For those of you who are tired of the mundane ’family’ game that targets everyone or the action/adventure game that fails to achieve anything new, behold: a ray of light shines through the dark! Rejoice, for we have been given No More Heroes! From the makers of Killer 7, this game was created for the purpose of breaking outdated molds. Though by now it’s not remotely a new release, No More Heroes is definitely worth looking at.
The goal of the game is basically to fight a boss and then earn enough money to fight the next boss. Repeat that process until you are ranked number one and that’s No More Heroes in a nutshell. The game starts off with an optional tutorial that is exceptionally thorough, and then leads directly into the heart of the game. You go through room after room of enemies making your way to the first boss, while grabbing all the collectibles you can find. After you finish off the first boss, a series of cutscenes explain the basics of the plot and you are immediately kicked out onto the streets of Santa Destroy with the order to get enough cash to pay your way into the next match.
The bulk of the game is spent earning money, unless you are like me and you obsessively scour the city for every single piece of treasure there is. There is a lot of treasure.The first thing you must do to start getting the green is to swing by the Job Center and get a part time job. A new one will be unlocked after each boss. Each part time job is a minigame with fairly simple controls. They are actually very clever in concept and a lot of fun. I think I liked mowing the lawn the best. The motion controls for the lawn mower were accurate but required a steady hand, and the pattern needed to get a gold ranking for the job is the same one I use when mowing a real lawn. Don’t get the wrong impression, though. I don’t normally enjoy mowing lawns.
Once you have completed your part time job, you are allowed two new hit missions every level. Unlike the part time jobs, the hit missions are actually a bit repetitive. Some really stand out and are a ton of fun, but others are just… not that fun. However, the assassination gigs get way more bucks than the part time jobs, so you basically have to do them. I slugged my way through them mostly because they are also good training for basic skills that will be necessary during boss fights. Like I said, though, there are a few hit missions that are gems and I replay them often.
The third way to earn money is to participate in a free fight mission. These matches are scattered across the map and always available, except when you’re already in another mission. In a free fight, you kill until you take a single hit or until all the enemies are dead. You are paid a given amount for each opponent killed. Since every free fight is exactly the same, I got tired of them pretty quickly. They are good for the times when you just want nonstop mindless killing, but even then if you take a single hit, the mission is over and, because the mission doesn’t reopen right away, you have to drive to the next one.
Once you get enough money to enter the next ranked fight, you go to an assigned place on the map where you enter a ’dungeon’ and battle your way through wave after wave of assassin henchmen to work your way up to the boss. Each boss has a different setting and a different set of henchmen. The battle that leads up to each boss fight is, as a result, mostly unique.
I know that by this time you must have read the word ’different’ at least a dozen times in this review, but when it comes to the bosses, I want you to understand that these are each so vastly far flung in diversity that pretty much any game I can think of seems just dry by comparison. Some bosses are fast and some are strong; some use guns and some use grenades; some of them run and some of them fly, but all of them are full of personality and deadly tricks. Every fight begins with a cut scene that draws you into the fight and shows off a few of your opponent’s moves, and at the end, each felled assassin is granted a few last words before they are stripped of their rank… and their life.
The boss fights themselves are all incredibly challenging for at least the first time you play through. You will fight tooth and nail for every inch in these fights, and you will savor every second of it. This is what all boss fights should be about. My favorite one is still the third boss fight against a black samurai girl. It was like the fight against Ganondorf at the end of Zelda: Twilight Princess, except in fast forward. It was ridiculous, and I loved it. I actually kept a save file of that fight so I can replay it whenever I want.
Now after gushing about all my favorite parts, I have to mention the not-so-great parts. The setting for the game, Santa Destroy, is like a ghost town. This is easily the biggest downer for the game. There are very few people and there are only a handful of pedestrian character models. You will frequently see two identical pedestrians pass each other on the sidewalk. The worst part is that you cannot interact with these people in any way. You can’t even beat them up.
Also, the town features only a handful of places you can go to, other than free fight missions. The cops, who are often seen cruising the streets, will do nothing to you when you park your bike in the middle of the road, speed, run over pedestrians (they can’t die) or drive on the wrong side of the road. I guess that can be explained by saying that Travis is one of the top ten assassins in the world and they can’t really touch that, but still I wish there were some interaction with the town. It just feels so dead, and that isn’t helped by the fact that there is no background music playing when you explore the town on foot.
The troubles don’t end there, though. The overworld is full of technical difficulties. A noticeably low framerate, pop-ins, invisible walls and oversized hit boxes abound. Like pretty much every reviewer out there, I’m going to say that No More Heroes would have been perfect were it not for the problems with the overworld. Aside from that, there is really a lot of great value in the game. The visual style a very cool blend of flashy pixel art and futuristic punk cel-shading, and the voice acting is actually really good for a video game. I really enjoyed the music in the game, and of course, the boss fights are always a treat.
No More Heroes is an absolute must for the hardcore Wii gamer. I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants a game that is wacky, exciting, action-intensive or just plain different. I doubly recommend it now that a sequel has been announced. Hopefully they will have ironed out all the kinks for the second time around. If you can get past the tedious overworld, you will absolutely love this game like I have.
