No More Heroes 2; or why most sequels suck
To put it simply, most sequels to video games suck. They try too hard to emulate the flash of lighting that was the original and fall flat on their asses doing so. Such is the case with No More Heroes 2, a game that tries to emulate the success of the first game with crazy weapons, bosses and characters, but just leaves you with the feeling that you wasted your time. You play as the otaku assassin Travis Touchdown who after three years in retirement comes back to the UAA (United Assassination Association) to take revenge on your fallen friend Bishop who was killed by the goons of the number 1 assassin, Jasper Batt jr. . The first problem I saw with NMH 2 was the fact that the game really has no structure. In the first game you had to pay to get into the rankings by doing assassination missions and odd jobs like picking up trash. You can still do those missions in the sequel, but there is almost no incentive to do so as you can do ranked battles for free. The missions and odd jobs were not very good but at least you had reason to do them in the first NHM. Then we get to the actual ranked levels themselves, which are probably the worst part of the game. With all the game's kooky aspect you would at least expect the levels to be somewhat entertaining right? No. All the levels are are a bunch of boring repetitive slash fests with no surprises or challenges. Remember in the first NMH where you had to play baseball or drive over hundreds of enemies with your bike? Well in this game there is almost none of that. There is a small stealth section but nothing more. Bosses range from really cool and challenging to really cheap to being really easy, but overall the bosses were pretty fun. Some bosses include a giant robot fight, a fight with a lost Russian cosmonaut and a fight with a motorcycle riding samurai, all of which are very fun though only make up a small percentage of the game. However, the game does a bate an switch early on that pissed me off something fierce. The game says that there are 51 bosses at the beginning, but you skip over half during the course of the story. Don't tell me that I will face 51 bosses, Suda 51, And then rip most of them away! Overall, NMH 2 is a flat, deflating experience that no one should play.
