Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Back in 2007, I was a devout Nintendo fanboy. Unashamedly looking forward to any and all upcoming first-party releases or exclusive 3rd parties on the Nintendo Wii. Reading about them in the monthly official Nintendo mag I’d pick up, IGN’s website or on YouTube. As a 16-year-old teenager as much as I loved playing the Marios and kid-friendly focused Wii games, I was always yearning to play something abit more ‘mature’. These sort of games were a rarity due to the target demographic they were going for, Nintendo’s motto for this generation being casual gamers.
Some developers saw demand for more mature content and dabbled to see if there was an audience. Most shied away due to the demand seemingly being from a vocal minority of the install base and risking possible poor sales. That’s where a smaller games team came in to test the waters early. Developer Grasshopper Manufacture were making No More Heroes as an Xbox 360 title but after studio head Goichi Suda, saw the Wii remote he knew they had to change the plan and make the game for Nintendo’s new home console, Wii.
I fell right into the hype, loving the first game for its mature tones, comical over-use of profanity and slick style. Being used to overly saturated Nintendo games at the time, it was a breath of fresh air for a gamer like me.
Since then, I’ve become very familiar with the series playing every entry. Playing them all as they launched. Between the big gap of 2 and 3 being over a decade I did plan to replay both earlier games in preparation for the 3rd but only got around to beating the 2nd before so.
Even without playing No More Heroes since the Wii era, my lasting memory of it has dampened with the less-than-stellar follow-ups that have made me question, was it always this mediocre? That’s why with me playing it again over 15 years later I want to see if the possible self-induced Stockholm syndrome holds up or if it’s actually a niche classic.
Right away I’m met with the familiar face of Travis Touchdown, modelled and inspired by Jackass Johnny Knoxville. Travis looks cool, especially with the beam katana he won in an online auction (To this day one of the coolest weapons in gaming). Well on the surface he looks cool. By looking around his apartment you’ll see he has some really weird niche interests, Gundam and Anime girls are littered everywhere.
The style and vibe it has going is heavily influenced by 60’s Brit rock, Travis’s outfits are the best giveaway for it. Most probably due to the technical limitations of the severely underpowered Wii, No More Heroes has an old film filter look, reminds me a lot of most games today using a muddy dynamic resolution to keep frame rates steady. With this Switch remaster it’s been cleaned up a little bit with character models looking sharp but certain textures looking like they’ve been pulled directly from 2007.
To climb the ranks and fight the next assassin in line, you have to pay some big bucks! You’ll be doing part-time jobs and assassination fights to earn the exorbitant costs they’re asking for. These side jobs are mundane tasks such as mowing lawns and cleaning up the streets, very humbling to someone like Travis’s ego.
Presumably, to pad the game's length, these repetitive tasks grow old very quick. I never saw an issue back in 2007, but as an older gamer who respects his time more than anything. It was abit of a shame to see that without my hyperbolic nostalgia glasses on, these minigames haven’t aged well at all. Thing is, I already knew how I stood on the grind in No More Heroes. Being familiar with the progression of this, I found myself grinding abit more in between fights to make the larger tolls abit more manageable. Thankfully it’s something the sequel addressed by adding more manageable 8-bit games.
This is the only way of gaining money and when currency is tied to everything, even new clothes and upgrading your beam katana. At some point, choices will be made if upgrading the beam katana or buying those new threads is worth the grind of the side jobs. Digging through trash cans and stabbing grass for small amounts of hidden cash did help too.
Open worlds have never been a highlight of the series, Santa Destroy in No More Heroes 1 having a barren empty city, No More Heroes 2 taking it out completely, and No More Heroes 3 uses a similar approach that the first had but ends up having quantity over quality. As for someone’s who’s played the entire series, it’s never been anything but a slog whenever I’m trying to go about to the next ranked battle.
With this replay, I found myself enjoying Santa Destroy a lot more than I initially remembered. Maybe it's clouded nostalgia, but with me playing the entire trilogy within the past 3 years I’m confident in saying it’s my personal favourite. It’s not without major flaws though, a dodgy framerate and weird clip detections didn’t help back then. It’s been slightly spruced up for this remaster but still not enough.
It’s still as barren as I remember, NPC’s wandering aimlessly down the streets. Saying that, I grew to be charmed by the handful of bizarre characters that are here. Naomi the engineer upgrading your katana being very blunt with her words and the rental store staff constantly reminding you of overdue adult films. Travis is a guy who lives up to his pseudo-celebrity status.
The premise of the story is easy to get around, Travis wants answers, and the only way is by killing ranked assassins and climbing to the top. Spurred on more than anything by his obsession with the blond bombshell Slyvia, who works for the United Assassins Association. Very simple to understand but as you go on, they sprinkle in more about Travis’s past and the (UAA) hidden motives. Once Travis is in the fold he can’t let up as there are many competing assassins below him trying to reach the same goal.
Revisiting this game as a more developed adult, I saw the story for more than its edgy facade. The try-hard personality of Travis while always front and centre, he does grow to show compassion and empathy as the story goes on. Even though it brought big set-piece scenes to a sombre end, it did give more purpose to Travis’s own motivations. There are 12 bosses to overcome, these are the game’s biggest highlights by far, Quirky, bullish and OTT. None of the encounters are boring and the way they’re presented is outlandish and somewhat pure insanity, it’s probably easier to say what fights I didn’t like as I’d be waffling on forever.
The fight with Shinobi, halfway through is a real test of skill and patience. Even knowing she’d be a stopgap for me, she stumped me a good few times. I had to hit the gym in town and button bash my way to not being humbled again…
And then if you collect every beam katana you are treated to one of the greatest postgame bosses in all of gaming, so out there with the story setup – the conclusion sets up the perfect cliffhanger for a follow-up, that at the time I believed to be vapourware. Even now it’s still an exhilarating end.
Combat on paper is pretty damn simple, a light low attack and a heavy overhead that’s it! Even back on the Wii, I knew it was. Being on the Wii had a clever use of the motion controls. None of the fabled waggle mechanics that the console was notoriously known for but a simple swipe gesture to do the finishing hit. That small inclusion elevated the combat 10-fold for me, still even now 17 years later. I played predominately handheld for this playthrough and being subject to using the analogue stick for finishers, still gave a little dopamine hit every once and a while.
You can’t exactly use the beam katana recklessly; it runs on batteries that need to be recharged every once in and while. Doing so, leads to a funny innuendo that wouldn’t fly in today’s audience. But fed into that early 00s influence of humour set by shows like Jackass.
Combat isn’t entirely based around the knock-off lightsaber, one of Travis’s biggest hobbies; Lucho wrestling - comes in handy. You’ll come across new moves everywhere, renting videos from the rental store or just before each boss fight. Overwhelming enemies in a fight can lead them to be stunned for a few seconds, giving you a chance to put into practice all those hours of tapes he’s been studying. Pulling the moves off require the same inputs as the beam katana finishers but sometimes needs more than one input.
Usually, people always have nitpicked about combat either feeling too sluggish, too light or even clunky altogether but my biggest gripe wasn’t any of those. Funnily enough, it was not being able to sheave your weapon. When it’s out, Travis moves at such as slow speed that it becomes a small annoyance moving at a snail's pace when trying to clear out a bigger room of enemies. Such a weird thing for myself to pick up on in this playthrough but it was something that did irk me more than I’d like to mention.
I was worried about revisiting No More Heroes, after being severely let down by No More Heroes 3. It did make me question if my blindsided nostalgia looked past any glaring critiques just because of a game I was so emotionally involved with, luckily, I was wrong. A style and vibe that still holds up 17 years later, boss battles that make you grin ear to ear with their spectacle and a simple but satisfying combat system. Padding is the worst offence, which will sit differently from player to player. But like humans, everyone/everything has flaws and that’s what makes us/it unique. No More Heroes wears its flaws on its sleeves, better yet, it embraces them. Where it falls short with triple AAA big budget production, it works with its limitations to make something money can’t replicate.
Hours to beat: 12
Pros:
Engaging combat
Brilliant Boss fights
Whitty characters
Cons:
Empty town
Boring Minigames
Score: 8/10
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