All My Friends Are Fictional Characters

Call me a fanboy if you want but I happen to love pretty much everything that Nintendo has ever come up with. Except for the obvious exception of the virtual boy. Yes I happen to even like the Nintendo Wii because I really like the motion control stuff. Yes I just legitimately said that. However, I do happen to recognize that the Nintendo Wii is severely lacking in decent games. Don’t get me wrong, I love the system but there has been a severe lack of games for me (the hardcore gaming audience).  There have been games like Zelda, Mario Galaxy and Okami but…not only is there a lack of hardcore games there is a severe lack of M rated games. What can I say? I can only take so much whitewashed death before I feel the need to open up the animal within me and go to town on someone’s face with a katana. In video games I mean…not in real life. That would be a crime. Anyway, No More Heroes certainly scratches that itch.

Let me give a notification beforehand though. this game’s plot is absolutely insane. Alright now that the warning has been given I can continue with this review. The main character in this game is an otaku (a person who is western and yet obsessed with eastern, specifically Japanese, culture). named Travis Touchdown, Travis  who, after spending all his cash on a beam katana on ebay (just roll with it), he decides to take a hit job. After successfully doing this, a woman stops by and tells him that he is now the 11th best assassin and that he is now the target of all the ranks lower than him. So Travis decides to do what anyone in that position would, he decides to shoot for the top and gain the title of number 1 before someone eventually kills him. Yea…that’s all the plot is.  Not even kidding. Pretty freaking crazy ain’t it?

Going onwards, lets talk about the gameplay. It’s absolutely fantastic. It’s extremely simple hack and slash style gameplay. You have two main weapons: the beam katana and wrestling moves that Travis learns from buying video tapes at the local video shop. This makes the game pretty simple to learn but interesting to play as you can upgrade in both forms of combat, increase your health and learn interesting techniques from some crazy guy by the name of Lovikov. Yeah…he hangs out in a bar and wants you to collect his balls…don’t ask, the response isn’t going to be good. Anyway, the game basically takes hack-and-slash gameplay and perfects it because hey if that’s all its got it better be perfect.

I still haven’t gotten to the best thing about this game though and that is the general feel of it. The feel of this game is completely off-beat, bizarre and retro to a very high degree. Think about it. The levels are all pretty linear (with non-linear world discovering parts in between) and then you’re off to fight the bid bad of the level and kill them to advance to the next one. It’s like Super Mario 3 if it got really depressing and psychotic really fast. The retro vibe is especially explored in the sequel but THAT is best left for another day. The humor is absolutely hilarious and rather 4 wall breaking a lot of the time. The game has no realistic physics engine to speak of and usually doesn’t obey by any law of reality anywhere. The art style is fantastic and I hold that it’s easily one of the best looking games…well ever. And the bosses are so ridiculously insane and original that it doesn’t matter if there are only 10, you just want to fight this one to see what the game will throw at you next. And you know what? It’s completely worth it.

This game is one of those games that comes around every once and a while to slaughter everything you know about video games with a rather large sword (or in this case a beam katana). It takes the modern video game world of gun metal gray first person shooters and says SCREW THAT. We’re going to make a brightly colored game about some man with one insanely gelled haircut, being sexually frustrated, killing a bunch of people with a beam sword and playing with his kitten. Why? Because we can that’s why. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m giving No More Heroes a solid 5 out of 5.