Often funny, always gory and at times just wrong, No More Heroes is one game you won't quickly forget.
Welcome to Santa Destroy. In this town, you'll butcher pizza chain owners, workout at a gym where your trainer tells you to get naked and make sure your ass is clean, and deliver coconuts to a man who believes that every part time job has it's own God. All this while gorily slaughtering endless victims with your light saber type weapon ripped right out of Star Wars, and then simulating masturbation to recharge it. I'm not kidding.
Basically you're Travis Touchdown, an assassin with an obsession for anime figurines, porno videos and being number one. Your aim in NMH is to locate and kill the 10 assassins ranked ahead of you in order to attain the number one ranking. These assassins range from a sick little girl with a baseball bat and an appetite for blood to an old lady whose trolley turns into a giant bazooka. Of course you'll not only kill them, but also their henchmen, which come at you in waves. Slaughter them by decapitating them or cutting them in half vertically. Either way be assured that it will result in a FOUNTAIN of blood.
In order to earn the money you need to officially contest for the next assassin's rank, you need to do a variety of part-time jobs. These range from mowing lawns to catching scorpions or picking up rubbish. Do well at these and you'll be offered 'seedier' work, dispatching foes in random, bloody ways. There is fun to be had here, but this was probably the most annoying aspect of the game for me. I just wanted to get on with the next mission, GTA style, but was forced to repeat these jobs enough to times to earn the ever-increasing amount of cash to register for the next mission.
Another gripe I have is with the map in Santa Destroy. NMH has a real touch of old school about it, and parts of the game are intentionally pixellated to give off a retro feel. This works well for the most part, but while cruising around town on your motorbike on your way to let's say, the gym or the video store, it's really hard to tell what's what in the pixellated map in the corner without going into the pause menu and zooming in, and even then it's not clear, which means it can be frustrating hoping that you're heading to the RIGHT yellow blob on the display.
Overall it's good fun though, and the dialogue is often humorous. When Travis recieves phone calls from the sexy French chick he's been promised a good time with if he reaches the no.1 rank, you actually have to hold the wii remote up to your ear as though recieving a phone call, and her voice comes through the Wii remote speaker. Ingenious move.
There is so much more to say about this game, but in the end you'd never fully comprehend it unless you played it. Did I mention that you have to take off your pants and sit on the crapper to save your game?
Visuals: 8
NMH has a cartoony feel, even a bit anime-ish. The Wii has it's limits graphically, and so this kind of look for Wii action games is a smart move. It needs to be cartoony too, given the sheer amount of blood involved. The menus are given the 8-bit treatment, which is nice, but kind of annoying at times (see comment on in-game map). Characters and bosses like quite good, but Santa Destroy is decidedly bland. Seen one street, you've seen 'em all, and you'll wanna play some GTA just to be reminded of what a detailed, interesting city looks like.
Sound: 9
The main theme music for NMH is.. hard to explain. Electronic, a little on the futuristic side, quirky and catchy. Whatever it is, it suits the action perfectly, and is playing in my head as I write this. The painful screams of those being sliced up is as entertaining as the spray of blood and shower of coins that follows. 'AAAHHHH sssshhhhhhh dingdingdingdingding', repeat. Love it. Voice acting is superb also.
Gameplay: 8
Basically you hold the Wii remote high or low, then press A and Travis will swing his saber. Do this a few times and if you connect you will be prompted to swing the remote in a certain direction. Horizontal usually means decapitation, and vertical means cutting your foe in half. You can also use the B button to use wrestling moves on foes. These slash-em-up sections are the most fun and playable in the game, though it does tend to get repetitive at times. The controls of your bike are far from great, and will mean some bizarre crashes and inaccurate turns. Overall fun and creative controls in battles though.
Lastability: 7
Hmm. The main campaign is fairly short, stretched out to a good length only by the jobs and mini-games in between missions. There are some extras to collect, mainly clothes for Travis (some of the t-shirts are hilarious) as well as saber upgrades or wrestling vids, from which you learn new moves. In the end though, one play through was enough, having satisfied my hunger for quirky, bloody mayhem in that time.
Overall: 8
Some great ideas here, most of which worked well. I look forward to the sequel, given that NMH was quite experimental, and we've been promised more in-depth story and gameplay next time around. To very briefly sum up No More Heroes, whether you like it or not, you'll NEVER forget it.