? Are you willing to operate above the law to get these guys? Well that is exactly what Exkee’s Kill The Bad Guy game will let you do. It’s already out now on Steam for PC, Mac and Linux. What is even better is that it does not even require really big balls on your machine to run either. Which is great for those who may not get into much PC gaming but would like to have a few fun little titles on their machines to give their controllers a rest and work out their underworked lonely mice that some of us seem to forget about. It crosses genres a bit in being a rag-doll physics based puzzler/strategy game…..Oh and I was dead serious I did kill the bad guy while he was watching porn…
I really liked this game a lot and it brings some really good things to the table. Ok now upon first booting up the game I was treated to a really catchy hip-hop title track for the menu screen which made me crank up my volume a little higher, and the background music for levels continues the enjoyably catchy trend with a down tempo number that’s a bit reminiscent of some of the tunes you would hear in a 60s era spy flick which sets the mood very nicely.
The game is really pleasing on the eyes too with its really nice monochromatic silhouettes of the buildings, yellow shirted villains, innocents bystanders, surveillance cameras, as well interactive objects are all rendered completely black, and last but not least the oh so satisfying red blood stain left after you do your job proper. The graphics are simple but in my opinion its a good way. When you put them all together you are upon first glance are viewing what appears to be a harmonious utopia that is of course until you leave the town painted with the blood of the guilty.
Ok. So let’s start to get a bit deeper into the game. There are 60 main missions and 6 bonus missions to unlock. Each mission has 5 objectives: of course there is the primary objective of killing the bad guy, a secondary mission you have to figure out by a clue given in the pre-mission dossier/or for those who aren’t good with riddles, through random experimentation with a levels interactive elements, kill the villain in the first day of the operation, finding the villain’s hidden passport in each level, and final objective is to quickly catch his tooth which goes airborne usually really far and very fast when you kill the bastard.
The game can be controlled by the mouse exclusively but you can also control via keyboard with a default secondary layout or configure your own control preferences. The first few missions are relatively simple with very obvious ways to take out your target and usually very quickly. Before each mission you’re a presented with a dossier file on the bad guy in which you are targeting. This may seem a bit odd but this was my favorite part of the game to be honest. Each mission file was written very cleverly most times parodying vile people pulled right from news articles and tabloid both current and past with very effective and humorous tongue in cheek humor (and since I am a bit of a news junkie this really made me happy). Then after a completing a slew of missions you a treated with a cut scene advancing the story and reminding you of your purpose. Once you begin finally start the game you will quickly notice the bad guy strolling through town and will be travelling a pretty repetitive path (though a few times he changed it up randomly which caught me of guard) through that particular part of whichever city he or she may be hiding out in, and if he leaves before your masterful plans of assassination are able to be put in motion and you can’t taking his life a day passes…and you have to try again which means this objective is now lost. Fear not though because you can easily repeat every mission with your unlocked achievements already still unlocked for you in your menu screen. The first few missions also occasionally give you some hints on how get stuff done, interact with objects or on how to control the game, as well as what the icons in the gameplay screen do. Like clicking on the eye shows you the bad guys field of vision, which is important because if he you constructing something he thinks is even remotely dangerous or of suspect he will quickly flee and you will be rewarded with a mission failed screen. Other interactive icons allow you to pause the game and take a look at that particular map to try and make your gameplan, there is also a speed up time icon which is set at 1x by default and can also be toggled to 2x and 4x speeds. The display up top features an icon of the bad guy which when clicked immediately centers the screen on the missions target, there are also icons that indicate if you have achieved you alternate objectives.
As is with most games the further in the more complicated it becomes to take the bad guy out, as well as more and more interactive items become usable to kill your target. Remember in each mission you are trying to make it look like an accident so keep that in mind. Eventually after you complete a good amount of mission innocent people begin to show up wandering through your target sites, police are on patrol, surveillance cameras watching, and the Bad Guy’s bodyguards must never suspect you…If any of these see you take the bad guy out it’s an instant fail the mission.
For those gamers who are into being an exhibitionist there is the ability to upload and share your favorite kills with your friends and the whole damn interwebz if you so desire. In fact right in the settings there is a direct sign in option to Twitch for those who use it. Other community features are that the game has are Steam Achievements, Steam Leaderboards, as well as Steam Trading Cards
It is the perfect game when you only have a very small window of time to get some gaming in. Most levels can be finished in a few short minutes. You get to have some fun, kills some time and quickly run off to do what you must. You not left having to run off and be on some huge plot cliffhanger wishing you could have watched that 10 minute cinematic cut scene and having had venture through that dungeon which seemed like it took half the day to get the super laser sword of doom.
Ok….now for what really irked me in this game. There is really nothing in the game that tells you what the interactive objects do minus a few sparse exceptions…or what objects needed to be/or could be combined with other ones…and there were a few times I got very annoyed and spent way to long trying to figure out how to activate a trap or what I needed to combine to what to get the job done efficiently. And this happened every few levels pretty regularly. This really held back wanting to play for long periods of time as I was becoming somewhat frequent for me. There some missions I would end up wasting multiple days on me trying to get items to do things they were not even capable of doing. Also there were some traps I couldn’t really identify…so I had no idea what I was supposed to do with it. And it is not because of it appearing too small on my screen. I am playing on a monitor that is very large in 1920 x 1080 on the highest possible graphics settings here.
So the game isn’t perfect but it is still a lot of fun. It’s a great little time killer that will make you laugh and wince a bit if you’re faint of heart. It’s also pretty entertaining to watch as well. A few of my pals sat here and laughed over my shoulder for some of the kills for quite a while. I do hope that some of my gripes might be addressed in an update patch perhaps in the future if the team is able.
Final Verdict: 3.5/5
Developed/Published by Exkee ; Released: May 28 2014 ; MSRP: $14.99 ; Available on PC (reviewed), Mac, and Linux.
This review was done on a PC running Windows 7 PRO 64 Bit via Steam. Impressions are based on review code provided by Exkee.
