GetDotted Domains

Viewing Thread:
"No More Heroes (Wii)"

The "Retro Game Reviews" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.

This thread has been linked to the game 'No More Heroes'.
Sun 20/04/08 at 13:44
Regular
"Ghosts Can't Die!"
Posts: 774
It’s rare that you find a game that oozes so much style and offers such a crude and weird level of humour found in No More Heroes. Not only is it a great example of how mature titles should be handled on the Wii, but really it’s an awesome illustration of how to produce any game aimed at the adult audience period. This game can hardly be compared to anything else on the market… well other than the crazy Killer 7.

You play the role of Travis Touchdown, a young Johnny Knoxville look-alike who has just won a beam katana weapon on an internet auction. After a very brief introduction you discover that Travis is set out to become the number one ranked assassin, (after having killed number eleven) by means of eliminated the other ten above him one by one. The reason? Well he wants to be number one, gain cash and get lucky with a certain Sylvia who organises the battles and basically proves a tease for Travis. The story is more of a mockery to other games and movies keeping things very simplistic and throwing in a lot of random and extremely weird ideas and characters into the mix. Travis mentioning at one point that he doesn’t want to bore the gamer with long explanations and cutscenes and throughout the experience pretty much talking to the audience is both funny and adds to the games weird charm.

The game consists of you controlling Travis and doing jobs, assassinations, riding around town, upgrading your stats and weapons and even playing with your pet cat?! You have an apartment which acts much like a save point where you can also change your clothes and katanas and view the city map. You earn money then take on a ranked assassin and repeat this process until you’re number one. That is No More Heroes in its simplest form.

Control is similar to that of a normal pad with the odd remote functionality here and there. The analogue on the nunchuck moves Travis whilst walking and riding his bike, the A button acts as his basic action button (going into buildings and getting on your bike) and Z targets in on enemies.

You’ll spend a majority of the time battling wave upon wave of enemies and if the combat system had been boring then this game would have fallen flat on its face. Fortunately that isn’t the case. Instead of swiping the Wii control back and forth to swing your katana you instead simply press the A button repeatedly before finishing off an opponent with one deadly slice of the remote in the direction instructed. Having thought about it this seems a better choice than the remote mimicking your beam movement on screen since there’s so many enemies to battle that waving like a fool would become too tiring.

The other portion of the game you will be searching the streets of Santa Destroy either by foot or on your motorbike. Thankfully the city really acts as just a means of gelling together the missions and nothing more since Santa Destroy is pretty empty and doesn’t offer much at all. There are hidden t-shirts and a few stores you need to visit, but other than that you can’t interact with much at all. It feels so limited but as I’ve said this is only a small portion of the game.

Each ranked fight requires money and in order to earn the green stuff you need to perform one of four deeds. First up are the jobs. These use the Wii remote capabilities the most and consist of chores like cleaning graffiti, rescuing cat and locating land mines on a beach. They are repetitive and can border on dull but one can’t help but think that’s the point of these jobs. They aren’t supposed to be too fun. Since there are also only nine spread throughout the entirety of the game the odd few minutes of repetition don’t hurt too much. Next are the assassination missions. These offer battling challenges ranging from killing one hundred men in a certain time to trying to eliminate pizza bosses amongst a massacre of other opponents. Then there is the one hit missions where you tackle a group of foes with one strike resulting in a fail. These are very tough and often infuriating not helped by the fact that these assignments cannot be retried straight away. Finally there is stabbing the ground and locating hidden dumpsters for money. Mixing these different activities up can somewhat vary what may seem a monotonous experience. Doing an unlocked job and few missions before taking on a ranked assassin fails to really get boring, even when you do it ten times over.

As for the ranked battles, they are really the bosses of the game. You always fight an onslaught of minions before you reach the big guns and here is where a little variety appears in the enemies. Some have guns, some have magic moves and some even perform magic tricks with you on stage. Having played through the game though you will eventually come to expect the wacky and crazy baddies that lie ahead and appreciate their personal traits.

The games simplistic look is overshadowed by its wonderful style with cel-shading used instead of traditional visuals and many retro references found at every corner. The characters look good but it feels like the environments feel a little empty and basic. The streets are pretty much empty and buildings feel more like a series of rooms with nothing to distinguish them. One big concern for many people was the lack of blood in the game. While it is a shame that this version lacks the red stuff it certainly isn’t game ruining.

Audio wise the game doesn’t fault either. The voice work is truly great and makes for some really entertaining scenes before ranked fights offering a little depth to the characters as well as a few laughs. Travis with his cocky attitude has his voice nailed flawlessly and makes for the jerk you can’t help but like. As for the music it suits the weird and wonderful style of the game with its brisk pace and while not spellbinding is decent enough.

As far as length goes this is your typical single player affair with completion time ranging from ten to fifteen hours depending how thorough you are. Side missions litter the game and simply ploughing through aiming for the top ten assassination challenges will result in a short experience but playing through side quests and jobs aiming for gold and collecting every weapon and item of clothing in the game will add hours onto the lifespan. Once finished you also have the chance to go through again on the games harder difficulty unlocking more clothing and artwork but that need only apply to those who enjoy finishing a game 100%.

But what is wrong with the game? Well the simplicity of the city for one and the fact you can’t repeat missions if you fail them right off the bat. Furthermore the ranked matches while great overall can tend to have some fights that go on too long. Some can take over twenty minutes and it then fizzles down to a battle of patience rather than a battle of skill. Also the jobs may prove too tedious for some gamers and the repetition of battling enemies may prove too much for some as well. And then there’s the lame finale. So No More Heroes isn’t without its faults.

There isn’t anything like No More Heroes on the Wii and that is its greatest selling point. It shows a darker side to Nintendo’s machine and promise that there can be serious, adult focused games released on it. It has its problems but surely having to release your bowels on a toilet in order to save your game is reason enough to buy this title? No? Well give it a chance anyway.

86%
There have been no replies to this thread yet.
Sun 20/04/08 at 13:44
Regular
"Ghosts Can't Die!"
Posts: 774
It’s rare that you find a game that oozes so much style and offers such a crude and weird level of humour found in No More Heroes. Not only is it a great example of how mature titles should be handled on the Wii, but really it’s an awesome illustration of how to produce any game aimed at the adult audience period. This game can hardly be compared to anything else on the market… well other than the crazy Killer 7.

You play the role of Travis Touchdown, a young Johnny Knoxville look-alike who has just won a beam katana weapon on an internet auction. After a very brief introduction you discover that Travis is set out to become the number one ranked assassin, (after having killed number eleven) by means of eliminated the other ten above him one by one. The reason? Well he wants to be number one, gain cash and get lucky with a certain Sylvia who organises the battles and basically proves a tease for Travis. The story is more of a mockery to other games and movies keeping things very simplistic and throwing in a lot of random and extremely weird ideas and characters into the mix. Travis mentioning at one point that he doesn’t want to bore the gamer with long explanations and cutscenes and throughout the experience pretty much talking to the audience is both funny and adds to the games weird charm.

The game consists of you controlling Travis and doing jobs, assassinations, riding around town, upgrading your stats and weapons and even playing with your pet cat?! You have an apartment which acts much like a save point where you can also change your clothes and katanas and view the city map. You earn money then take on a ranked assassin and repeat this process until you’re number one. That is No More Heroes in its simplest form.

Control is similar to that of a normal pad with the odd remote functionality here and there. The analogue on the nunchuck moves Travis whilst walking and riding his bike, the A button acts as his basic action button (going into buildings and getting on your bike) and Z targets in on enemies.

You’ll spend a majority of the time battling wave upon wave of enemies and if the combat system had been boring then this game would have fallen flat on its face. Fortunately that isn’t the case. Instead of swiping the Wii control back and forth to swing your katana you instead simply press the A button repeatedly before finishing off an opponent with one deadly slice of the remote in the direction instructed. Having thought about it this seems a better choice than the remote mimicking your beam movement on screen since there’s so many enemies to battle that waving like a fool would become too tiring.

The other portion of the game you will be searching the streets of Santa Destroy either by foot or on your motorbike. Thankfully the city really acts as just a means of gelling together the missions and nothing more since Santa Destroy is pretty empty and doesn’t offer much at all. There are hidden t-shirts and a few stores you need to visit, but other than that you can’t interact with much at all. It feels so limited but as I’ve said this is only a small portion of the game.

Each ranked fight requires money and in order to earn the green stuff you need to perform one of four deeds. First up are the jobs. These use the Wii remote capabilities the most and consist of chores like cleaning graffiti, rescuing cat and locating land mines on a beach. They are repetitive and can border on dull but one can’t help but think that’s the point of these jobs. They aren’t supposed to be too fun. Since there are also only nine spread throughout the entirety of the game the odd few minutes of repetition don’t hurt too much. Next are the assassination missions. These offer battling challenges ranging from killing one hundred men in a certain time to trying to eliminate pizza bosses amongst a massacre of other opponents. Then there is the one hit missions where you tackle a group of foes with one strike resulting in a fail. These are very tough and often infuriating not helped by the fact that these assignments cannot be retried straight away. Finally there is stabbing the ground and locating hidden dumpsters for money. Mixing these different activities up can somewhat vary what may seem a monotonous experience. Doing an unlocked job and few missions before taking on a ranked assassin fails to really get boring, even when you do it ten times over.

As for the ranked battles, they are really the bosses of the game. You always fight an onslaught of minions before you reach the big guns and here is where a little variety appears in the enemies. Some have guns, some have magic moves and some even perform magic tricks with you on stage. Having played through the game though you will eventually come to expect the wacky and crazy baddies that lie ahead and appreciate their personal traits.

The games simplistic look is overshadowed by its wonderful style with cel-shading used instead of traditional visuals and many retro references found at every corner. The characters look good but it feels like the environments feel a little empty and basic. The streets are pretty much empty and buildings feel more like a series of rooms with nothing to distinguish them. One big concern for many people was the lack of blood in the game. While it is a shame that this version lacks the red stuff it certainly isn’t game ruining.

Audio wise the game doesn’t fault either. The voice work is truly great and makes for some really entertaining scenes before ranked fights offering a little depth to the characters as well as a few laughs. Travis with his cocky attitude has his voice nailed flawlessly and makes for the jerk you can’t help but like. As for the music it suits the weird and wonderful style of the game with its brisk pace and while not spellbinding is decent enough.

As far as length goes this is your typical single player affair with completion time ranging from ten to fifteen hours depending how thorough you are. Side missions litter the game and simply ploughing through aiming for the top ten assassination challenges will result in a short experience but playing through side quests and jobs aiming for gold and collecting every weapon and item of clothing in the game will add hours onto the lifespan. Once finished you also have the chance to go through again on the games harder difficulty unlocking more clothing and artwork but that need only apply to those who enjoy finishing a game 100%.

But what is wrong with the game? Well the simplicity of the city for one and the fact you can’t repeat missions if you fail them right off the bat. Furthermore the ranked matches while great overall can tend to have some fights that go on too long. Some can take over twenty minutes and it then fizzles down to a battle of patience rather than a battle of skill. Also the jobs may prove too tedious for some gamers and the repetition of battling enemies may prove too much for some as well. And then there’s the lame finale. So No More Heroes isn’t without its faults.

There isn’t anything like No More Heroes on the Wii and that is its greatest selling point. It shows a darker side to Nintendo’s machine and promise that there can be serious, adult focused games released on it. It has its problems but surely having to release your bowels on a toilet in order to save your game is reason enough to buy this title? No? Well give it a chance anyway.

86%

Freeola & GetDotted are rated 5 Stars

Check out some of our customer reviews below:

Excellent support service!
I have always found the support staff to provide an excellent service on every occasion I've called.
Ben
Brilliant service.
Love it, love it, love it!
Christopher

View More Reviews

Need some help? Give us a call on 01376 55 60 60

Go to Support Centre
Feedback Close Feedback

It appears you are using an old browser, as such, some parts of the Freeola and Getdotted site will not work as intended. Using the latest version of your browser, or another browser such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Opera will provide a better, safer browsing experience for you.