No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle

No More Heroes was Suda51’s love letter to himself. Here was a game starring a selfish and flawed hero with interests in pedophiliac anime, Mexican Lucha Libre, Star Wars and his pet cat. He engaged in a ranking war with assassins (that are never seen assassinating anyone but their fellow kind) and his motivations can best be summed up as “he is a male with a penis.” Call it self-indulgent but there was something very refreshing about No More Heroes’ non-conformist style. In a world rife with military shooters and sequels, this game felt bold and distinct. No More Heroes had the mentality of punk rock, but more akin the Sex Pistols’ independent brand of anti-authority, anti-conformity and anti-sobriety than Avril Lavigne’s manufactured brand. As far as I’m concerned, it was 2008’s real Game of the Year, Grand Theft Auto or Metal Gear be damned. 
 
Forunately, No More Heroes 2 doesn’t have a corporate aura, or the feeling that the franchise has sold out to the Man. In some ways, this game is even more daring, and bound to make many red-blooded Americans feel uncomfortable about themselves. But there’s also an underlying sense of fatigue, that you’ve seen the best this franchise has to offer already, and that the concept of No More Heroes has plateaued. 

So Travis Touchdown is back, and he’s taken a three year hiatus from killing, a hiatus that makes him a legend amongst assassins everywhere in the city of Santa Destroy. Why did he disappear? No explanation is given, under the excuse of “gamers don’t care about exposition.” This game is wrong, especially since Travis’ sabbatical is glorified in later scenes. Anyways, Travis once again wants to climb the rankings, as he once again wants to mack the French chick, but there’s also a hilarious revenge device that fans of the first game will get a kick out of. 

For better or for worse, this game has a much more serious tone than that of its predecessor. There are a few black humour chuckles in spots but most of the dialogue from the various assassins are straight-faced affairs to get over the game's assorted themes. And the player will have plenty to be preached to about. Themes such as the mindset of prizefighters and fan obsession are touched upon in various moments. Perhaps most prevalent being the themes of pro-violence and sexual undertones in video games. Enemies explode in a sea of blood and cash, a visual reward for ending others’ lives, and much ado is made about how Travis gets off on killing. The sword battery charge meter in the top is further symbolized by a phallic smiley face and a tiger icon represents Travis’ libido. The underlying messages being that only a sick fetishist psychopath would be the one-man-army protagonist of a violent video game. One can almost call No More Heroes 2 the video game equivalent of Watchmen, albeit less subtle. 

Not to mention how shamelessly upfront the female characters are subjected to voyeuristic scenes. The revealing sequences involving Sylvia or Shinobu such feel more like satires of the female manipulator or Kill Bill-esque femme fatale than anything else. There may be no game more comfortable with its own sexuality ever made than No More Heroes 2.

That said, you’ll always wonder why Travis, a rampant murdering machine with a strong disdain for the assassin’s association doesn’t just give up killing his fellow kind and slaughter the association office members instead. 

Gone from the first game is the city of Santa Destroy as a universal hub. Players merely hop from location to location through a menu screen. You still have the option to work side job mini-games to earn cash for upgrades and weapons. But since you no longer have to pay a mortgage’s worth in funds to progress in the story, there’s less of a sense of resentment to be harbored for their presence. But you’ll still want to get the new weapons and stat upgrades anyways, since later bosses have more health than the remaining members of the Sex Pistols have money. Almost all of the mini-games are presented in the style of 8-bit video games…in fact, scratch that. They are presented in the style of forgotten 8-bit mini-game compilations like The Three Stooges NES title, complete with hokey music and muffled voice samples. Being that “the bad NES mini-game set” has rarely been spoofed, seeing it done here feels more fresh and amusing than recent 8-bit homages like Retro Game Challenge and Eat Lead. Plus you can earn large sums of cash, fast, which makes these quirky games inviting in of themselves. 

So after about 700 words of text, a reader of this review may be thinking that No More Heroes 2 sounds like some kind of great improvement of a game. But it’s when one finally divulges in the main game portion that things start to fall apart. The main gameplay portions consist of, and only of, Travis walking through a linear path and slicing up every hired goon he stumbles across. The lack of variety seen in these segments is almost disappointing. You’ll slice and dice the same kind of enemies repeatedly, from goons to goons with guns to fat goons with chainsaws to bouncers with lightsabers. The game feels about two onion layers of depth above a straight button-masher. You’ll press A repeatedly, then waggle the remote in a direction to pull off a gratifying finishing move, made all the more delicious by the cries for mercy from your fallen foes. From time to time, you’ll press B to Steinerize your enemies with a pro-wrestling slam. Old abilities like jerking off the Wiimote to recharge your batteries and the slot-machine shortcake superpowers are back as well. (Complete with a new slot machine power that liberates Travis’s hormones by transforming him into a tiger.) I had completely forgotten about how to break enemy guards or tilting the remote to change sword swipe directions until the final level, to be honest. Depth is certainly lacking here. 

Oh, the camera kind of sucks. It’s pitched low, as to make the slashing of whatever enemy you’re making look all the more dramatic. But the camera doesn’t account for other enemies in the room, leaving a less conservative player to repeatedly get chainsawed in the back. 

And the shallow nature of the combat is emphasized by just how much combat you’ll be doing in the game. There are several sequences where the game just throws wave after wave of enemies at you, almost to a point of ludicrousness. One level, set in a parking lot, has what could very well be one hundred enemies magically appearing from the back doors of four or five vans. Maybe this was intended to be a spoof of enemy respawn points in other games, but I wasn’t keen on being the victim of the joke. 

The boss fights are a bit more gratifying. Sure, they mostly comprise of “sidestep their attack, then deliver your own.” Sure, they have a health bar worthy of Cal Ripkin Jr. Sure, you’ll swear in agony because you were one health bar away from victory and the enemy just dropped you with a one-hit-kill. But you’ll be the one laughing over the unconscious body of your fallen adversary when you finally deliver the QTE killing blow. None of the bosses approach the wacky creativity of, say, Super Destroyman or Bad Girl from the first game, but there are still some memorable battles that’ll earn a warm place in your heart. The final boss is certainly something to behold, not that I’d want to spoil it.   

Now, the game does attempt a few diversions. Some, like an early-game mech battle that exists for no reason other than because a mech battle needed to happen, are humourous in concept, even if they’re not intuitive to play through in execution. There are two stages, occurring consecutively, that place you in Shinobu’s shoes and dress. (Though she’ll get out of both on several occasions.) They’re made distinct in that Shinobu can actually jump, though this feature is thankfully not fully utilized to its fullest. As she has the trademark spinning forward jump seen in the recent Ninja Gaiden and Shinobi remakes, but with remarkably un-ninja-like agility and intuitiveness. You also get to play as Irish twin brother Henry for all of one single boss fight. I definitely wish that these side diversions were both better designed and more fleshed out. Instead, I was merely happy that they were all as short as they were. 

I completed the game in 8 hours, though if I were to chart out how many of those hours were entertaining and which were of me being annoying, the line graph would have many valleys. Desperate Struggle has its moments but the gameplay doesn’t hold up and match the game’s sense of style. Fans of the first game will do themselves well to give it a shot, if just to see the continued adventures of Travis, Sylvia, Shinobu and Travis’s cat. Meanwhile curious parties should take a gander at the first No More Heroes instead. 

3 ½ stars