‘No More Heroes’ Review (Wii)

On July 15th 2005, Suda 51 developed a stylish, bizarre game on the Nintendo Gamecube called Killer 7 which was clearly aimed towards a more mature audience. Suda 51 have kept the exact same theme with their latest game ‘No More Heroes’ on the Nintendo Wii.

No More Heroes is a hack and slash adventure game that takes all the best bits out of Killer 7, and makes it into a whole new bigger and better game. The game has loads of blood, explicit language and very strange plot lines throughout. For example when you train your character at the gym, the gym owner always tries to get you to get naked before a workout!

The storyline is very simple and bizarre too. You play as a guy called Travis Touchdown living in Santa Destroy. Travis loves Japanese anime, loves to watch porn, bought his bean katana from an internet auction, and then decides to go on a quest to kill all the heroes to be the best hero in Santa Destroy!

The gameplay of No More Heroes has two extreme sides to it. There are the main battles which are straight to the point. You fight your way to the boss hero and finish him off. This is the best part of the game. Then there is another part of the game where you roam around a city like Grand Theft Auto (GTA) and do small jobs to pay for the fee to the next hero battle.

The battle side of the game play is great. You control Travis with the Wii remote and the Nunchuk. Surprisingly Suda 51 has done a different approach to the battle sequence than most other Wii games. The gameplay is a mixture of button combinations and waggle. The button combination do the basic katana strikes and hand to hand combat, while the swings do the finishing moves and wrestling grabs.

The battles can sound a little repetitive as all you do is attack one enemy and move onto the next, however the bizarre presentation and sheer amount of being brutal just seems to make you look past that and keep playing. As you progress through slicing away at you enemies, a slot machine below the screen spins. When you score the same faces on the slot machine Travis goes into a crazy state, allowing him to do even more damage with special moves. Different faces on the slot machine represent different special moves, which are a lot of fun.

The other side of No More Heroes is the free roaming, GTA side of the game. There are many mini missions, cleaning the roads and cutting the grass etc. These missions are actually a nice addition to the game but you can’t help but want to carry on with the action. These missions slow the games pace down and can seem a little strange to have a whole level dedicated to fast game play fighting to cutting as much grass as you can in two minutes.

The criticism has to go to roaming the city. If you have played GTA or any other free roaming game, then you will be disappointed with the No More Heroes version. The city is practically lifeless and the objectives are too far away from each other, spending too much time on driving around when the best parts of the game is the action. It would have been much better to have a loading screen to the next part of the game rather than having to driving in a lifeless city.

In conclusion No More Heroes is possibly the most interesting game on the Wii. It is by far the most adult game, has stylish graphics, nice animations, bizarre storyline, great actions sequence and a free roaming city. If you can look past flaws in what is a good game then you definitely get No More Heroes.

3.5 out of 5

Related Pages:

1. Heroes Season 3 Trailer
2. Tetris Party Review (WiiWare)
3. ‘Super Smash Bros Brawl’ Review (Wii)
4. Heroes Season 2 Trailer
5. ‘SNK Arcade Classics Volume 1′ Review (Wii)

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