Recently, Goichi Suda, better known as Suda51, released Romeo is a Dead, the latest in a long run of weird, but captivating games from the legendary creator. With a catalog going back to 1993, Suda has made a career of making games that leave players wondering exactly what they just dove into. That might sound like a knock, but Suda’s brand of oddball gameplay is aiming to do exactly that. Not every Suda game can be a hit, but these five games are the best he’s made so far. Here’s hoping he’s got a few more in him before retirement.
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This is Suda51’s five best games, ranked from top to bottom.
5) Let It Die
Let It Die isn’t for everybody. It’s a dastardly difficult hack-and-slash game that has players trying to make it to the top of a tower filled with villains who are bent on their destruction. The moment-to-moment combat is tough enough, but some of the boss characters almost feel like the game is cheating. It doesn’t help that earning equipment and even understanding progression is a chore.
Plus, every time you die, your “death data” is shared with other players. That means some of the toughest characters in the game are actually other players. Again, this isn’t for the faint of heart, but if you’re willing to sit at the knee of the skateboarding grim reaper named Uncle Death, you’ll have a delightfully strange action game that puts your skill to the test.
4) Shadows of the Damned
For Shadows of the Damned, Suda’s team at Grasshopper Manufacture teamed up with Shinji Mikami, the man behind the Resident Evil series. The duo called it a combination of styles, as Suda’s “punk rock edge” met up with Mikami’s “psychological action thrillers.” Playing as Garcia Hotspur, fans go on a journey to save his girlfriend from the Lord of Demons.
As with most Suda joints, it takes the action to the extreme, giving players boss characters that are equal parts challenging and horrifying. It was a heck of a mash-up between the two iconic developers’ styles that mostly knocked it out of the park. This isn’t the only successful team-up Suda’s had. While it just missed out on making the list, Suda brought in James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy, Peacemaker) to write the script for Lollipop Chainsaw a few years later.
3) The Silver Case
The Silver Case is one of Suda’s earliest games and the first game made by his studio, Grasshopper Manufacture. Unlike the stylish action games he’d come to be known for, The Silver Case is an adventure visual novel with limited gameplay.
Thankfully, Suda has always been an effective storyteller. Sure, those stories almost always veer into the bizarre, but he’s almost always able to pull it off. The Silver Case is no different, as players have to solve a series of mysterious murders taking place in “Ward 24” in Tokyo. It’s a weird one, but Suda’s able to nail the landing, giving players a mystery worth diving into.
2) Killer7
With Killer7, we have another Suda51 team-up. This time, he had Hiroyuki Kobayashi produce the unique shooter. Fans will know that name from his producer credits on games like Dino Crisis 2, Devil May Cry, and Resident Evil 4. Killer7 also brings a strange mash-up of genres. As mentioned, there are first-person, on-rails shooting segments, but Grasshopper and Capcom also used Myst-style adventure gameplay to keep things fresh.
Players dive into the shoes of the members of the Killer7 group of assassins. You can switch between available assassins during gameplay to help solve puzzles. Toss in one of the more striking art styles of the era, and you have another Suda classic. Unfortunately, it could only ever attain cult classic status. While Suda has played around with the idea of a sequel, the closest we’ve ever gotten to that is a 2018 remaster.
1) No More Heroes
No More Heroes is Suda’s (and Grasshopper Manufacture’s) most important game. Not only did it earn critical and commercial acclaim on the Wii, but it also kicked off the developers’ one major series. Since the first game launched in 2007, fans have been graced with four mainline NMH games and one spin-off.
Simply put, there’s nothing else like that in Suda’s extensive library. Travis Touchdown is his best character, and while No More Heroes III wasn’t quite as successful as the first two, it was still a great Switch game. At the time, Grasshopper said the NMH3 would serve as the series’ finale, but you never know with Suda at the helm. It’s unlikely he’d ever go back, but Suda has basically made a career out of doing things fans don’t expect.
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