One Helluva Touchdown...
"Enjoy your kiddie machine!" That's what more then one 360phile told me when I purchased my Wii. "Enjoy your kids games!" Well I used to tell them, "I hope you like shooters...cause that's all you have" but now I have an actual case for the Wii being a machine for older gamers as well. No More Heroes is that case. This game is absolutely not for children. It has almost every bad word outside of the ever dreaded "#((%^@#^()$)&*#^." (Isn't that the worst word you've ever seen?) As your protagonist, Travis Touchdown opens his mouth and lets the curses fly on his journey to the top.
To the top of what? The top of "The United Assassins Association" of course! He'll fight and boy will he kill, his way to the #1 spot. In hand will be the beam katana (think lightsaber) he won in an online auction. And this is where the fun begins. From the opening stage your sent to make your first kill, but in order to do that, you have to do many other kills beforehand. How? Swing your Wiimote like a sword? No not quite. Grasshopper played it very smart, unlike a lot of Wii developers, and didn't design the entire game around the remote. Just give it simple, yet effective functions. You press A for your slashing combos, only swinging the remote when your foe's energy is low to deal the finishing strike, which will undoubtedly chop off some part of their body and when you have the right weapon and attacks...you may just completely liquefy them. Either way, the blood will fly and when I say fly...I mean like the movie Kill Bill...FLY.
A simple as the controls sound, they work rather well will dodge moves mapped to the Wii D-Pad. And very shortly, you'll have most of what you need down so you don't need to fumble over the remote. Though their is one minor control flaw however, riding your oversized motorcycle. It almost feels like it turns a second or two after you tilt the analog stick a slight annoyance but nothing game destroying.
Speaking of the motorcycle, your going to be spending a rather large amount of time riding it. In between ranking fights, you'll need to do part time jobs and various other missions to acquire the cash to enter the next ranked battle. While these missions do have you doing a variety of things, from cleaning up graffiti to killing mounds of hitmen, the in between sections can sometimes drag on, leaving you to replay missions you've already completed in order to make the increasingly large fees.
For all that gory, fun action, you must be asking, how does it look? The answer, fantastic! The game's look has a very comic book feel to it, which works quite well with the violent but not so serious attitude the game provides. The dialogue is humorous and sometimes brilliant, aided by the fantastic voice actors delivering the lines. A lot of the humor comes in particular from the French accented Silvia Christel, who aside from screwing with you constantly, (one of the best game touches is holding your Wiimote like a cell phone every time she calls you...only to berate and insult you) she is also the one who sets up all of your ranking matches, keeping those large fees for herself.
At its heart, No More Heroes is a game that focuses on style and simple fun over super deep substance, a focus that works incredibly well. It also holds up as a argument as to what kind of games can exist on the Wii in terms of gameplay, but more so in terms of age group. It makes an attempt at selling the idea that Nintendo isn't just for kids anymore, and while this is a very good way to start that argument, it will take more support to finish it.
