No More Heroes

It's a 5-star game in my heart, but when I think about it, I have to take a few points from it.

It's a Wii game, so the graphics aren't technically impressive compared to non-Wii games, but I loved the art-style. The partial cell-shading adds a hint of cartoon style, but in an urban artsy, non-childish way. I hope I'll be able to play the Xbox 360 version, because when I had to put my face a foot away from the TV to see the incredibly tiny, low-res treasure dots on the mini-map, I noticed the crappy Wii resolution and thought to myself  "Man, fuck the wii." Generally, resolution isn't a big deal for me, but even I, who can't tell the difference between HD channels and regular unless they're side-by-side, noticed the resolution a little at normal distance from the TV.

The art style fit really well with the way the world is in that game. Humorous, ridiculous, and completely awesome things happening all the time in this game. Every time (every time) you kill a non-boss enemy, massive arterial spray and money flies out of their heads, and I still can't get over the fact that the city is called Santa Destroy. Many of the characters and their interactions are completely balls-out crazy, which I loved, but one should note that the dialogue has a very Japanese feel to it, in case you aren't into that sort of thing.  

The game has a lot of little touches that are seemingly meant to make the player feel more in the action, or just generally more real. Some of it is small enough that I doubt almost anyone would be bothered by it. The smallest example of this is that before a battle begins, Travis pulls out his beam katana, and the player is prompted to hit the A button to turn it on, and start the action. Not a big deal, but personally, I think it's a nice touch. Also, the player must swipe the wiimote to deliver killing blows. This isn't very challenging, but it put me in the action more, and it felt right that a more bad-ass attack should require something more exciting than tapping a button.

There are two other examples of added realism mechanics that might piss some people off. Travis will need to catch his breath after sprinting for long enough, but I've only once gotten to that point, because you mainly travel by motor-cycle, and any tiny little break you take from running, half of a second even, will recharge the running meter a good amount. The most significant thing is that in combat, the beam katana will eventually run out of power and need to be re-charged by shaking the wiimote, leaving Travis briefly unprotected. It sounds very annoying to me in theory, but if you're playing right, you'll very rarely have to recharge, and I have never felt like I would have fared significantly better in a fight if I had unlimited power. For me, it just added a little extra drama to make things more exciting. I really appreciated these mechanics, but more impatient gamers might not.

I really enjoyed the combat. I generally don't like  to block, dodge, or do anything other than attack in any fighting game, but the mechanics of No More Heroes, namely the semi-automatic blocking, make blocking and evasion and such flow very elegantly, even for a brute like me. I also love the pacing of the fights. Because you can block most attacks, you can take the battle slowly, and examine attack patterns. Even a button-mashing brute like myself can really get into the strategic elements of the boss fights because of that. Of course, theres plenty of good old button-mashy action to be had as well outside of boss fights, and those damned free missions.

I hate free missions, but thankfully they are completely optional, and not really superior to the normal missions in monetary gain. In these missions you must fight a handful of goons with only one health point left. The combat mechanics are good, but not so good that they're really suited to a scenario where you can't make a single mistake. The imperfections in the lock-on mechanic and the jump-cut style of camera movement make it winning difficult, and inelegant in that you have to work around the little unpolished bits to make it happen.

The open-world part of this game is unnecessary and sometime annoying, but also slightly appealing. There isn't much to do, and navigation could be improved. Pulling tee-shirts out of dumpsters is pretty rad though. I suppose this is another attempt at making the world feel more real and I guess it sort of works. Santa Destroy has different looking parts to it and transitioning between the different part is smooth, so the city has a very cohesive, real feeling to it. The open-world aspect of the game is pretty pointless gameplay-wise, but it was sort of neat, so it didn't bother me too much, but the mini-map sucked, and when I had to re-do a mission a few times to get a gold rank, it got annoying to have to drive back and forth between the mission giver and the mission site.

I know I've mentioned a lot of flaws, but honestly, they didn't bother me much, and even if they were much, much worse, I would still love this game. A big part of me wants to give it a higher score, because as a singular experience, it sort of deserves it, but considering the improvements that should be made, I have to take it down a few notches. Once I decided I had to take a star away, I wasn't sure if I wanted to go with 3.5 or 4, but fate decided for me, when I accidentally put in 4 instead of 3.5, without a way to edit that part as far as I know. In the end, I'm glad messed, because a review should be about how much you enjoyed the game, and it deserves at least a 4 for that.

Thanks for reading this ridiculously long review; my ADD medication sometimes makes me OCD enough to undertake such ventures with an insanely in-depth and long-winded approach. I hope my psychosis has generated some useful or vaguely interesting analysis for you.