Pro Killer Man

4
Every once in a while, I come across a game that, after only maybe a minute of playing it, makes me slap my head and shout, “why didn’t I think of that?!” (Well, not really. I don’t generally have such outbursts unless I’m sure no one is around, but the feeling is the same.) Pro Killer Man is one such game.

The concept is as simple as it is brilliant – you play, from an overhead perspective, as some sort of assassin whose target is milling about in a large crowd of people. You are wearing black; your target is wearing white. Your goal, as you might expect, is to kill your target – but you can’t be willy-nilly about it, as killing your target alerts the cops (the blue guys) that also happen to be roaming about, and killing a civilian will alert them and summon more on top of that. Amusingly, the cops seem to have no qualms about killing civilians in their quest for justice. As the game progresses (which happens pretty quickly, as there are only ten levels – though the later ones are bound to take you some time), cops become more numerous, your targets get bodyguards, and the rooms become more complex. If this sounds like fun, that’s because it is. My only complaint, really, is that the randomness of the AI’s movement patterns end up diminishing the “puzzle” part of the “puzzle-action” classification significantly. But it’s still some serious fun.

The game also has excellent aesthetics; the graphics have a pixelly, retro, pseudo-3D style that I find very appealing, with a pleasing array of colors to boot. shooting people yields amusingly huge puddles of blood. The music, what little of it there is, is excellent – it’s got a great, kind of cheesy, secret agent sort of vibe, retro like the graphics. The only sound effect I heard was a gunshot, but I honestly don’t see what else this game needs, and it’s not bad as far as gunshots go. Put all this together, with an amusing (or at least I thought so) intro screen to top it off, and you’ve got quite the game. In short, unless senseless violence prohibitively offends you, give this game a try; you’ll probably enjoy yourself.