Heroes of a Different Generation

Just one of the many Kill Bill moments in No More Heroes



It may have come out in January but I just made this site, so I'm posting the review for it now. This review was published in my college newspaper, and I think it works on defining every aspect of the game in the 800 word limit they gave me. One thing I did not get a chance to say in the review is that this game is a throwback to past generations of video game heroes, hence the name. You will never be able to play a game that feels like a Nintendo64 or PSone game again, but this game tries to change that. Johnny Touchdown wants to be retroactively put into the heroes of video game canon. He never will due to the poor sales of this game. As of right now No More Heroes is only 30 dead presidents at your local EB Gamestop new. So support the developers and buy the game new... oh and support me and read this wonderful review of No More Heroes!

Pop culture author Chuck Klosterman once claimed video games as the rock n’ roll of our generation. Suda 51, the creator of No More Heroes, has stated that he wants to be the punk rocker of video games. And from the moment when you throw in No More Heroes and turn on your Wii, he makes his argument perfectly clear when his development team’s logo appears and says “Grasshopper Manufacture: Punk’s Not Dead”. Suda 51 managed to pack so much creativity and retro-goodness in order to create this highly stylized Wii exclusive, it would be a shame not to pick a copy up.

Right when the game begins it throws the gamer into the boots of Travis Touchdown, the 11^th best assassin in Santa Destroy, a fictional California city. In order to be number one Travis must kill through the top ten assassins. Suda decided to go after an over-the-top, retro style. The story is simple and lends itself well to the incredible manner and flair presented throughout the game. Some of the graphics and sound effects seem to come straight out of a game from the 1980s. The leader board that shows the gamer’s assassin rank, screams Space Invaders while Travis’ life is represented as a pixilated heart.

Throughout the game Travis wields his trusty lightsaber (here called a beam katana). Even though gamers may catch themselves button mashing multiple times throughout the game, the controls work surprisingly well. The motion controls, which are what the Wii is known for, are saved for slow motion decapitation, splitting someone in half with Travis’ trusty beam katana, or performing certain wrestling moves. The controls are polished and are one of the better qualities of the game.

Santa Destroy is an open world city, like Grand Theft Auto, and gives any gamer the ability to drive around and pick up simple missions like “Kill the CEO of the new fast food chain Pizza Butt”. Unlike GTA there is no stealing cars, instead Travis has one form of transportation, a highly stylized motorcycle. In the open world Travis can take on menial tasks like mow a lawn or collect coconuts in order to gain money or missions that require him to murder. Ironically enough, collecting garbage acquires Travis more cash than assassinating someone and both are strangely equal in fun. The gamer can also upgrade Travis with new shirts, bigger muscles or even a more powerful beam katana.

The game loads when gamers go in or out of a building or start a mission. This would be annoying but Suda allowed for the gamer to move the little loading symbol up and down the screen to give even the most ADD gamer something to do. The heart of the game lies in the ten assassination missions. Throughout these levels gamers will see over glamorized murder and gratuitous sexual themes in the bucket load, but they are all there to give the game its own very good edge. The blood and amount of bad guys Travis fight seem very Kill Bill.

The sexual imagery comes in all forms from talking to Travis’ fellow co-worker on the phone while she puts on her clothes, to the save-points being located in bathrooms. That’s right, when you go to save Travis walks into a bathroom, unzips, and toilet paper appears covering his exposed parts asking if you want to save. Probably the best use of the gratuitousness, along with the Wii motion controls, is how the gamer must reactivate the beam katana’s battery power, which… I’ll just let your imagination do the work for you.

There are a couple of small problems with the game. For instance the textures throughout Santa Destroy are very bland and suffer from pop-up, which is when things just appear on the screen from far away. And for the simple missions there is no retry option, gamers actually have to drive all the way back to the middle of the map, activate the mission, and then drive back to where the mission takes place. This is especially annoying when a gamer is in a mission where one must defeat every bad guy without being hit.

But overall this game is wonderful; everything from the mix of Tarantino violence to Suda 51’s professed love of lucha libre wrestling. This game reaches into the bowels of masculine desire and rips them out for everyone to see. This is the first must own title for the Wii in 2008 and any hardcore gamers fantasy. Please do not miss this game. I give it a solid 8.5 out of 10.

Picture from: www.omgnintendo.com