The No More Heroes is the story of Travis Touchdown, a man who enjoys such niceties as wanting to be the #1 assassin in the world, driving around on an Akira-like motorcycle, professional wrestling, and his awesome beam katana that is an obvious nod to Luke Skywalker. Sounds like an odd mix, and those are just a sampling of the craziness this game contains. And honestly, who doesn’t love a game where you have to go to the bathroom in order to save the game? The most amazing thing is that it just may contain the most brilliant use of the Wii controls to show up on the system to date. Go figure.
The The game is very much an acquired taste. The violence and the amount of blood that flows and the colorful language flying around is something that is rarely seen in gaming today, even from the Grand Theft Auto games. Supposedly developer Grasshopper and director SUDA 51, previously known best for the game Killer 7, increased the amount of violence and blood from the Japanese version. The overall style and storyline told through cutscenes comes straight out of Japanese anime and the overall story just gets crazier the farther you get into the game.
The core of the story is that you start off in place as #11 on the Assassination List. Your goal is to make it all the way to #1. In order to do this you have to go through the ten people in front of you and defeat them in a battle. This all sounds very much like Assassin’s Creed to a degree and you do spend much of the game taking up side jobs in order to accumulate enough money to pay off the Assassin’s Association and take on your next target. With each successive target that amount goes up by $50,000. This means you have to drive around town and take up part-time jobs or professional jobs that can net you some money or, in the case of higher professional jobs, a lot of money. Along with the price to face the next target you are also able to buy other things such as newer blades, clothes and do some training to increase your strength and vitality.
The The biggest problem with going around town is that the driving controls are really quite poor. They are simple (nunchuck turns, A button accelerates, B button brakes), but the feel of the motorcycle is just poor. The game is nice enough to not have you crash every time you run into a car. Instead it just tries to move forward and will bounce from side to side until it gets around the car. This is the only section of the game that seems almost an afterthought and it really sits on the fence to pure frustration having to go around town on the motorcycle.
The beauty of the game comes from everything surrounding your targets. At the beginning of each target opportunity you usually have a phone message from the UAA (United Assassin Association or something like that) along with a phone message from the girl at the video store talking about the latest porn movie that is past due. You are also assigned an agent for lack of a better term. Her name is Sylvia and she talks with a French accent. Travis has the hots for her and many times when she talks to you on the phone or meets you in person the double entendres are flying from her mouth and Travis gets overly excited. She often lets Travis get close to hitting the jackpot, but she smacks him right back down to Earth. The interplay between the two is refreshing and keeps you interested in the overall story and when you reach the end and find out everything about Sylvia it will blow your mind.
The The gameplay itself is handled perfectly with the Wii remote and nunchuck. At the beginning you can go through a tutorial that explains pretty much everything to you. Your weapon is a beam katana which looks a lot like a lightsaber. Unlike everyone’s wish, the Wii remote is not used to swing back and forth with the weapon. Instead all attacks are done with the A button for swinging or the B button to attempt to stun the enemy. Once their health is down to zero an orange arrow comes up on the screen that shows you which way to swing the remote in order to slice and dice them. This is where heads get lopped off or enemies get cut in half and blood spurts out all over. Sometimes you will be lucky and be able to take off two or more heads while doing a finishing move. After you have done the finishing move a slot machine rolls at the bottom of the screen and if you get three of the same icon they will come up on the screen and Travis will get some special powers. A couple of them are him going Super Saiyan-like (Dragonball reference) with his hair turning yellow and being more powerful or crosshairs coming up on the screen and Travis can shoot a projectile from his katana and blow up the enemy it is aimed at. This all just adds to the overall anime feel that this game has.
There are also two different stances that Travis can take. Most of the time you will be in the high stance, but sometimes there are high blockers and you have to go to the low stance by moving the remote below the horizontal plane like you were going to drag a sword in real life. As Travis uses his katana, the battery will run out on it. In order to recharge the battery you have to hold the 1 button and then swing the remote back and forth while Travis does a spastic move on the screen. If your battery runs out the blade will no longer fire up. Travis also has the ability to deflect attacks back with the beam katana.
