Giant Bomb Review
28 CommentsNo More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle Review
4- WII
by Ryan Davis on
Grasshopper Manufacture punches you square in the nose with this double-live gonzo action sequel that's leaner, faster, and--in a feat that borders on the impossible--crazier than the original No More Heroes.
Following in the footsteps of other unnecessary sequels before it, No More Heroes 2 basically pushes the reset button on our hero, the self-made assassin Travis Touchdown, ginning up a new excuse for him to break out his trusty beam katana and murder his way to the top of the United Assassins Association ranks with the help of his cold and presumably duplicitous agent Sylvia. The game actually maintains continuity with the first game, featuring a number of returning characters and unresolved story threads, though it correctly assumes that, if the person holding the controller didn't play the first game, it's a waste of time to try and explain what the hell is going on. This is a game where, if it'll save time, a character will plainly state that video-game players don't care about backstory, implicating the player with a glance towards the camera.
So his reasons for the unmitigated bloodshed are a little more personal this time around, but the overall structure of Travis Touchdown's mission remains the same, pushing his way through deliberately chunky and garish environments filled with cannon fodder before facing off with the next ranked assassin in an over-the-top boss battle. Your first fight is against a hip-hop-label-owner-turned-cult-leader with a Scottish accent and robotic arms that turn into a deadly boombox. From there, it gets kinda weird.
No More Heroes 2 aims higher with its outlandish boss battles than the first game did, though it eases up on the overall difficulty, making health items more plentiful and boss fights a little less drawn out. There are some structural improvements as well. Gone is the crappy open-world navigation of the first game, replaced with a simple map of Santa Destroy, significantly cutting down on the downtime between activities. You also don't have to pay any exorbitant entry fees to enter a ranking fight, leaving you with more money to spend on training, upgraded beam katanas, and random hipster t-shirts. Money will still, hilariously, fly out of enemies, though you'll need to take on some side jobs to earn some real scratch, all of which are rendered in the style of old 8-bit console games. These games aren't so much good as they are accurate, right down to the crushed and muddled digital voice samples. It only takes a couple plays for most of these side jobs to turn tedious, but they make up for it with volume, and it's impressive how they nail the era and the styles of games they're trying to emulate.
This 8-bit design style bleeds out into the rest of the game in random spots, often in the form of square-wave audio cues and anachronistic fonts, though it takes equal inspiration from giant robot cartoons, lucha libre, anime cheesecake, and spaghetti westerns. No More Heroes 2 is clearly less interested in creating an immersive world than it is a ridiculous playground for its protagonist to murder dudes in, which can make it a very spartan-looking game at times, a sense that's exacerbated by the game's high-contrast art style.
In more ways than one, No More Heroes is to games what Crank is the movies--this is a deliberately stupid and absurd game made with incredible craft and passion by people who love video games and hate being bored. No More Heroes 2 is a game seemingly designed specifically to surprise people who have played a lot of video games, and to this end, it's a smashing success.
