I’ve had my Nintendo Wii since February ’07, I didn’t buy my first game (outside of Wii Sports) until Super Mario Galaxy. Now I have my second game, No More Heroes, and I can’t put my Wii-remote down. I’ve already played through the entire game on Mild difficulty, and I’m playing it again on Bitter now. No More Heroes has been everything I wanted in a Wii title, it’s got great game play, looks fairly good, is incredibly stylish, has some of the best dark humor and writing I have experienced in a game, and best of all, it doesn’t abuse waggle. If there was one thing this game had to do wrong to totally lose me it would have been to make motion controls ridiculous and overbearing, and thankfully that is not the case. Instead, No More Heroes is a game that the “hardcore” people have wanted on the Wii since it first came out instead of some hackneyed mini-game fest.

From the get go, No More Heroes makes a clever introduction to the anti-hero Travis Touchdown, giving a quick recap of the events that led to his place as number eleven on the list of assassins, by taking out the drifter Helter Skelter, who was cool, well-dressed and packin’ heat and looked like he had a victory in the bag. From there it’s a wild ride around the fictional town of Santa Destroy led by Sylvia Christel as Travis makes his way up the ranks of the United Assassin’s Association, in hopes that his otaku fantasies will come true and she’ll sleep with him. Taking on the other top ten assassins will put Travis up against some crazy characters like Destroy Man, post-man by day and assassin by night, with over the top attacks like the Destroy Cannon, or the Destroy Spark Then there is Bad Girl who stands out from the bunch with her Gothic Lolita style and bloodied baseball bat and penchant for drinking beer on the job. Each character has their own quirks about them, some a bit odd, and others downright disturbing to the point that the game could have been given an AO rating according to a fourth wall breaking monologue. The writing in the game is great, and once the story comes full circle you see that the journey was well worth it.

The acting job in this game is also superb, with Travis Touchdown voiced by Robin Atkin Downes, and other characters voiced by some other prominent voice talent like Kari Wahlgren (known for her work as Ashe in Final Fantasy XII and other games/anime). This is a game that could have been terrible if the acting wasn’t done well, but the effort put forth by Mr. Downes and the rest of the cast puts this up there with some of the best voice jobs in all of gaming. The rest of the audio however is a bit of a mixed bag. A lot of music tracks in the game that are used when you’re out cutting a swath of destruction are just remixes of a main battle theme. Thankfully the boss music offsets this by having interesting tracks that make most of the fights memorable, like the battle with Dr. Peace where, well I’ll just say they use the song again for the credits it is that good. Also I think Suda 51 should be expecting a call from Mr. Lucas soon telling him to give back those lightsaber sounds.

Let the blood-shed begin!

Another thing that will be immediately striking is the art style for No More Heroes. It is quite awesome, which I would expect from Yusuke Kozaki; whose previous works include the anime Speed Grapher (which to call bizarre would be a massive understatement). Graphically, this game is rough, to say the least. Even running in 480p this game has jaggies to spare, and a terrible draw distance to boot. The frame-rate is also sketchy, with hiccups when things get really out of hand, and then randomly drop when running around Santa Destroy. The style of the game keeps everything interesting though, from the copious amounts of blood to the choice of locations for the batt...

I was skeptical about this game at first, thought it'd turn out to be weird and clunky like Killer 7, but with the good reviews it's been getting I'll probably pick it up. If Matt says it deserves a 9, then that's good enough for me. I trust fellow GN staff a lot more than the dolts over at IGN.

I was skeptical just because it was on the Wii. =)

But yeah, I had a ton of fun with this one, even if the open world is kind of weak and the "jobs" aren't always fun (cleaning up graffiti, PASS).

Hell yes, and I enjoyed it. I liked collecting cats more though. Or pumping gas, that was a good way to kill time and make money. Eventually I went exclusively for assassination missions as those pulled in the most money (120k average on one in particular).