Every two weeks, a staff member presents a game that has influenced his or her work. This installment: K. Thor Jensen on Killer 7.

I'm always pulling for the maverick to make it big – the scrappy underdog who pulls strings to make their creative visions a reality. One of the best and most unpredictable mavericks in modern game production is Goichi Suda, the head of Japanese studio Grasshopper Manufacture. Although Grasshopper has some experience, releasing several graphic adventure games that never came to this side of the Atlantic, it was still a major risk for Capcom to release Suda's magnum opus, Killer 7, in 2005.

On the surface, the game doesn't look risky or particularly innovative – screenshots show a first-person view, stylish cel-shaded 3D graphics, and big, shiny guns. It seems to fit solidly in Capcom's standard portfolio. But once the game is in progress, you quickly realize that something very different is happening here.

Killer 7 is not by most standards a "good" game – the controls are odd and clunky, the gameplay is fairly minimal (wander around set paths in third-person mode, switch to first-person to shoot occasionally invisible enemies and solve simple puzzles), but what makes it such a compelling experience is the bizarre, surreal, self-aware atmosphere. The game takes an attitude towards the player that few games dare to, proudly proclaiming that the actions you are taking are foolish, and pointless, and make no sense to anybody. You shoot your way through hordes of "Heaven Smiles" only to be told that they're actually innocent people. You bond with your cast of protagonists only to be told that they're actually the ghosts of people you murdered. And, at the end of the game, you're forced to choose whether Japan or the United States will be completely destroyed by nuclear bombs. It's not a feel-good ending.

And that's the genius of Killer 7 – it subverts itself so continuously that it's like a Mobius strip of a video game, embracing conventions only to mock them. If you can penetrate the barriers that the game lays in your way, it's one of the most unique gaming experiences of the last ten years. Highly recommended.

By K. Thor Jensen, Project Manager