2007 was such a landmark year for gaming. Not necessarily the best, but it was a year when gaming really felt like it had broken through as the brand new art-form of the now. A new console generation had kicked off, and it kicked off with some great games. In particular: it was the year of the Wii.
I know, it's laughable now. The Wii died a painful, terrible death and Nintendo itself is dying slowly. This isn't helped by the fact that Nintendo are absolute assholes. They've completely dropped the ball on their virtual console service, yet shut down any attempt to emulate their work. They also shut down ROM hackers so they can release hackneyed, desperate products like Mario Maker. They've also gone to war against Let's Player's. You know: the people who're massively successful on YouTube, love Nintendo, and serve as free promotion? Well if you want to release a video that contains any footage from a Nintendo game then you need to get Nintendo's approval. Nintendo will then take a cut of your pay, and if the video says anything negative about Nintendo then you cannot publish it online. Oh, and there's the homophobia.
But this was before Nintendo decided their company wasn't dying quickly enough, and needed a gentle push into destruction. In 2007 the Wii was big. Everyone had one. The fact that I was able to buy a used Wii for just £30 three years ago shows how many units were sold. It also shows how much of a death it died, now that retailers have so many used Wii's I think they're going to start paying us to take them. Yet the reason why so many people had them was because the XBOX 360 and PS3 were firmly geared towards teenagers and adults, whilst Nintendo were still making games that anyone could play. 2007 had Wii Sports, Mario Galaxy, Twilight Princess, Super Paper Mario, WarioWare. All of these were great games that spread themselves beyond the male 13-18 demographic.
So it was perhaps confusing when No More Heroes was released. It's an 16+ third-person hack and slash about a virginal nerd who kills people with a lightsaber called Travis Touchdown. Presumably this lightsaber cost a lot of money, and so to justify this purchase he's decided to become an assassin. He likes being an assassin so much that he's working his way through the top 10 assassin's in the world (though they all live in the same area) to eventually become number one, at which point he'll be...number one. In his spare time he's also obsessed with wrestling, action figures, anime, and porn. This is a strange world where GPS, cellphones, and lightsabers exist - yet everyone still uses VHS and fax.
Why is this on the Wii? This is like if they made LEGO Kill Bill. Then again, this is the brainchild of Japanese game designer Suda51. He's a rarity in gaming: an auteur. Aside from Richard Garriot, Peter Molyeneux, Hideo Kojima, Tim Shaefer, Davey Wrenden, and Ken Levine; there are precious few 'names' in gaming. It's always been more company-based. Games are frequently marketed as "a Bethesda game" or "a Naughty Dog game" or "a BioWare game." Compare this to movies where it's usually "a Spielberg film" or "a Christopher Nolan film."
An auteur is defined as an artist who brings a unique vision to her/his work whilst standing independent. In the case of Suda51, it's utter insanity. His other games include Lollipop Chainsaw and Killer Is Dead. His magnum opus is killer7, a game about seven split personalities and Mexican wrestler's head-butting bullets. I also have a feeling that Suda51 is a schizophrenic who assumes everyone in the world is secretly an assassin. The mailman. The clerk. Accountants. Lawyers. All assassins.
This also probably means that Suda51 himself owns a katana and spends his Friday nights chopping up people. That, or maybe he thinks he's the only non-assassin in a world where everyone's an assassin. It's actually a really funny world-view. Don't believe me? Go outside and imagine that everyone you come across is a katana-wielding assassin. Imagine the kind elderly couple are members of the Yakuza. Try not to die laughing.
No More Heroes really shouldn't be on the Wii. The combat itself only tokenly uses the motion controls. You hold the Wiimote up slightly to slash up, down slightly to slash down. On command, you perform a finishing move by slashing in a certain direction. You also on command perform wrestling moves by moving the Wiimoe and nunchuck in a specified direction. It's all prompted, and it gets really repetitive considering how many times you dive into combat. It also gets tiring on your arms very quickly. This isn't the sort of game you can just slump down on the sofa/bed and play after a long day.
The only time the motion controls feel justified is during the overworld minigames. I thought I'd be fed up with how the game makes you raise money to pay for the missions, meaning you're requires to sidequest before you can continue with the game. However, the sidequests take the form of surprisingly fun minigames that take full advantage of the Wii's motion controls. They feel like they should be part of one of the Wii's many party games, and that's supposed to be a compliment.
No, where the game gets repetitive is the actual assassination's themselves. You start the mission, and the whole mission consists of just fighting a handful of rooms full of dudes. In-between this, you walk through a linear environment which you can't interactive with and doesn't contain anything to really flesh out the world. It gets boring really quickly, as the game never tries to vary anything. It's just beating up the same guys for a few minutes, then you get a phone-call and then the boss fight happens.
But then it's all forgiven when you finally reach the boss. I was worried that the game would run out of ideas, since it has ten whole boss fights to design whilst most games can't even come up with one good boss fight. Yet whilst the way to the boss gets mind-numbing, every single boss has a completely unique personality as well as a different combat style. There's a superhero who fires energy-balls, a veteran with a mechanical leg, a schoolteacher obsessed with Samurai movies - it's endless. For me it makes up for the repetitive structure of the whole game, since I just spent the entire time looking forward to the next boss, wondering what it was going to be and then always being surprised.
The most interesting part of the game is Travis himself, who is a surprisingly unlike-able character. Quite often games have you as an anti-hero, but it's rare to play a game where the protagonist is deliberately a jerk. He tries to act tough when in reality he has no muscle, no real social skills, nothing really to his name and oh god he's me isn't he?
His quest to become the number one ranked assassin feels hollow and childish. The majority of the bosses you face show respect and even intelligence. They are all dedicated professionals, and yet here you are, an upstart, barging in. Travis spouts terrible one-liners, and tries to engage in witty. He's a misogynist who when encountered with a female boss often tries flirting because he got all his knowledge of women from porn...which is perhaps a bit hypocritical considering the portrayl of women in this game. Whilst Suda51 definitely has a questionable relationship with the opposite sex, it wasn't until Killer Is Dead where his women had no kind of empowerment. If nothing else, all the females in Suda51's games before then dressed in revealing outfits because they clearly just wanted to. They always seemed in control of their situation and...I'm going to change the topic before I annoy people.
Perhaps it's unfair to complain about the graphics, but dear god. I would say it's because I use a HD TV but my PS2 looks better than this. The fight sequences taking place in blocky corridors look fine, but the outside has so much aliasing I got headaches from playing it for too long. The graphics are so ugly outside that it physically hurt me, which is something I only get from 2.5D shooters when I play them for more than an hour. Yes, I'm such a privileged git that I can't play something too resolution without hurting myself. (I'm fine with Quake and beyond.)
Some claim this is a sandbox game. It really isn't. You have the city to explore, but that's it. There's not much to do in the city, and the city itself feels lifeless. This is merely an overworld, in the vein of Thief 3 where rather than moving from one mission to another you have to journey through the same place again and again. Fortunately, this is compensated for by more parts of the overworld being unlocked as you progress, such as a gym where you can improve your abilities and a shop where you can upgrade your weapon. But, as I said, the city is a ghostown - most likely limited by the Wii's asthmatic processing power.
Also, the Wii really isn't suited to third-person games...which is a problem considering that's all the Wii can do. This is because you only have one thumbstick, which is always used to control your character. Meanwhile, you don't have any control of the camera, which makes moving around the world so difficult. But it means you're probably going to miss hidden items not because they're camouflaged but because they're situated to the lower right of you.
So you might look at this review and think I don't like the game. But this is a Suda51 game, and Suda51 doesn't make 'good' games. At least not good in the traditional sense. Compare this to a game such as Arkham Asylum. It's a fun game, and it's fun because it's solidly made. The graphics are good, the gameplay is well balanced, and it has a pleasant Triple A polish. You cannot really go wrong with it. Yet it's not really a very interesting game, aside from perhaps the parts with Scarecrow. You run around beating people up as the blandest character in history.
Meanwhile, this just pours so much quirky flair through the screen that it's impossible not to enjoy...even if the game itself tries very hard to not make it enjoyable. I can never call any of Suda51's games my favourite. I can't even call them 'good.' I can however call them utterly unique and absolutely essential for anyone who claims gaming is more than entertainment and is actually a credible artform.
