Review: No More Heroes
It’s very tempting to compare “No More Heroes,” the latest exercise in playable madness from director Suda 51 and Grasshopper Manufacture, to their last major original title “Killer 7.” Aside from sharing the same director, they were both developed for Nintendo systems (though “Killer 7″ got a reportedly sloppy PS2 port), and feature some of the most out-there storytelling you’ll see in any medium. “Killer 7″ had a team of seven assassins that were really the split personalities of one man fighting a group of invisible terrorist monsters. “No More Heroes” puts you in the shoes of Travis Touchdown, an anime and wrestling otaku who buys a lightsaber beam katana in an online auction and decides to start killing his way up the ranks of the world’s best assassins in order to score with a hot French chick.
JASON GLICK
So rather than doing something more straightforward, Suda 51 and co. have decided to explore a whole new brand of insanity with this game. The good news is that “No More Heroes’” brand of “WTH!?” is a funnier and more accessible brand of “WTH!?” than their previous efforts. Furthermore, while the gameplay in “Killer 7″ felt like an afterthought compared to the story and world the developers created, it’s immediately obvious that they put more thought into how the game should play this time around.
Not only do you have full control of your character as he moves around his environments, but the game uses the Wiimote’s motion-sensing capabilities in some welcome ways. They include swinging it in the appropriate direction to deliver finishing blows to enemies, moving it and the nunchuck in tandem to execute Travis’ wrestling moves on stunned enemies, and rotating the Wiimote in a circular fashion to break weapon deadlocks between you and your enemies. At its heart the gameplay is very much of the “button mashing” variety, but the physical exertion prompted by the Wiimote breaks up the monotony quite well.
It’s probably worth noting that the game is probably a bit too forgiving in terms of registering what direction your Wiimote is swung in for the finishing blows. Most times it seems like just swinging it around when the indicator pops up will register the correct direction. Still, it was probably better to err on the side of “too forgiving” and have most motion register, than “not forgiving enough” and have most of your swings not register at all.
Those of you that thrive on the use of finesse in video game combat will probably find the system here a little bit wanting. Sure, you can dodge attacks and get in some extra hits if you time it right, but that’s about it. Making matters worse is that the controls should’ve been much tighter than they are. Travis handles “just fine” in most cases, but the game is very fussy about where he has to be in order to pull off context-sensitive moves like pressing the “A” button to stab a guy on the ground. Precise movements are also a pain to perform, but they’re more of a problem when you’re performing jobs around the city.
The way the game is set up is that in between the assassination missions, you’ll be set free in the city of Santa Destroy to perform part-time jobs and assassinations to earn the cash needed to participate in the next mission. You’ll also be able to upgrade your beam katana and Travis’ stats, buy more clothes for him, and explore the city. As you complete each mission, you’ll unlock more jobs and more assassinations to perform, with steadily increasing cash payoffs.
A setup like this could’ve easily turned into a dull grind-fest to get the necessary cash after each mission, but the developers handled this smartly. Not only are they fairly generous with the cash you’ll earn from the sidequests you perfrom, but none of these tasks lasts longer than three minutes. So if you don’t enjoy filling cars with the correct amount of gas (careful, too much and you’ll set yourself on fire!), you won’t have long to wait until it’s over and you can do something else. Like picking up garbage or poisonous scorpions, or sweeping the beach for landmines, activities which are much more fun. The assassinations you’re tasked with performing around the city are just more of the game’s usual combat, with a time limit and some kind of special twist (i.e.: kill this particular guy, beat 100 guys in the time limit, fight upside down). They’re not quite as fun as the part-time jobs, but they pay more so you’ll be doing more of them anyway.
When you’re not earning cash, you can also take the time to explore the city to find the mysterious “Lovikov Balls.” For every seven you collect and bring to a drunken Russian athlete in this one bar, you’ll earn a new technique! There’s that… and not much else. Though Santa Destroy might seem like a fun “sandbox” environment like the “GTA” games, you’ll find there’s remarkably little to do in the city besides drive around it, run into pedestrians and knock over trees and traffic lights. It’s disappointing, but it’s not the game’s biggest failing.
That failing would be in the way the game’s technology fails to do it justice. While it wouldn’t be fair to compare it to the open-world games like “Crackdown” on the 360, it fails to measure up to the level of the “GTA” games on the PS2. While no one would argue that they were the best-looking games on the system, they at least had an impressive sense of scale and style to their cities. All Santa Destroy has is a few uniquely designed buildings, lots of bland houses and buildings, and pop-up. Lots of pop-up. To add insult to injury, whenever you hit a pedestrian they’ll just make an “Ugh” sound and run away and you can’t even move cars from their fixed paths when you run into them, let alone carjack them. To sum it up, the game’s technological failings are less of the “Let’s rush the game out of the door” variety than the “It needed another 6-8 months to make it good.”
So the game has issues, but I gladly played through it to the end. More than anything, that was due to the absolutely insane and hilarious sense of style the game possesses. Putting you in the shoes of an otaku with a lightsaber beam katana as he strives to become the world’s greatest assassin was only the tip of the insanity iceberg in the game. That’s because the people you’re fighting have even MORE issues than you do.
There’s DESTROYMAN, the pseudo-courteous superhero with machine gun nipples and a crotch that shoots lasers. Holly Summers is grenade tossing specialist who can dig holes with her artificial leg. Harvey Moiseiwitsch Volodarski is a magician who can flip your world upside down and uses every dirty stage magic trick in the book to take you out. Bad Girl tries to beat you to death with her bat, and if that fails, she’ll start batting Gimps at you instead. And as for the epicness that is Letz Shake… you’ll just have to see him for yourself.
Now it goes without saying that this kind of humor won’t be for everyone. The game does earn its “M” rating with all the profanity, blood and… uh, “adult themes” it deals with. But I can say with a fair amount of certainty that if what I’ve described to you sounds interesting, then you’ll appreciate it.
Helping in that aspect is the excellent voice acting. Considering the strangeness of the game’s story and its characters, any attempt to translate it into English could’ve been a complete disaster. Instead, every actor does a great job with their given character, conveying their psychoses and personality remarkably well. I’ll admit that Travis’ voice didn’t quite work for me at first, but as the game went on, he really grew on me. While I’d be interested in hearing what the game sounded like in its native Japanese, I’m not necessarily sure it’d be that much better.
Many people have complained about the lack of solid third-party software, “mature” games, and games that cater towards the “hardcore” gamer rather than the “casual” one on the Wii. “No More Heroes” manages to address all of these complaints, and while it won’t appeal to everyone, I’d certainly like to see more games as ambitious and different as this on the system.
Pros: Has a sense of humor and style that you won’t see on any other system right now. Makes good use of the Wiimote’s capabilities. Paced very well.
Cons: Looks worst than most last-gen games. Controls a bit too “loose.” Sadly, the game’s humor and style won’t be for everyone.
Overall: 7.5
February 3rd, 2008 at 12:41 pm
“No More Heroes” was recorded originally in English. So was “Killer7″ for that matter. In short, much like the Silent Hill or Resident Evil series, there is NO original Japanese version in existence. Good review otherwise.