Off-beat, offensive, quirky, and gory. This title is a well-made must-have for all mature Wii owners.

User Rating: 9 | No More Heroes WII
Since I bought and started playing this title before other M rated games (and this one's sequel) began making a splash on the Wii but I am posting this review afterwards, I will attempt to write this as if it were still brand new since a lot of my initial impressions came that time.

Welcome to scenic Santa Destroy! The natives are friendly, the weather is always fair, the beach is clean, and the assassination contracts are abundant! That's right, you, playing the role of Travis Touchdown, will find more than your fair share of off-beat, colorful, and quirky characters to meet and violently slaughter. And while you're here, don't forget to visit our stadium!

The story goes as such: Travis Touchdown wins a Beam Katana (pronounced Light Saber) from one of those internet auction sites. One night while getting tanked in the local bar he meets a gorgeous french woman named Sylvia Christel who offers him money if he will carry out an assassination for her. After meeting, greeting, and murdering this strange character Travis learns the man was actually part of an union of assassins. This union had rankings. The man who saw his end at Travis' hand was actually their #11 ranked assassin. Now he has the option to climb the ranks of the top 10 and ascend to fame and glory. However, a tail-chaser by nature, he's more interested in Sylvia, who is acting as the official representative of the governing body of the assassin's union. She promises him "a date" if he can ascend the ranks to numero uno.

This is just the beginning of this game's incredibly appealing quirkiness.

The right to compete in the top 10 is an honor so Travis has to cough up a fat stack of greenbacks every time he wants to take a stab (pardon the pun) at the rank above him. This leads to the body of the game which is so off-beat and out of sorts with the nature of this game that it's an adventure just to see what each new level brings.

Travis is apparently broke. Your first clue being that he was willing to kill a total stranger for some extra scratch. The second comes when you go back to his domicile and realize he's living Santa Destroy's No More Heroes Motel. Since he doesn't have the LB$s (the official currency of SD) to put up for each fight he has to earn it in other ways. You learn of an assassin employment agency that has all kinds of murder-for-hire work for the one not afraid to do some wetwork. When you try to get in you learn that people don't just waltz in and get hired to kill people. One has to have a recommendation in order to get in. You have to head over to a more legitimate employment agency and take their jobs. The client running each of these jobs is well aware of your ulterior motive and will pass on his recommendation to the agency when you complete your job. This is the oddest part. These jobs include such tasks as rounding up escaped kittens, harvesting coconuts for a juice stand, mowing someone's lawn, and cleaning up the graffitti which mars the wonderful city of Santa Destroy. Your performance in these jobs is rated by the "olympic medal" system. A sub-par job nets a bronze, an unimpressive performance earns a silver, and exceptional work takes home the gold. These are refreshingly odd. The dialouge from both the man working the counter and each client is delightfully quirky and what most of us would revere as "very Japanese". They all make reference to being "third raters" who are either waiting for the god of first raters to give them a break or figuring out the secret of the First Class. The clients make reference to the "secret rules of Santa Destroy" and the various gods who over-see the unique Third Raters. These necessary side-jobs help to add that extra layer of involvement that this game might otherwise lack.

Once you have Travis' recommendation you can peruse the work available at the agency. These missions are usually straight forward and see Travis hacking blindly through waves of mindless, cannon-fodder baddies. As you progress through the rankings and earn better medals in the employment agency jobs you will unlock more assassination contracts. These missions have Travis doing things like killing a set number of baddies within the time limit, hacking through a multitude of foes to hit a single target as fast as he can, or killing people with his wrestling moves only.

I'll use this as a segue to discuss the various control schemes. The combat is fairly straight forward. The nunchuck's analog stick is your movement, C snaps the camera back to it's default positon, Z locks on a target, A is your primary attack, B kicks, the D-Pad makes you dodge while locked on with Z (Travis diving each corresponding direction), otherwise it just controls the camera, and pressing 1 enables you to charge your Beam Katana. Yes, your ultra-sleek, futuristic energy beam weapon runs on a batterey which you have to charge by shaking it like one of those emergency flashlights. The animation that you see Travis frantically executing on screen does look like he's doing something else...but this is an M Rated game and Travis' love of "the hunt" should have shown you this was coming. If you time your dodge correctly, diving away at the absolute last second, your foe is slowed down (to show that Travis has sped up) and you essentially get a few free hits. You can angle your Wiimote so your A button attacks can come in Low or High. These help you get your attacks around the guard of the standard enemies. It's not a crucial part of the game and until the final levles you won't see much cause for it.

The kicks interrupt your enemies and you can hold down the button to charge them. If the kick is hard enough it can stun your foe leaving him open for one of Travis' many wrestling techniques. Once you get in range of the stunned opponent who is reeling with the cartoon cliche stars circling his head and even the sound of tweeting birds, the game will prompt you to press B to grab him. On screen you will be prompted to simultaneously swing the Wiimote and nunchuck simultaneously in certain directions. The simple moves one require one swing, the more complex moves require two. The accompanying animations are impressive in their brutality. In one, you suplex the unwitting baddie and then watch as the Beam Katana Travis tossed to free his hands comes down, point first, through the fallen baddie's chest. As for the wrestling techinques, you can learn more throughout the game. These come in two forms: video tapes you can purchase (more on that later), and wrestling masks with notes for Travis in them.

The A button combo attacks are going to be your primary method of dispensing punishment. The combo can be lengthened with training (again, more on that later). When the combo has drained enough of the opponent's health you will see a white circle with an orange arrow in it telling you which way to swing the Wiimote. This swing pulls of Travis' finisher. This is where the game's fighting takes on a style distinctly reminiscient of Kill Bill Vol. 1. These finishers find Travis lopping off heads or slicing unfortunate victims in half. These horrid mutilations are accompanied with a gratuitous spraying of blood and money (he's an assassin, every kill on the clock earns him something, even if the dead man wasn't the primary target). During the killing to get through to the ranked matches the finisher also starts a slot machine at the bottom of the screen. If you get triple anything it can launch one of Travis' special abilities, known as Dark Side Modes. All of these are preceeded by Travis shouting a phrase which is distinctly a satire of some anime where characters shout the name of their moves as they do them.

"Strawberry On The Shortcake" - if the slot machine pops three grasshoppers Travis assumes the power of lightning. As he moves, he obliterates everyone in his path.

"Blueberry Cheese Brownie" - 3 bells and Travis can use his Beam Katana to throw waves of energy at distant opponents. It spawns a targeting recticule to make it easier.

"Cranberry Chocolate Sunday" - Triple Bars and everyone slows to a crawl. You will even find Travis being limited a bit. Once you maneuver him within range of a foe you will be prompted to press a button. Pressing this button with execute a one-hit-kill. The wrong button and Travis just taunts his foe. If there are many nearby he can lay waste to an entire horde with one button per target and no other movement on your part. There is also an assassin contract that has you killing with this power.

"Anarchy In The Galay" - Lukcy 7! Trip 7 earns you a "stock". This "stock" means you can press the - button and unleash a devastating explosing to lay waste to any enemy unfortunate enough to be near you. You don't have to use this right away, and you can hold up to 3 of them.

"Cherry" - Three cherries (gee, they should promote the guy who named this one) and Travis goes Matrix...or Max Payne...or Witch Time...you get the point. He moves faster so everyone slows down. This makes it easier for you to hack and slash through your opposition withouth them being much, well...opposition.

Mentioning this sort of satyrical feature brings up a point. The over-all attitude of this game is almost satyr. There are constant references to things like Pretty Girl anime and the like. This game never takes itself seriously. Fortunately this all plays together and they keep this light-hearted approach through-out.

Now, I'm sure a lot of you are wondering "With the Ranked Assassin fights, Assassination Contracts, and Side Jobs, how is it all executed?" I'm going to tell you now. It's an open world format. The motel is Travis' base and features menus for things like saving and other extras. Outside, in the parking lot, you find his bike. Now you can navigate Santa Destroy. Here you can see, all over your map, the locations of the Assassin's Agency, the Employment Agency, and (if you've coughed up the LB$ for it) the location of your next ranking fight. Starting an assassination contract or a side-job will clear all but the client location from your map as you travel from the job source to its respective client.

In addition to the features essential to the main story you also have free-fight missions. These are similar in nature to the Assassination contracts with the challenge in each fight being similar to the agency's. These are not essential to advance the main story line, but they do pay extra cash so you can play them if you find the job or assassination missions getting redundant. Of course, you 100%-ers are going to enjoy them.

Santa Destroy isn't just full of people Travis needs to kill before they kill him. There are also some friendly places where he can freely spend extra money. Places like:

Area 51 - Clothing to tweak Travis' appearance

Beef Head - the video game and movie rental/retail outlet. Perusing the video selection here allows Travis to learn new wrestling abilities.

The Thunder Ryu Building - Training! Here Travis can increase his attack power, lengthen his combo attack, and even up his maximum health. These are done by one of 3 training exercises, curling, squats, and bench press. Curling and squats require flicking the Wiimore and Nunchuck and the bench press asks you to press the A button as fast as you can. Just watch out for Thunder Ryu. He always wants to show Travis "THAT" technique. And for "THAT" (always in all caps) he wants Travis to get undressed and make sure his..."backdoor" is clean.

Naomi's Lab - Naomi is Travis' incredibly attractive connection to the world of new technology. As you progress through the game you will sometimes find things from the ranked assassins that Naomi can transform into new beam katanas for you, if given the right amount of time and financial compensation. She also has a selection of parts to upgrade your existing weapons. These can improve attack power and even keep you from having to charge the batteries more often.

Gold Town - referred to in the manual as Santa Destroy's downtown area. However, it seems to be the name of a bar that can be found directly behind the Thunder Ryu building. Inside is a strange old lush from Russia. He will task you with finding Lovikov Balls for him. Every 7 of these can be cashed in for a new technique. These techniques include a dash so Travis can sprint for short bursts while on foot and one to extend the length of his Dark Side Modes.

This brings me to the one thing every open world game has: the free-form collectible hunt. Every open world game has that set number of hidden items that you can collect, and No More Heroes is no exception. This one, however, puts little orange and yellow dots on the map. The orange dots denote the location of a Lovikov Ball while the yellow dots denote treasure spots. If you stand in a grassy area and press A Travis will shove his beam katana into the ground. This is how you "dig up" the treasure spots. These treasure spots offer up LB$1000 per spot. They are somewhat diffcult to hit. When you get close to them the Wiimote pulses. The closer the spot, the more intense the pulses.

As for control in the open world: control with the stick, C snaps the camera back to the default position, digging with A has already been discussed, B lets you dash when you learn it, and A is your interaction key (context sensitive). When you're on your bike A is accelerate, B is brake, Z is the turbo boost, and pulling the Wiimote up makes the bike jump. Don't expect a GTA or Saint's Row here. The real world stuff is fairly shallow and they only did enough to keep it from being a deal breaker with the title. It's not without its problems. The bike in particular is an unappealing spot in the open world roaming. The bike has issues and can get hung up on edges and walls that it does't even appear to be touching. It's frustrating.

In addition to these things on the map the dumpsters of SD offer forth their own unique bounties. Each one can either contain LB$2000 or a T-shirt not available at Area 51. These three simple open world elements are respectable elements that make the game that much better.

Back to some basics now. I haven't spent much discussing the graphics or the other things that make this game so original and funny.

The graphics are an element of compromoise. All things considered about the Wii obviously the grapics here are defeinitely not a high point. They do the best they can with the world but with some of the glitches on the bike, the achilles heel is exposed. However, they do an excellent job with their limitations when it comes to the menus. The menus have an 8-bit presentation. You will even see several of the icons that show you what to interact with in the world showing up with those intentionally absudly large pixels. It's a nice touch.

As for the humor in the game, it starts as shock and when that wears off you can see that it has the power to stand on its own. This game was the first time I had ever heard the F Bomb dropped on a Nintendo console. The first time I heard it I was stunned. I even denied hearing it. Then I heard it several more times along with every other 4 letter word. Now, don't get me wrong, they make use of profanity but they don't just use it to use it. Not every character in the title drops the F Bomb like spare change. They use it when its appropriate and then the degree to which they use it is in keeping with the personality of the character.

Further humor in the title includes things like the game's save points. Travis has to use a toilet in order to save. This means every session you play beings and ends with Travis copping a squat. They do obstruct your view so it's not like you see anything.

One of the more unique comes in the ranked assassin fights. These start out more or less the same way. You being by having to slaughter your way through slews of cannon-fodder baddies. After you clear them you end up in an area that has a battery pack to refill your beam katana, full health power-up, along side the icon to activate the next fight. The save point is handy because the boss fights can get difficult and its nice that if you die or get frustrated you can turn off the console, take a break, and return to jump right back into the boss fight. Either way, the unique feature I wanted to discuss is the cell phone call from Sylvia. Her lines in the call are almost always humorous and always end with "Embrace your inner force and enter the garden of madness". This is another satyrical statement. What makes these calls so original is their method of delivery. Her voice isn't going to come from your television or surround sound. It comes out of the Wiimote speaker. It's just a new thing to have to hold it to your ear as your on-screen counterpart holds his phone to his ear.

Now for the boss fights. The boss fights in this game are the real meat of this title. Each boss is different, with their own off-the-wall personalities. They have their own weaknesses and all have to be handled differently. Once you figure them out the boss fights become a waiting game. You have to wait them out, staying alive and avoiding their attacks until they do the moves that make them vulenerable and then you strike. This is where a good dodge comes in most handy. If you dodge an attack the slow down lets you score some solid damage on your foe. Plus, most foes can be stunned at least once during the fights and the dodges can set you up to capitalize on those stuns.

The story itself is interesting with Sylvia appearing after each fight to continue taunting Travis with the promise of their date when he ascends to #1. The events before and after each fight, and even some of the events when you pay up for the fight help to move the story along. For the most part it seems pretty straight forward and doesn't really move much during the vast majority of these fights. There's one that introduces an unknown character but I don't want to go into to avoid spoilers. The real movement in the story doesn't happen along until the #1 rank fight. There are some huge story twists and more jokes that show the series doesn't take itself very seriously. A character comes along and when asked about this character's back story, this character refuses initially on the grounds that it's so graphic it would kick up the game's rating and delay its release. He agrees to fast forward through it so the character divulges this information in fast forward. You can pick up on random sentences but the real jokes are this character's expressions and body language, and Travis' reactions and his reactions and body language. When it's all over Travis sums it all up. It's a massive and impressive story twist that certainly came out of left field.

After you complete the final ranked fight the game kicks out another fight and presents the option to have either the Final Fight or the REAL final fight. I only did the real final fight and I have to say it was frustrating. He has an insta-kill move. If it connects it WILL kill you. He caught me with it 6 times. I had to fight this guy 7 times to win. This particular fight and its cutscene fires off more explanations and answers some of the unanswered questions that the events before, during, and after the final fight created. It uses a similar story twist to the twist in the #1 rank fight and adds a little more. The end of this fight is a real gripe. After having so much trouble with this guy I felt the ending was a massive let-down. I was actually a bit angry but I'm sure that the angry extreme of my disappointment was just my frustration with the last boss carrying over. It doesn't change the fact that the ending was not the greatest. It caused me to knock off a point.

Since I'm not sure how much my frustration with the final boss magnified my feelings about the ending I am not going to knock off any points for it. I leave it up to the rest of you to judge it.

All in all, if you have a Wii, I recommend this game. It's brutal, offensive, and at times tasteless but it's incredibly well made. It's an experience that I think all mature Wii owners should have.