And now for something completely different.

Title: No More Heroes – Nintendo Wii

Publisher: Ubisoft

Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture

Release Date: January 22^nd, 2008

Notable Personnel: Written and Directed by Goichi Suda (“Suda 51”)

For the past six months or so, anyone who asked me what I thought was holding back the videogame medium would have been met with the same answer: Japanese home console games. Japanese game developers have been living by the philosophy of if it ain’t broke don’t fix it; which is precisely why the Zelda, Mario and Final Fantasy franchises haven’t seen the slightest goddamn bit of change or innovation since they all went 3-D a decade ago. Of course there have been exceptions (Shadow of the Colossus) but for 99% of games from the land of the rising sun, my point remains valid. Fast forward to last weekend when my copy of No More Heroes arrived in the mail from Amazon.com. I was an hour into the game when I lowered my head, closed my eyes and whispered to myself under my breath.

“I’m sorry Japan. I take it back.”

There’s something I find very perplexing about the game’s title. It is correct in that there are no heroes; each character you encounter is an amoral psychopath who would murder their own mother for pay or play. But outside in the real world, No More Heroes has given me a hero in its writer/director Suda 51. The tables have turned. I am now hoping Suda will show us Americans how it’s done. He is my one hope against the American Hollywood blockbuster style games (Gears of War and Halo 3) of recent years. That said; let’s get to the actual game.

No More Heroes is a 3^rd person (The camera trails behind the player) action game that puts you in control of Travis Touchdown, a newbie hitman living in Santa Destroy, a fictional town in Southern California. The story goes that after spending all of his money on a hot date with a woman he met at a “Deathmatch Bar”; he accepts an assassination job to pay his rent. Travis disposes of the target with his weapon of choice, a beam katana (lightsabre) he purchased on an online auction. Immediately after the fight Travis is approached by his date from the night prior. She informs him that the man he just killed was the 11^th best hitman in the United Assassins Association (UAA) and that Travis now has challenging rights to the top 10. Under the promise that she’ll have sex with him, Travis sets out to claim the #1 spot.

The road to #1 composes the majority, if not the entirety of the game’s storyline and gameplay. There are ten missions, each culminating in a boss battle with a ranked assassin. The missions are fairly straight forward. You cleave your way through roughly a hundred million goons in a themed arena, collecting power-ups and hidden secrets until you reach the boss of the stage. Each boss is unique and compelling; both in personality and strategy. Each assassin on his/her own can put the entire cast of Metal Gear Solid to shame in terms of quirk and bizarre. The combat is simple, but polished. The bulk of the combat involves repeatedly hitting the A button to swing the beam katana at some unlucky sucker. Once the unlucky sucker’s life bar has been depleted the game will pause and show a directional arrow on the screen. Swinging the Wii-remote in this direction will execute a gnarly finishing move worthy of the black knight from Holy Grail. Everytime you execute a finishing move, a slot machine graphic will appear at the bottom of the screen. If three matching icons come up, you’ll enter “Dark Side Mode” where the carnage will increase exponentially for a short while. However the enemies have this annoying tendency to block some of your attacks. When this happens the B button will have Travis kick the bastard and stun him. Hitting B again will grapple him. Two directional arrows will appear on the screen: one for the remote and one for the nunchuck. Following the instructions will have Travis slam his opponent lucha nibre style leaving the chump open for a coup-de-grace. Boss battles work in a similar fashion, except they take a lot more hits to bring down. Also each battle has its own special quirk or two which I’ll leave you to discover and experience.

When the boss is finally brought down, usually with less limbs then he started with, we’re brought back to Travis’ cheap motel. Here we can save, change Travis’ clothes and weapons and even play with his cat Jeane. When Travis walks out the door he finds himself smack dab in the middle of Santa Destroy. The objective of the city sections is almost always to earn enough money to pay the entrance fee for the next ranked assassin battle. Money can be earned in several ways. Travis’ beam katana can dig into the ground and unearth buried treasure. However this way is terribly inefficient and I’m curious what the reasoning behind it was. The second way, and my most common method of making money is taking on smaller side combat missions. Each side mission has its own objectives but usually wind up being kill as many people as you can in this amount of time missions. Unfortunately by the end of the game these side fights all blend together because there’s nothing really that special about any of them. Additional depth and length to them would have been much appreciated. The third way to make cash moneys in Santa Destroy is performing part time jobs. While the rest of the game is unadulterated carnage, these part time jobs often have you performing tasks like picking fruit, pumping gas and mowing lawns. Santa Destroy is not just a place to earn money though. In town Travis can buy new clothes, purchase upgrades to his weapons and improve his stats. Travis gets around town on his motorcycle, the Schpel Tiger. The mammoth of a bike looks like a cross between the Batmobile from Batman Begins and Shotaro Kaneda’s bike from Akira. The handling on the bike is sluggish and it often gets stuck on world objects. But for getting around town it works most of the time.

Except for the shops, missions, the save point (There’s only one in the overworld) and a few funny signs, Santa Destroy is completely empty. The city has no personality and the walking pedestrians and passing cars have even less. But don’t jump to conclusions. The city seems almost normal, a little empty, but ordinary looking; which only makes the absurdly lunatic storyline and characters stand out more. While I’m here I figure I should let you know that with NMH, Suda 51 is on top of his game.

There is no dead air here. Everything NMH has to offer is worth seeing. Every line spoken by the top notch cast is either cynically badass, hilarious, or both. The sound effects work perfectly in the world of Santa Destroy. The beam katana sounds just like a lightsabre from one of the original Star Wars movies. The entire game is decorated with beeps and blips dating from 80s arcade machines. Nothing in this game sounds real, and I mean that as a compliment. Nothing looks real either. Suda utilized a similar cel-shading effect that he used in his previous game Killer7. The characters look low-polygon and blocky. The menu and heads up display are made of pixilated graphics and banners that look older than I am. In short, it looks like a videogame.

Now to my favorite part of No More Heroes. No More Heroes is a videogame and it knows that. It doesn’t try to be an “interactive movie” or anything like that. And just to make sure you know that, the game occasionally breaks the fourth wall; especially so during the downright fantastic ending. Unlike the more sophisticated “better” games that you find on the western videogame market, in NMH it feels like the development team had as much fun making the game as you do playing it. The whole experience feels personal. I wanted to reach the top just as much as Travis did, which is a difficult experience to create. Another review of this game I read calls No More Heroes “[a] love letter to videogames that never grows old, tired, or dull.” This is true. However I’m going to take it a step further. No More Heroes is more than just a love letter to videogames. It’s a love letter to videogamers too. The game is filled with references and jokes that only a true nerd would understand. This game was handcrafted for gamers who scour their local Gamestop looking for that $9.99 game that no one’s ever heard of. Those of you who camped out for an Xbox 360 just to play Halo 3 are going to feel a little left out, but the wanton carnage should satisfy you. No More Heroes is an anthem to everyone who ditched their senior prom to watch a Star Trek marathon (for the record I went to two proms and have the pictures to prove it). No More Heroes is the first game for the Nintendo Wii that feels as wacky and innovative as the platform itself.

No More Heroes is the game that officially restored my faith in a medium that I feel has been letting me down for the past year. If you haven’t guessed it already I wholeheartedly recommend NMH; especially to seasoned gamers who’ve been playing since childhood. The more casual of you who play Wii Sports and Guitar Hero from time to time may not be as crazy about it as I was. However the spectacular script, combat and pacing should keep you satisfied for the 10-15 hours you’ll spend playing this game. Just be sure to get the “real ending.”

This game receives 1 out of 1 “I like it!’s”.