Kill the Bad Guy Review

Sneaky-Smart Saboteur
By Lee Marcussen
Reviewed on Xbox One
Released on January 20th, 2017 for Xbox One, Also on Steam
Developer: Exkee  Publisher: Plug In Digital

​ Killing, without getting caught, is what you could say to accurately describe as the objective in Kill the Bad Guy. The murders and greedy criminals out there need to be taken out. You’re the guy who’s going to make their deaths come sooner than the grim ripper wanted to. You have to kill these bad guys quickly and make everything look like an accident. You make their deaths look accidental by using various traps or rigging up things that are found on each map. Here is where the fun starts.
 
Each level is set up similarly in a downtown city where the “bad guy” will walk in a path, letting you first observe his movements and determine what materials around you can be used as death machines. The items in each level are highlighted dark black and they range from cars to bottles and even trees. You can use almost any object to either distract your target or as a murder weapon. There are some items that can be combined with others to use, like combining a piano and rope.  You can string the piano from a tall building and wait for the bad guy to walk underneath and oops, the rope broke! Other items need a part to be activated, an example of that would be a pool of oil or gas needs a lighter so once the bad guy walks over he is set ablaze. Some objects can be placed to set up distractions, such as a playboy type magazine, dead dog or a construction barricade. You can use these to delay the bad guy or redirect his route forcing him to go the way you want. A part that becomes very hard to deal with in some of the later levels is not getting caught by the police driving around, pedestrians out and about and security cameras that are posted up on buildings. 

​The controls for the game are very easy to use to use. The picking up and placing of items is simple enough. There are some sort of interactive parts, when you are hotwiring a car to take off, in which you have to move the analog stick back and forth in order for it to get started. You also must time the takeoff of the car and set the amount of acceleration it needs to kill the bad guy. A feature that I didn’t notice until I was further in the game was that you can hotwire a car and move the camera away from the car to a spot where the bad guy will be and even if the car is not in the camera view you can still set the acceleration to hit the bad guy. This is great for making sure your timing is on point. You can speed up time which is super helpful for when the bad guy is taking his time to get to your trap. The quick restart of the level is helpful if you happened to use a trap too soon and mess up. 

The way you are scored in each level is based on many things like how much time it took to kill the bad guy, if you completed secondary objectives, and even killing him in one day. There are also some bonuses that can be earned like finding random items in each level. These items are the bad guy’s fake passport and collecting one of his teeth after he is murdered. If you complete those and find all these things you can get 5 stars on the level. Completing the secondary challenges are tricky because you have to figure out what they are while in the moment. 
 
Overall Kill the Bad Guy combines the puzzle aspect of games with a bit of murder and blood. You must be creative to figure out the levels and use all the materials around you to your advantage.  As someone who really enjoys puzzle style games this was a great fit for me and a nice change of pace, introducing a  sort of adult styled puzzle game that there are very few of. Kill the Bad Guy also has a good sound track that fits well with the game. Controls are very easy to use and make adding objects to each other easy as well. Camera angles are easy to see everything going on in the level. At the end of the day, Kill the Bad Guy hits its target on its debut assignment on the Xbox One.

*Note: A copy of the game was provided for the purposes of the review
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Final Score: 8/10

+Lots of levels 
+Replay value
+Creative idea

+Could use some more editing/
killcam features