Kill the Bad Guy Review

Target acquired.

Kill the Bad Guy seemed – at first glance – a game that I could really get on board with. As a long-time fan of the Hitman franchise, its focus on puzzle gameplay and a multitude of inventive, over-the-top kills seemed irresistible. Unfortunately, whilst interesting in theory, Kill the Bad Guy managed to turn me off at almost every corner. Let’s find out why…

Containing over sixty levels, you’re presented with an isometric view of various scenarios in which you must, well, kill the bad guy. You don’t control any particular character as such, but rather manipulate the environment in a similar way to God-sim games, moving a cursor across the screen to directly interact with various objects. So, in a sense, the game is effectively a bit of a spin on the Final Destination movie franchise, if you like.

The levels are primarily presented in greyscale, with interactive elements shown in a darker shade – almost black – to help you identify what you can alter or move. Naturally, the game starts you off with some relatively straightforward missions in which you simply need to wait for the target to walk into the path of whatever hazard you’ve set up, be it a malfunctioning car or a grand piano strung up from the top of a building. As you progress, the puzzles gradually become more complex, to the point when you will need to manually funnel your target down a particular path, and manipulate multiple objects at the correct time in order to successfully carry out the hit.

Straight off the bat, the controls immediately seem a bit uninspired. Objects can be moved in a grid-like pattern – you select your desired object with the A button, and move it with X. You can either simply move the object into another position, or combine it with another to make a deadly hazard. It’s very simplistic, but at the same time, it’s not always obvious which objects work well with others. You’ll spend a lot of the time simply trying out different combinations through trial and error, and sadly the experience gets a bit repetitive as a result.

Having said that, actually pulling off the perfect assassination can be very satisfying. Some of the stages require you to tamper with parked cars, allowing them to accelerate on their own at the touch of a shoulder button. So you can run the car up a ramp, over a building, and land it right on top of an unsuspecting victim, spilling blood everywhere.

That’s something else I should mention about the visuals: there’s quite a bit of blood. A lot, in fact. Amongst the whites, greys and blacks, the vivid red of the blood splattered across the ground and walls is the only hint of any other colour in the environments (aside from the characters themselves). I get why this is the case, but I think I would have preferred the entire game to be in colour. It looks considerably less attractive than, say, Hitman Go.

All in all, Kill the Bad Guy is game brimming with potential, but it could have done with a bit longer in the oven. A lot of the missions feel repetitive, and your actual objective is often clear as mud, leading to unnecessary trial and error. Still, it could be worth a go for fans of puzzle games.