Scratch below the surface and will you find a hero? - 7/10
Introduction
Have you ever been massively excited by the hype around a game (other than by Brawl)? I was by a game that seemed set to bring a little more goodness to a console with far too few truly great titles. 'No More Heroes', is it a game that will go down in history, even if only as a cult classic, or will it be just another game that could have been so much better?
First Impressions of the Game:
When you start the game you are greeted with text that brings up significant memories for older gamers. Unfortunately, when the game actually gets going the graphics also bring back memories for those older gamers. Low resolution textures and hideously jagged lines, admittedly this may just be my TV though I have never seen a similar issue on a game on the Wii that outputs at 480p.
Luckily the "hack and slash" game play is interesting enough to get you, and Travis Touchdown (the main character of the game) through the first level and up to your first boss fight "Death Metal"; A man with more piercings than my emo brother and an accent taken straight from Crocodile Dundee.
Gameplay
The game revolves around three main parts: performing assassination missions; performing odd jobs for money; and wandering around the streets.
When you are out on assassination missions the gameplay is, as all good games, simply to learn but difficult to master. 'A' swings your beam katana, 'B' lashes out with either a kick or a punch (it also grabs stunned opponents so that you can perform "bone crushing professional wrestling moves"), 'Z' locks onto an enemy and allows you to block their attacks and the joystick controls the movement of your flawed hero. There are other controls but these are the basics that will be used most often.
The general fight will go "hack, slash, slash, finishing move"; finishing moves will never get boring. You will constantly wonder which way you will end up swinging that beam katana and whether you can get multiple foes in the one hit.
The controls out on odd jobs differ, they all, so far that I have played in the game, require running Travis around an area performing small goals. Each of these goals will be worth a small amount of money that adds up over the course of the job. Each job has a time limit for you to get as much money as you can and then at the end you will be ranked, though the ranking does not seem to have any real effect on the game.
Wandering the streets is one of the most frustrating things in the game; you can do it in two ways: on foot; or on your bike (though when you ride the bike you will feel like you need a buster sword).
Walking is slow but, once you have put your first upgrade on the beam katana, will allow you to find treasure burried by paranoid souls in the city. Riding your bike is mildly faster but still feels slow. The bike is very unresponsive at speed and takes a little bit of getting used to. These two methods are the only way to get around Santa Destroy, the city in which the game is set, and you will quite often feel like there should be an instant travel facility when you are repeating small side missions or odd jobs to get up the money to enter into your next story line fight.
To show that I can do segues as well as 'Today Tonight'.
Storyline Fights
Travis' soul desire seems to be to kill people. He is the worst kind of psychopath; he feels no remorse about killing and desires to get in quickly and do as much damage as possible. This seems to fit well with the ethics of the majority of characters you will meet in the game though, so I guess that makes it ok.
Travis kills his first significant character very early in the game and then finds out he is ranked 10th by the Assassins League. This means that he can now be targeted by other wannabe assassins and somehow this means that the only thing for him to do is become the best assassin. As such his sole desire is to kill the 9 assassins above him. The biggest problem with this is that before entering each fight you will need to raise, and then deposit, a certain amount of money in order to gain access to each fight. This money seems to then be embezzled and used to pay off various people.
In order to get through to each of these assassins you will have to fight through a building full of their goons. This is quite fun but generally not incredibly challenging. The only reason for this that is the story concept that you are one of the 10 best assassins in the world and all other killers pale in comparison. The boss fights are a challenge and each boss is unique. Expect weapons and abilities that scream "I was made by a Japanese anime fan." These fights will bring you right in though, from the interesting dialogue that preceeds them to the tactics you will find yourself employing to win them; ultimately this means that your whole gaming experience will rotate around getting to the next one.
Graphics
The graphics in the game are a real let down, especially after how nice the screen shots looked. I got in and the first look of the actual game made me wonder whether I had made a mistake with my purchase. That said you won't notice them for the majority of fights as you will be too busy killing everything that gets in your way, but wandering around the city you can't help but notice the jagged edges, appalling textures and incredibly low polygon counts on models.
Replayability
Not having finished the game yet I can't say what the replay value of the game will be. If there is a way to jump straight into an arena for boss fights then there will be a lot of incentive to come back and fight your favourite ones. Otherwise I am not sure whether people will want to redo all of the side missions in order to get back to the storyline fights.
Conclusion
Ultimately the game is quite good. The humour that people raved about is there, the quirkiness is definitely there, the anime references are there a-plenty (both in the what the characters say and their delivery) and the fighting, which is really the emphasis of the game, cannot be falted.
Though a lot of people have read a lot into the game doing that reminds me too much of English in High School. My current opinion is that it is a game which is well worth a look but is doomed to become a cult classic, lost into the ether that the majority of gamers don't look into for their next title.
Submitted by pleo
30/03/2008
447
17
Join MyWii to vote for your favourite story!
More Info:
No More Heroes
Other Reviews:
Related News:
Related Videos: