No More Heroes Review

I’ve always wanted to play No More Heroes. The original game made its debut on the Wii to rave reviews for its stylistic gameplay, outlandish premise and retro appeal. However, due to both being a Wii exclusive and a Mature title, it never really took off. That’s a real shame because it deserved the attention.

You play as Travis Touchdown. Currently ranked the eleventh best assassin, you try to prove that you are the best by killing the other ten in your way. Each level starts with Travis earning enough money to take on the next boss, a sort of entry fee. Some average-skilled bad guys face you on your way through these levels which range from a school to a subway. The game saves when you take a dump in a bathroom near the end of the level before the boss.

Once you reach the boss, which always tops off a level like many classic games, you are faced with a unique set of strengths and weaknesses. The bosses have the same pattern making it a tedious and sometimes annoying event. They get better and more unique as you go along in the game. You can tell that this game comes from the developer behind Killer 7. Each boss is more eccentric than the last. Like the rest of the game, the scenes where you defeat the boss are ultra-violent. This game is not suggested for young audiences.

Between each level are a series of things that Travis can do in the game’s open-world city. Some of the things that you can do include training, buying clothes, searching for balls, upgrading your katana, and completing side-missions. You drive to get from place to place. Driving is not very responsive and has some faulty physics, but it gets the job done, albeit with glitch moments where your car gets stuck.

No More Heroes has a great sense of humor. You get training from a guy that tells you to take off your clothes and bend over. “Make sure your ass is clean,” he says. You then go on to doing squats, dumbbells and using the bench press. The game makes good use of the Wii Remote here and with other mini-games. Expect your arm to hurt after a few hours of play time.

You earn cash by killing enemies, completing side-missions and doing part-time jobs. These jobs are little mini-games that vary from knocking coconuts off of their trees to mowing the lawn. Some of them are better than others, although I have to say that a few are almost unplayable with the Wii Remote. Mostly, though, it is a good distraction from all of the game’s killing. I have to say that switching from slicing dudes in half to flirtatiously luring missing kittens is something only Suda 51 could manage.

No More Heroes joins some other top-notch games like MadWorld and Red Steel 2 that only received a lukewarm reception on Wii. While the game can get annoying at times (you hear “My spleen!” a thousand times over), it is overall a fun and very Japanese experience. Fans of the first game and newcomers to the series should be encouraged to buy this. It will remind you of some of the crazy Dreamcast games that made Japanese-style 3D games great in the late 90s and early 2000s.