No More Heroes Review

Describing No More Heroes is not the easiest thing to do, but to put it bluntly its an untraditional Wii game. Suda 51, the man behind Killer 7, has come out with some of his best work yet in this combination of insane blood work, light sabers, and Mexican wrestling. To be honest No More Heroes is just the game that the Nintendo Wii needed; one that’s suited to the hardcore and one that’s actually coming from a third party. Our review after the jump

You play the role of Travis Touchdown, the eleventh ranked assassin in Santa Destroy as you make your way through the ten assassins above you to become number one. Obviously he has some motivation, in the form of Sylvia Crystal who watches your progress through the rankings. Taking out these assassins results in incredible boss fights all having their own style. Whether it be simply slashing away or trying to avoid a huge laser beam these boss fights are some of the best. Obviously this brings us on to the combat which is one of the best aspects of No More Heroes due to its great creativity. Travis carries around his blood berry, a simple light saber, that can be upgraded into faster and more powerful version as you progress through the game. He also gets a combination of fighting moves, most notably Mexican wrestling moves. The number of moves you can perform increases and they all involve using the Wii’s motion functionality. The combat works out great and is one of the strong points in this game especially as you decapitate your victim with a swish of the Wii-mote. Some of this combat is played to death though, usually before a boss battle you’ll be met with a continuous swarm of enemies as you hack your way through, essentially using the same moves encountering a few frame rate issues along the way. Overall the combat is some of the most impressive on the Wii due to its originality and awesome use of the Wii-mote.

There are many other things to do in Santa Destroy besides going through the story line. Your given a sandbox style city that is extremely small in comparison to other sandbox titles and what you can do is also limited. There are a few neat assassination mission and random tasks you can complete but the majority are not memorable. The free roaming aspect is to the most part not justified as it feels as if it doesn’t fit well with this game. The game would have been better off focusing on its unique combat and boss battles and not spend its time with a meager free roaming aspect.

Visually No More Heroes is one of those Wii games that can’t be seen as a great technical achievement but more of an artistic one. The artistic look goes great with this game with a good combination of cell-shading techniques and colour. There are a lot of rough edges, more noticeably in Santa Destroy away from the main story line. The cars look down right pathetic, but again that’s not the focus of the game. No More Heroes doesn’t try to push the Wii’s hardware and nor should it, the look goes great with the game and makes it a memorable experience. No More Heroes supports a pretty small cast of characters, essentially Travis and Sylvia give the best dialogue in this game with a few of the bosses having their own twisted story. Some of the minor characters throughout the city can’t even be understood, either by poor recording or poor translation. The music, a combination of modern and old video game styles, is pretty neat has a uniqueness to it that stays fresh through the entire game.

The main pull for No More Heroes is its creativity. The amazing boss battles, unique and addicting combat, along with a look that no other game really has makes No More Heroes the best third party and mature rated game on the Nintendo Wii hopefully setting the bar for future action games to come.