Now Playing: No More Heroes

No More Heroes is a third person action game originally released on the Nintendo Wii in 2008. Set in the fictional town of Santa Destroy, you play as Travis Touchdown, a man on a mission to become the top ranked assassin in the USA. Beginning at rank 11, you must guide Travis up the ranks from one fight to the next.

You’ll divide your time between the core linear missions – the ranked fights – and the open world side content. The core missions are the best part of No More Heroes. Each features a new environment, new bad guys and an entirely unique boss fight. The quality and challenge of the missions varies somewhat, but it’s where the game shines and it’s where you’ll have the most fun.

The open world and side content, on the other hand, feels like an unnecessary addition that only exists to pad out the rather meagre core content. Each ranking fight costs an ever increasing amount of cash to unlock. Whilst cash is earned during core missions, it’s never enough to cover the next entry fee. And this is where the side content comes into play.

After every ranking fight you’ll unlock a new side ‘job’. These are just basic mini-games that range from collecting coconuts to cleaning graffiti from buildings. They don’t pay very well, but you’ll need to complete each in turn in order to unlock the assassination jobs. These pay the most cash upon completion, and if you’re only interested in going from one core mission to the next, you’ll likely only have to complete each side and assassination job once in order to do so.

But there are other things to spend your money on in Santa Destroy. You can buy wrestling videos to learn new moves. You can buy new versions of your beam katana, or new parts to improve its power and recharge rate. You can pay for training to increase your health and strength. Oh, and you can also purchase new clothes for Travis to customise how he looks.

And spending cash to improve your health, strength and weapon, whilst not strictly necessary to progress, does make things a lot easier, particularly on the harder difficulty settings. It should be noted, however, that everything you buy does carry over into a new playthrough, so you’re under no pressure to try to purchase everything on a single run.

But here’s the problem with this system – every time you spend your cash on something, you’re moving another step away from your next entry fee. And this means that if you want to buy all of the katana variations and upgrades, stat improvements and cosmetic items – and earn enough to unlock the next rank fight – you’d better be ready to grind your way through the assassination jobs multiple times.

Which wouldn’t be so bad if the jobs weren’t almost entirely recycled content from the core missions, which then also recycle the same job types multiple times. So much of the side content – including the bonus ‘free fight’ jobs – are all just pieces of the core missions recycled. And once you’ve played each side or assassination job once or twice, you really don’t want to play them again – but you’ll have to if you want to unlock any of the extra items or upgrades.

That said, the cost of items and what you can earn as you progress isn’t too punishing. It’s not like you’ll need to grind these extra jobs for hours to earn the cash you need, but the way these jobs are unlocked and played also proves rather frustrating. You can’t just pick a job and play it from a list. No. Instead, you need to pick a job and physically travel through the open world of Santa Destroy to start it.

This is where it becomes clear that the ‘open world’ aspect was really just used to pad out the run time. Nearly every job requires you to travel from one side of the map (to choose the job) to the other (to complete the job) and then all the way back again if you want to choose another job or even to replay the one you just did.

The open world isn’t massive, and you do have a fairly speedy (though awkward to control) bike you can use to get around. And to be fair, it only takes 30 seconds or so to travel from one side of the map to the other. So why am I complaining? I guess it’s just something that adds up and begins to irritate as you play. Because so much of the side content is recycled, you’ll frequently be driving to and from the exact same locations multiple times, even for entirely different jobs. It’s not so bad at first, as you begin to explore the open world, but by the time you hit rank 5, these repetitive little back and forth driving sections really start to get on your tits.

All it does it pad out the game, turning what is only 4-5 hours of original content, into 9-10, half of which is repetitive, recycled content. The open world itself is small and rather pointless to explore. There are collectibles to find which can be used to unlock various things, but there’s little reason to bother. And the same applies to the cosmetic items – they cost so much and are mostly just recolours of your ‘base’ outfit that they’re not worth the extra side job grinding.

In fact, everything about the world and the side content is a little basic. The weapon variation and upgrades are very limited – there’s no system to customise your weapon by swapping out different parts. The health and strength training is just another motion controlled mini-game. There are only 4 or 5 wrestling videos to buy and you can’t even select which moves you want to use once you’ve learned new ones.

None of this extra stuff is terrible, but it’s frustratingly shallow. If all of this side content had been properly fleshed out and didn’t rely so heavily on recycled content, it really would have transformed No More Heroes from being a good game into a great one.

Yes, I do think No More Heroes is a good game, despite these complaints. I love its style, its music, its completely bonkers world, characters and plot. And the core gameplay and missions are a lot of fun. But in many ways, the game feels unfinished. Even some of the main missions feel hastily cobbled together. It’s like they just tossed a bunch of wacky, half-baked ideas together to see what would stick.

And the weird thing is, they kind of succeeded. Because No More Heroes does somehow manage to mix all of this crazy shit together in a way that actually works. It’s certainly one of the most unique games you’ll ever play, that’s for sure.

The core missions are great as is the combat. It’s a fairly simple system of blocks, dodges and basic combo moves with motion controlled finishes. The bosses each offer a unique challenge with their own attack style and patterns.

I’ve already written way more than I intended to about No More Heroes but that’s probably because it’s a game I really like, but I’m also pretty frustrated by. It misses as much as it hits with its content, but when it hits it really knocks it out of the park. It’s enjoyable, irritating, bizarre and most importantly – fun. I can’t wait to play the sequel.

7/10