Now Playing: No More Heroes 2

I played No More Heroes 1 & 2 when they originally released on the Wii in 2008 and 2010. I played NMH 1 multiple times, so when I replayed the game for review on this blog in 2017, I remembered the game quite well. I said – ‘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.’

I guess I got a little side tracked, because it’s taken me six years to finally sit down and play No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle again, but this time I’m not playing my Wii copy but the Switch version which, as far as I can tell, has the best available versions of NMH 1 & 2. All I could recall of NMH 2 from when I played it on release was that I didn’t think it was as good as the original – hence why I never replayed it until now.

I was curious to see how I felt about it today, to see if I still didn’t think it was as good or if, as I’ve seen so many say down the years – is actually better. But now, having finished it again I have to say – I kind of hate it.

For me, NMH 2 isn’t a very good sequel and not a particularly good game. Despite all my issues with NMH 1 I said in my review – ‘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 I feel exactly the same about NMH 2, but whereas the high points of NMH 1 were enough to elevate the game beyond its low points, the lows of NMH 2 are much lower and the highs are few, fleeting and far between. And frankly, the novelty of the first game has somewhat worn off.

NMH 2 desperately struggles (yes, I did that) to recapture the manic energy of 1, but it’s trying way too hard. The weirdness is just weird for the sake of being weird. The sexualisation is dialled to eleven and is, honestly, just embarrassing. The humour misses way more than it lands. The story is bonkers, but it’s trying too hard to be bonkers and ends up feeling obvious and trite. There was a certain magic to NMH 1 where all of this crazy shit just came together in a way that worked – but sadly, NMH 2 can’t replicate that magic here.

NMH 2 strips the open world aspect from 1 but it doesn’t replace it with anything better – now you just teleport to your chosen map location. The side jobs you can do to earn money are now all retro style mini-games (aside from one, for some bizarre reason) and none of them are very good. They’re not terrible, but once you’ve played them once to see what they are, you probably won’t bother again. You can still buy some cosmetic items for Travis which is nice, I guess, but kind of pointless. You can also, like in NMH 1, purchase training to improve your health and attack but this is now another dull retro mini-game so I didn’t really bother with it.

Naomi is back to purchase new beam katanas from but she’s also been given massive tits because . . . because tits, I guess? She was a cool character in 1, so why not at least give her an expanded role here? All they did was give her massive, bouncing tits. Like I said – embarrassing. That doesn’t annoy me as much as what they did with Shinobu who only makes a brief appearance here. She’s playable in two of what are some of the better levels in the game, but then immediately f**ks off never to be seen again.

The combat works more or less the same as NMH 1 which is kind of disappointing as they had an opportunity to really mix things up, especially with the wrestling moves. I do like the new beam katanas though, especially the dual wield. But there’s so few levels where you really get to cut loose and just enjoy the action. There’s some really pointless little sections where you might be riding your bike or walking along a road but nothing actually happens and the game is really just padding out its already meagre content.

I finished NMH 2 in about 6 hours but I’d guess about 40 minutes of that was watching those dumb ‘intermission’ cut-scenes where the camera constantly zooms in on the narrator’s tits and ass. The side content is rather lacklustre, and the main content feels stripped back compared to NMH 1. Most of the ranking fights forget any kind of build up action and just throw you straight into the boss fight.

You might get a couple of small sections of goons to slay – all of which only seem to have two lines of dialogue they repeat ad nauseam. Enemy goon variety as you progress is also practically non-existent. Killing waves of goons in NMH 2 is still pretty fun, but there’s just not much of it because so many ranking fights just throw you straight up against the boss – and a lot of these boss fights are f**king awful.

Honestly, I must have scrubbed some of these fights from my memory because they’re absolutely terrible. They’re not fun. They’re not challenging. They’re not clever. There’s a lot of cheap nonsense to artificially inflate the difficulty – teleporting enemies, insta-kill attacks, perfect dodges – and there’s a lot of really irritating stuff too.

Like bosses that continually dart (or teleport) away from one side of the map to the other forcing you to constantly be chasing after them, to attacks that instantly drain your battery, or attacks that knock you down and then instantly knock you down again when you try to get back up. Or unnecessary scenery items that block your view or cause you to miss an attack. They are, on the whole, far more frustrating than fun.

Like I said, none of them are very difficult. They’re either so easy and fast that you wonder what the point was, or they’re frustratingly slow as you have to chip away at them every chance you get because they’re constantly dodging or teleporting away. I think, maybe, there were only 2-3 bosses I actually thought were well designed.

There’s one point when you think you’re going to play as Henry and fight a few bosses as him, kind of like you did as Shinobu, but instead the game makes a joke about how ‘there’s too much content in the game as it is’ (there’s not) and you just skip over them. Oh.

It’s honestly kind of hard to think of many parts of NMH 2 I actually liked, but there are fleeting moments when the game does come close to those highs of the original (transforming into a tiger never gets old). Moments when the craziness doesn’t feel totally forced like they’re desperately (and unnecessarily) trying to top the first game.

But it’s just not enough. And now I see why I never replayed NMH 2. Because even back then I could see that it wasn’t very good. It’s a short, disappointing sequel that simply can’t recapture the magic of NMH 1. It tries so hard, but it fails. It doesn’t improve or evolve any aspect of the first game. There are a few moments of fun, but they can’t save it. It’s weird seeing all those great scores it got at release. Are they mad? Or am I?

5/10

Half-life 2: Episodes 1 & 2 VR (Mod)

One of the best VR experiences you can have is the VR mod for Half-Life 2 which I wrote a post about last year. The way the VR functionality was incorporated into the game was impressive, but what was even more impressive was how a game from 2004 translated so perfectly into VR. And now, following the Half-Life 2 release, we now have full VR mods of the two Episodes.

I always felt Episode 1 was the weaker of the two, at least in terms of content, and I still feel that way now after playing them both again in VR. I do think I enjoyed Episode 1 more in VR though. The fight through the old hospital was always the highlight in Episode 1 and it’s even better in VR.

Episode 2, whilst superior in terms of content, is a more mixed experience in VR, mostly because a large part of the content is spent in a vehicle. There are several additional comfort options for how you want to play the vehicle section, but like the vehicle stuff in Half-Life 2, this is the one aspect of the game that doesn’t translate quite as well to VR.

It’s a shame, because up to that point Episode 2 is a real blast in VR. All the stuff in the mines, fighting antlion hordes and venturing into a nest is great. There’s one fantastic moment when you’re climbing a ladder and you look up to see a Vortigaunt peering down at you and it works so well in VR you really start to feel like you’re playing a game designed for VR – not just a mod.

But then you hit that vehicle section and things can feel a little awkward and annoying. It’s not so bad once you get used to it and, like I said, there is an impressive range of choices with regards to how you play it, but none of it is really ideal for VR. It’s the one aspect of these games that just doesn’t quite work.

Overall, like Half-Life 2 VR before it, these Episodes are a must play if you own a VR platform. Vehicle stuff aside, they translate brilliantly into VR, even to the point that you might forget they’re nearly 20 years old and never designed for it.

That’s a testament not only to the fantastic job the modders have done putting together these VR versions, but also to just how well designed these games were at release and how well they hold up today in terms of visuals, animations, combat, pacing and level design. If you’ve got a VR set, be sure to give them a spin, I guarantee they’ll offer you a better VR experience than a lot of actual VR releases.

Now Playing: Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

It took me some time, but I finally got around to playing The Lost Legacy, a stand-alone expansion to Uncharted 4. In The Lost Legacy you play as Chloe Frazer, a character who has appeared in previous Uncharted games – but not in 4, the only Uncharted game I’ve played. So I didn’t know the character, but the expansion does a decent enough job of establishing who she is and what’s important to her.

What did help though was the return of Nadine Ross and Sam Drake, characters I was familiar with. Nadine is your main partner throughout the expansion, with her and Chloe acting in a similar way to Nate and Sam in UC4. It worked then and it works here, with some fun banter back and forth, some co-op puzzle solving and enemy beatdowns.

The expansion is fairly short – about 8 hours if you want all of the collectibles, and even shorter if you don’t. The levels are mostly linear with some basic puzzle solving interspaced with enemy encounters. There is one ‘open’ jeep driving level similar to those in UC4 but honestly, the expansion probably didn’t need it. Traversing all those mudbanks gets a little tiresome.

Although I enjoyed the new location and architecture, The Lost Legacy does re-use a lot of assets and – more importantly – gameplay mechanics from UC4 which isn’t a surprise and certainly nothing to complain about, but it does also mean that you don’t really feel like you’re playing something new.

The story is decent but the villain isn’t terribly interesting. You’ll be slipping, sliding and swinging your way through levels just as you did in UC4. There are plenty of ledges to climb – aside from those that are scripted to break for a dramatic moment. The combat is solid and fun, just as it was in UC4.

If you liked UC4, I think it’s pretty safe to assume you’ll enjoy this too because it’s really just more of the same. Which in some ways, is a little disappointing, because maybe it would have been nice if The Lost Legacy had introduced a few new ideas or meaningful mechanics of its own. But it doesn’t.

Overall, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy my time with The Lost Legacy because it is a polished, good expansion to UC4, but I also don’t think there’s anything special or unique enough about it to make me want to replay it in the future. I am glad I played it though and if, like me, you’ve picked up the Legacy of Thieves Collection on PC, there’s really no reason not to give it a go too.

7/10

Gallery: Hi-Fi Rush