When asked about how the title “No More Heroes” relates to the game itself, director Goichi Suda confirmed that it’s in reference to how protagonist Travis Touchdown thinks of assassins as heroes; the game depicts him growing past his need of such idols and taking them down one by one — using all the “life lessons” he’s picked up through anime, video games and wrestling.

I’d argue the title is a bit of a double entendre though, with perhaps the even more obvious interpretation being that Travis himself is a break from the types of heroes we’re used to in games: an uncompromising display of what it would actually look like if an American weeb really did buy a lightsaber off eBay and went out to murder people to fulfill his fantasies of rising to the top of a real life-highscore board. Tired of cookie-cutter agreeable heroics? Well, here’s a game for you.

Looking at NMH in the context of Grasshopper’s previous game Killer7 is fascinating, because the evolutionary and thematic chain between the two is a lot more logical than you might first expect. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that Killer7 is Suda’s first international release, while also being explicitly about anti-Eastern xenophobia and the disturbing ways the West will impregnate the minds of following generations with their toxic ideas. What we know for sure based on interviews is that his new audience was a major consideration for Suda when designing Killer7’s absurdist control scheme, essentially asking “if you’re only walking in straight lines anyway, why not boil that process down to just holding a gigantic-ass green button?” With the controls now totally in the background, your mind is free is to fully take in the game’s sights, sounds and themes.

If Killer7 was a game about using the GameCube pad’s in-your-face A button to run through corridors and shoot at nightmarish abominations, then No More Heroes is a game about using the Wiimote’s equally in-your-face A button to slash away at regular people and do janky mini-games. If Killer7 was a game about fear of Eastern culture, then No More Heroes is a game about the commodification of that same culture. The ways that manifests may not be quite as explosive as what’s depicted in Killer7, but the implications are no less disturbing if you stop to think about them.

NMH predates the words “Gamergate” and “incel” entering our everyday vocabulary, so replaying this cold-blooded takedown of nerd culture with a 2021 perspective is almost eerie in its predictiveness. In her final phone call, Sylvia’s finally 100% blunt about the fact that Travis never had a shot with her in the first place and that he’s an idiot for ever thinking otherwise: “You are a dopy otaku assassin. The bottom of the barrel. No woman would be caught dead with you… unless she was a desperate bitch.” Given that Sylvia’s calls are delivered through the Wii remote’s speakers, which you have to hold to your head to hear, meaning she’s speaking directly to you, the connection to actual real life video game players couldn’t be more explicit.

I just used the word “predictiveness,” but it’s actually more illuminating to think about how this game, in reality, has to be a reflection of how Suda perceives our consumption of his country’s culture. It’s interesting that Travis is regularly referred to as an “otaku” by different characters; today and in the West, the word we’d instead use is “weeb” (I already have in this review,) because it’s more strongly connoted as specifically in reference to obsessive Westerners, whereas the word “otaku” is more understood as a descriptor for a “general” nerd in Japan.

From that (and some cursory research I did,) it’s safe to assume “weeaboo” doesn’t really mean anything to most Japanese people, and yet Suda clearly understands the concept and is able to portray it at its most alarming extreme. Over the course of the game, you and Travis spend mountains of cash on surface-level obsessions: you can get dripped out, buy a goofy new laser sword or dummy grind to enter your next ranked fight, but Travis’s life will never actually meaningfully progress, he’s never moving out of that motel, the game’s rigid structure of ping-ponging between work and play is never broken. The significance of either of the two endings (Travis being doomed to be continually challenged by new assassins + him and Henry literally saying they can only keep running now, never to find the exit) didn’t really hit me until I wrote down this paragraph.

Under that light, it’s NMH’s combat that warrants more detailed analysis. Again, very much like Killer7, No More Heroes is a piece of extremely impressive interface design in how the control layout, camera and general mechanics correspond into this vehicle for beautiful kinesthetic violence, but as an actual fighting system it’s fundamentally ill-fit to make for compelling engagements: having to shift between high and low stances to connect attacks and maintain combos doesn’t result in meaningful choices, you basically wail on the enemies until they decide to not take hit stun anymore, at which point it’s time to dodge roll away and look for another chance to get back in. The parry system is so free (you hold one button to block and then wiggle the analog stick) that the game has to sometimes arbitrarily decide to not reward you for it because fights would otherwise be over in like two seconds.

It’s cool that contextual QTE finishers can hit multiple enemies — there’s very little in gaming that’s as satisfying as taking out an entire crowd of NMH goons in a single strike, fountains of blood gushing from where their heads used to be, your Nintendo Wii completely shitting itself as the frame rate hits single digits. Creating opportunities to make that kind of carnage happen by spacing correctly or singling out problematic foes with a dash attack knockdown is engaging enough. The problem is that this dynamic with its periodic cathartic payoffs isn’t whatsoever present in boss fights. Instead they only highlight the rigidity I mentioned previously: you chain as many parries and basic attacks together as the game will let you, until the boss runs away for a minute and throws out gimmicks for you to dodge roll; rinse, repeat.

It’s easy to see how the game’s creative fighting scenarios and audacious violence wowed players (myself included) back in the day, but on my most recent playthrough it’s been kind of difficult not to be underwhelmed with pretty much every single boss fight here — which is ironic when eccentric bosses are the number one thing you associate No More Heroes with. This game is for all intents and purposes a boss rush: it spends a vast amount of its runtime edging you for the next ranked fight, only to never really let you cum.

A deliberate series of anti-climaxes, then? My honest answer to that is “probably not;” I’m unconvinced any mainstream developer would specifically set out to make something that’s shitty in this particular kind of way. Either way, entertaining these debates is pointless with no insight into the actual process. I feel the real achievement here is to have a game that’s interesting enough to make you question the developer’s intentions in the first place. The point isn’t that the feeling of dissatisfaction I got from most of NMH’s gameplay necessarily brings me more in tune with its themes, it’s that the specific combination of elements here is distinct and interesting enough that I find my mind regularly trailing off of the nitty-gritty procedures and instead trying to untangle the experience as a whole while I’m playing. If this reminds you of what I said earlier about Suda’s intentions with Killer7’s mechanics, now you know why I keep comparing the two games.

In an odd way, No More Heroes being so much more conventional than Killer7 on the surface does an even better job of making you let your guard down. That lack of abstraction makes it hit all the harder whenever you follow Travis into yet another dingy, blood-tinged fighting arena where only one more psychopath awaits; to say a couple words, give you a shitty fight and then die without leaving a meaningful mark. I not only appreciate that it balances that darkness with comforting levity, I’d argue it kind of needed just enough anime antics to be interpreted as a celebration of that culture by at least some of its playerbase, rather than the uncompromising condemnation it actually is. The way it walks that fine, almost satirical line is so much of what drives my interest in the experience. Under that light, it’s hard not to consider No More Heroes a resounding success, even if it’s not a game I will revisit much in the future.

Ash has already done a very good review of this game which I won't try to live up to, read it, it's probably on top of the feed rn. So I won't go too deep into the game here, honestly.

But...

The #2 assasin in No More Heroes, Bad Girl, in her introduction, after murdering a bunch of gimps on a conveyer belt with a baseball bat, sits down, downs a beer, and despite being waaaaay too into the murder, remarks on it being the daily grind.

Whilst the more ridiculous, meta and upfront stuff comes in the following hour or so, this moment, which by no means is unsubtle, is what hit me most in NMH. Even this absolutely batshit lady who i want to step on me is stuck in the grind.

Because that's what NMH really is about for me. This absurd narcissistic fantasy story about travis where he's forced to rise and grind, GET THAT BREAD from working shitty jobs, doing deadlifts that demand way too many A presses, giving money to a grift, live like shit and only really finding solace in porn, getting way too into this one girl that pays attention to him and his delightfully low-poly kitten.

You ride around a shitty town on your piece of shit badly handling motorcyle, passing the same streets over and over going between a few locations just trying to eek out the living you want. Even if that living is heroic, or bullshit, the grind is all the same. Money is what makes things spin in this world. You can get caught up in your murderous fantasies and adventures all you want, but when it comes to us third-raters? Me, Travis, Bad Girl, we've got to pay rent all the same.

It's probably not the thing everyone takes from no more heroes. It's a game so heavily driven by vibes and themes that people are always going to latch onto different portions of it.

But for me, it's just that. We've all got to grind out paths. It won't be easy, whatever choices we make, whatever route we go down. So, we may as well take our true path.

Everything feels deliberate in No More Heroes, perfectly chosen and presented to the player. Its commentary on otaku culture is pointed and ageless, all the while being quite entertaining. The combat is deceptively simple and very rewarding once fully understood. Every beam katana has different strengths and weaknesses, and I found myself enjoying each one as I unlocked them.

The plot of No More Heroes is a fairly open-and-shut affair: if sequels had never been made, I would have been satisfied and not questioned it. The strength of the plot comes from the incredibly creative cutscenes, which give a lot of personality to each assassin while peeling back the story's layers bit by bit. Of course, some cutscenes are entirely character-focused and still rock: Destroyman's is the obvious pick, but I think the oft-neglected Volodarskii's cutscene is equally awesome.

To me, this all goes back to the deliberate nature of the game. The side-job tedium reflects Travis' pointless climb to the real-life leaderboards of wet work, and the smart writing tells you just enough without spoiling the big reveal. Even so, the player is given plenty of options for the open world segments: finding the Lovikov balls, mastering the bike, shopping, there's a solid variety of things to do outside of jobs.

No More Heroes isn't a very long game, but it doesn't need to be. It has its points and themes spread evenly across its runtime, a story smart enough to know when to end, and streamlined combat that rewards decisive action without being greedy. It's a damn fine game and I'm glad I finally got the chance to play it.