Games: No More Heroes

Date: 2009.01.22 | Posted by Jeff | Category: Gaming | Response: 0

Right off the bat, this game is SO not a kids game. If anything, No More Heroes might very well be the most violent, mature, sexual explicit game out yet for the Wii. That said, it’s pretty awesome.

UBI Soft’s No More Heroes’ gameplay is a typical beat ‘em up, but with a very adult-oriented theme. Instead of trying to save a princess, you’re killing other assassins so that you can be number one. That’s it. Along the way, you’re forced to do odd jobs like collect coconuts and mow lawns to earn money so that you can enter the battle against the next ranked assassin. This keeps the game from getting too boring too quick. (Imagine his resume: Travis Touchdown, Assassin and part-time lawn mower)

The style of this game is strange at first glance as it seems to have a choppy-anime’ish look. After around 15 minutes or so, they seem to smooth out and you realize how incredibly amazing the look of this game really is. The dialoge between characters in the cinematic scenes are fantastic and incredibly witty. However, during the game the taunts get quite repetitive, and could use some fine tuning (even if that just means being removed completely).

The controls are generally just push the button or hold the button down to attack. You can either attack with punch/kick and wrestling moves (B) or with your bean katana (A). an interesting twist on the controls though is that for wrestling moves you have to move the wiimote and nunchuck in the same direction to do the attack. Also with the beam katana when in a draw, you draw circles to win it. It’s strange, but to be expected for the Nintendo Wii. Overall fairly easy controls to get used to.

One of the coolest things about this game is that he has a cell phone. Whenever you get a call on his phone, your wiimote vibrates. When you push the button to answer it, the voice (other person on the phone) comes through on the wiimore speaker, not the TV speakers. So you actually have to hold the wiimote up to the side of your head. Strange? Yes. Entertaining? You betcha!

Though only about 1/3 of the way through the plot, I’m having one problem with this game when it comes to the missions. If a mission is failed, you can not simply ‘retry’, you have to go all the way back to where the mission was picked up, get it again, then go try the mission once more. This is frustrating when it takes you 10 minutes to travel between the two locations. Though the missions are pretty easy for the most part, it would be nice if they didn’t waste my time with the odd one that I mess up on.

The game is fairly cheap to pick up (Amazon has it for $20) so might be worth adding to your collection. Given that 95% of the games currently out for the Wii are targeted at family/children this is a nice change. I’d recommend it if not just to be able to say you own it, it’s right up there with Conker’s Bad Fur Day for N64.