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 No More Heroes is one of those games that's going to represent a 'moment' in the history of the Wii, because of what it does, and what it doesn't do. Suda 51's latest creation is bloody, grotesque, sexual, violent, and brazen in a way you simply haven't seen in a while, and certainly haven't seen so far on the Wii. This is a mature game, in so many senses of the word, on a system whose very nature is the direct antithesis of mature gaming. After all, the Wii is bringing together families, reinvigorating old people, and bringing the casual market into the gaming fold. So you would never, ever expect a game like No More Heroes to be available on the Wii, much less as a system exclusive.
And that's one of the many surprises that No More Heroes has in store for you. On a system that seems to be plagued with the "Casual" stigma, where concerns about its longevity as a hardcore gaming platform are bandied about left and right, where gamers are now suffering from a sense of Wii-morse as they lack a regular flow of AAA titles, the release of No More Heroes isn't just a breath of fresh air. It's a slap in the face, shaming us for ever thinking those things in the first place.
No More Heroes walks a fine line between genius and insanity. If you don't mind a game that's visually lacking with a mixed aesthetic, you'll love No More Heroes. For the people lamenting their Wii purchase and wondering why it inertly sits on the shelves of their entertainment center, this is a game worth dusting off the system for, because finally, we have a mature title. And it is goodness.
Bring a tarp with you when you hit the jump. There's blood on the dance floor.
No More Heroes places you in the role of Travis Touchdown, an assassin in the city of Santa Destroy. Travis is ranked 11th in list of assassins in the United States. Your job, through the course of the game's story, is to kill the 10 people that reign supreme over you, and take your place at the top of the assassin leaderboards. This, of course, means you get to kill people. A lot of them. It doesn't matter who they are, only that they're getting in your way.
Travis is guided along his path by Sylvia, a mysterious woman that helps him enter ranking tournaments to eliminate his competition. She also guides him outside the ranking matches, helping him earn cash and pick up odd jobs. She's like an assassin pimp, only she's the one wearing skimpy clothes. Oh, and Travis wants to hit that.
In between the ranked matches, you'll need to perform odd jobs around town in order to collect money for the next tournament. This usually consists of a small, harmless minigame followed by a low end set of assassinations. While these are meant to provide variety and keep you from getting stuck in a rut, they're ultimately just distractions, delaying the periods of slaughter that the game handles so well. None of these minigames is done particularly well, and may leave some of you harkening back to a time when stacking crates was par for the course.
The city of Santa Destroy is traversable in a free roaming style, akin to what you see in Grand Theft Auto. The only problem is, there's very little to do in Santa Destroy, and what's there, you simply won't care for. Whereas in Grand Theft Auto, half of the fun of getting to the destination was exploring the city, No More Heroes' Santa Destroy is really just a waste of space and a poorly implemented concept. It's just a matter of getting from Point A to Point B, with no real purpose served. It's not just annoying, it's absolutely absurd, and it drags the momentum of the game down. Once you realize you've got to navigate around Santa Destroy, several times, just to get from one ranked match to the next, you'll find your patience taxed.
The graphics in No More Heroes won't be winning any awards this year. The character and level designs are all poorly designed, looking more like a late-era game on the original PlayStation. While this is done to help set a tone for the game (more on that below), it's a design choice that's going to leave a lot of gamers scratching their heads. For the people looking at this as another entry in video games, they'll find the graphics dated. For the ones that choose to look at No More Heroes as a statement, a piece of art, they'll 'get' the style choice and understand it, even if they don't appreciate it.
And they are a definitive style choice. The audio and visual presentations within No More Heroes are just that. They're meant to differentiate it from every other piece of gaming out there, while still offering you subtle winks of nostalgia. Sound effects mimic the 8-bit era, the Health Meter is meant to look like a pixel grid, and interstitial moments within the game are homages to the coin-op arcade gaming era. For the most part, these style choices serve to make the game a little more interesting. In other areas, the decisions lead to gameplay issues. The minimap is the biggest offender in this. By making the minimap no more than a collection of green squares, it makes finding paths difficult to discern. While the style changes are welcome, it's a problem once they start affecting the way you play the game.
Most of your game time in No More Heroes is spent dishing out violent carnage upon the evil inhabitants of Santa Destroy, and it's here where the game starts to truly shine. Travis carries with him a Beam Katana, similar to a lightsaber but much more nasty (and different enough to avoid a Lucas lawsuit). The combat system is simple but effective, requiring you to only rely on the A button and a high/low gesture of the Wiimote to enter different stances. Z-targeting is in effect here, and blocking is done automatically once locked on. If it sounds familiar to another Nintendo game, it shouldn't be a huge surprise. But hey, why reinvent the wheel?
As you whittle down an enemy's health bar to near-empty, you're given the opportunity to issue a Finishing Move. This is done by gesturing the Wiimote in the direction of an arrow that flashes on screen. Finishing Moves not only polish off the enemy, but also starts up a trio of slot wheels at the bottom of the screen. Match three of the same symbol, and Travis goes into an overdrive mode where he can unleash special attacks, slow down time, and become even more of a badass than before.
The Wii's motion sensing capabilities aren't overplayed here. You'll use them in certain areas, but No More Heroes doesn't overplay this as a Wii game. The Wiimote's motion capabilities are used as a highlight and an enhancement over the basic control scheme, not as the foundation for it.
Because the Beam Katana is an energy weapon, it requires occasional recharging. At any point during the match, you can recharge the Energy Level of the Beam Katana by holding down the 1 button and jerking the Wiimote up and down. It's just like shaking up a can of soda... only the animations of Travis on screen, as he 'recharges' the Beam Katana, are intentionally sexual. It's only innuendo because they never come right out and say that he's masturbating the Beam Katana. And he is.
Boss battles in this game are spectacular events. You're not just an enemy with a health bar that's bigger than normal. In fact, you're going to need strategy and patience to beat these bosses. Each of them has a different style of attack, requiring you to really think about how to approach a boss before you run in and start swinging. You'll be spending time with each boss, enough that you'll probably die once or twice on the later ones as you figure out their styles of combat and figure out how to counteract them. It's nice to see another developer that gets it, that boss characters in a game are meant to be big events, worthy of time and earning praise.
No More Heroes earns its M rating in spades. In the first hour, you'll hear the F bomb (and several other choice words) dropped several times, and sexually explicit dialogue will pop out of characters mouths without hesitation. When enemies die, they don't just fall over. Heads will be decapitated, limbs will be severed, blood will spray everywhere in gushing glory. Death and violence here are handled in such an over the top manner that at first, it's almost beating you over the head with how gory it is. Then you'll realize that it's MEANT to be over the top, and your apprehension and shock dissipate, and the abhorrence you felt is replaced with amusement. Death and violence become a comedy. Oh, and you save the game by taking a dump on the toilet. This game toes the line between the "M" and "AO" ratings, almost challenging the ESA to give it the stigmatic Adults Only tag.
As you kill enemies, complete tournaments, and perform certain tasks within the city of Santa Destroy, you're given money. While the primary purpose of money in the game is to pay your way into the next ranked match, you can also purchase upgrades for Travis' weapons, clothes, and fighting moves.
In as much as No More Heroes is a solid game, it's also a piece of social commentary. Suda 51 is clearly trying to make a point about games and the media, and about how gamers (and society in general) treat sex and violence. At first, you're shocked by what you see. Then, we slowly become desensitized, to the point that they're barely a distraction, rather than something that piques our interest. But don't let high concept points like that fool you. While Suda 51 is making a point, he's also entertaining you, and he's doing it quite well.
For the people lamenting their Wii purchase, disappointed in their lack of Wii use, worried that the Wii is just a gimmick, or chastising Nintendo's little white box for being yet another kiddie offering, you no longer have room to complain. At least, not until you've played and beaten this game. No More Heroes is THAT game... the one that proves that adult-specific content is not only a potential for the Wii, but that it can flourish and thrive based upon its own merits as a game. It's like playing a video game version of Kill Bill, where Tarantino takes violence and makes it so stylish and absurdly over the top that it ends up looking like a comedy. Sure, you're killing hundreds of people, but does it matter? When a game is this entertaining, you can't complain.
It's so easy to like No More Heroes. It does almost everything right, and when the action really gets moving, you'll be pumped up. It gets a little repetitious, but that's OK. The storyline is actually engaging enough that it won't matter. In fact, it's a little too engaging, because when you get stuck doing those random minigames in order to build up the money you need for ranking matches, you'll hurry through them just to get back with the story. The enemies you face in the game each have their own backstory, and range from the grizzled assassin trying to retire to a high school girl that slaughters her classroom. The story issues no quarter, it just comes in and gets brutal, fast. No More Heroes doesn't pull any punches.
No More Heroes is flawed, don't get me wrong. Questionable style choices, such as a useless mini-map and a free roaming world with almost no point, make you wonder if Suda 51 lost his mind towards the end of development. But trust me, it's worth sitting through those minor hiccups for the main course of the game. No More Heroes is a moment in gaming, the kind of moment where you sit around in a few years and reminisce about your experiences with it when you're talking to fellow gamers. You mention that game, and the people start nodding in agreement with you. No More Heroes may never be a commercial success, but it deserves to do well. Don't let the box art or the graphics fool you. This is a quality game.
Final Score: A-
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