GregHowley.com

I'm nearing the end of No More Heroes, so it's time for the review. I'm fighting Bad Girl, who's fairly tough, but I feel confident that I'll be able to beat her eventually. The problem is that when she hits me she takes off about 20% of my life, and when I hit her, I do about 2% damage. I will beat her. Oh yes, I will.

In No More Heroes, you play as Tommy Touchdown, who lives in the town of Santa Destroy. He's just gotten himself a light saber on EBay. Of course, they can't call it a light saber, so it's a beam katana. Out at a bar one night, he gets into a fight and kills a guy. Turns out the guy was the #11 ranked assassin in America. So he's approached by a woman who sets up his match against the #10 assassin, and Tommy sets out to be #1. Cause the lady told him she'd do it with him if he got to #1.

The game's got some pretty screwy conventions. I hear that it was created in part to parody the traditional conventions of video games. That starts with the whole open world thing. This isn't Grand Theft Auto or Oblivion. There's not a heck of a lot to do in the open world. You can check dumpsters for cash and the occasional old tee shirt, you can dig for buried treasure, and you can collect these weird glowing spheres which you then turn in to a drunk Russian guy in a bar who teaches you new techniques by beating the crap out of you. But the open world doesn't have a lot to offer. Mainly you just have to drive to certain points when you're given an odd job or an assassination mission. Driving around town is fun for a while, as you get to learn how to use the nitro on your bike, and how to refill it by pulling drift turns around corners. The odd thing is that the controls on the drift turn are odd, and sometimes you turn left when you meant to turn right. When you're at a T intersection, this can sometimes be a problem, as you smash into the side of a building at full speed. That type of crash actually happens very often, whether or not you get a bug on a drift turn. Doesn't bother Tommy Touchdown though. He's tough. His motorcycle knocks down telephone poles and palm trees - he smashes right through them like they're not there.

The fighting in the game works really well. Unlike Twilight Princess, it's actually hard to play the game while sitting down. Firstly, you're not swinging the Wiimote to slash your beam katana. You press A to attck, and then when it's time for the final attack on any foe, you get an arrow on screen, and must swing the Wiimote in that direction to finish that foe. And occasionally, you'll clash swords with a foe and must quickly spin the wiimote in circles. Succeed and you get a free deathblow shot at your enemy. Lose, and he gets a shot at you. Somehow, this ends up feeling more like swordfighting than anything else I've played on the Wii.

The beam katana you use has a pretty lousy battery, but fortunately it's got a pretty efficient way to recharge. You've just got to shake the thing up and down. You tap the "1" button to start recharging, and then shake the wii remote. Onscreen, Tommy jerks his beam katana up and down in a fairly disturbing display. Yep.

Tommy's fighting style merges swordplay with professional wrestling. In between his slashes, you can throw in kicks and dizzy your opponent. Once the opponent is dizzy, you can grab him and pull off suplexes, piledrivers, DDTs, and all manner of professional wrestling moves. You can even rent wrestling videos from the local video store and learn new moves!

I've also got to mention - the game swears a lot and is pretty damn gory. When you kill enemies, tons of blood shoots out, Kill Bill style. Also a lot of times, coins shoot out. Weird. But that's one way to get money. And every time you kill an enemy, a slot machine appears at the bottom of the screen. If you hit three cherries, three BARs, et cetera, you enter "Dark Side" mode, and gain special powers depending on which combination you've hit on the slots. For example, Tommy might yell "Blueberry cheese brownie!", and be able to kill any enemies with a single hit. Yes, it's very weird.

After the first match, Trevor learns that he's got to pay to enter ranked matches against other assassins. And it's not cheap. So he's got to take odd jobs. This includes things like mowing lawns, picking up litter, pumping gas, and removing grafitti from walls. Each of these minigames unlocks a few assassination missions, which are a bit more exciting. The assassination missions include killing the CEO of Pizza Butt, baseball killing sprees that use the Wiimote's bat-swinging mechanic to kill people with baseballs, and the dreaded 1-hit-kill missions. In those, you've got to defeat a group of enemies without getting hit once. Those suck.

In between missions, you can hit various locations around town. You can buy new beam katanas, you can rent wrestling videos, you can visit a gym and do various training minigames that improve your stats, and you can visit the clothing store and buy new outfits. These are purely cosmetic, but I've spent quite a lot on new jackets, jeans, and new tee shirts that say things like "You say PSYCHO like it's a bad thing".

Overall, the game is a lot of fun. It's got a lot of humor in it. Every time Tommy picks up a health or battery power-up, you can hear him say things under his breath like "Yess!" or "Sweet!". One of the techniques I learned from that crazy drunk Russian in the bar was "The technique of crazy awesomeness". That one had me rolling. During the mission leading up to the 4th ranked assassin, the game cut to a minigame very much like Galaxians. That one caught me off guard. And the way you save the game is by pooping. Yeah. Whether it's a nice hotel bathroom or a beachside outhouse, you need a toilet to save your game. And Tommy must have IBS.

I've got very few complaints. The camera has occasional issues when you get caught in a corner. And you can sometimes get hung up pretty badly on things like pillars when fighting or telephone poles when driving. And every girl assassin in the game is freaking hard. I've always beat the male assassins in one sitting, but with the exception of the bag lady, every female has been damn near impossible to beat for some reason.

If you like really strange humor and occasional vulgarity, I'd recommend this game. It's a hoot.