an excellent collection of 'moments' (if you ignore that its pastiche/regressive nostalgia, they're all ripped off whole-sale from past entries in the series, which uniformly executed them better) but a legitimate trainwreck of a narrative built on one flimsy justification after the other. i unfortunately lost a lot of my goodwill and charitability towards the game in the last quarter of this meandering, directionless, and deeply hypocritical/ill-considered work. would rather be playing this over 5 but it's not saying much. ive said it before but AC's base of mechanics are in my wheelhouse entirely, and without very much in the way of improvement or alterations to the formula i'll end up looking to other factors in assessing any given title here but man this was such an exhausting disappointment im not even sure i want to unpack it, i'm not sure it's worth my time. a mess in every single way.

okay maybe there's one thing i want to address. there's a bit in ace combat zero that i love; a faceless and nameless belkan squadron intercepts your sortie. at first, the player is led to believe they are yet more threats to quarrel with, but the squadron instead begins attacking the enemies you had already begun duelling - belkan bombers who intended to bring a fiery end to the war through means of nuclear self-immolation. in keeping with ac0s themes, how you engage with this neutral squadron is up to you - and their names are never revealed, ultimately buried by nuclear ash in the annals of history. but they were lone actors in a campaign marked by a quite complicated and nuanced war effort, singularly opposed to a crime against humanity at the hands of their nationalist, authoritarian generals.

ac7 ends up making the argument that belkans are innately evil warmongers who just cant stop engaging in conspiracy and stirring international conflict as revenge for the past lol. you can see how the person behind ac5 spearheaded this games script. any game that earnestly tries to make the argument that drone warfare is bad but fighter jets are cool and good should probably be laughed at. doubly so if the protagonist fights for the in-universe analogue for america against these drones, which are manufactured by an antagonistic state for which drone warfare would only be beneficial in reducing the casualties of war. triply so if the in-universe america analogue was repeatedly shown in the campaign to be obscenely incompetent and corrupt, forcing convicts to be conscript forces, and this goes unquestioned. or if a late-game mission involved you and your band of unlikeable cronies raiding and indiscriminately tearing through an independent separatist state filled with refugees to 'stock up on supplies' with no oversight from higher authorities, and this was the narratives stab at posturing moral ambiguity. but yeah man drones are bad

i dunno man AC3 and 0 are proof you can have it all in this series. cohesive and fantastically considered storytelling, tight core gameplay that has been tweaked to serve the titles themes, immense replayability…so much of that is neutered here, and even if i only craved the simplicity of arcade sensibilities i could still turn to ace combat 2 or x instead. understandable how AC7 managed to find a new audience, but an exasperating disappointment for series veterans.

the discrepancy between top banana's advertised aesthetic, signified by its cover art, and the manifestly psychedelic artwork reflected within is ferociously disorienting. ive never felt such abrasive whiplash, anticipating a rote and teed-up but hamfistedly executed platformer and getting instead what can only be described as environmental rave horror.

im pretty happy to walk into games knowing next to nothing these days, people love inadvertently ruining the joy of discovery online nowadays. i sat there for half an hour, adjusting the settings of my amiga emulator, trying to get this damn thing to work with no knowledge of the games mechanics or stylings. for a time i was accompanied only by the lovingly recreated whirring and chugging of the amiga emulator reading my floppy disk files, presumably orchestrated so as to reflect the sounds an actual amiga might make. we're segued into the game with a loop of a music video entitled 'Global Chaos' featuring protagonist KT, and then momentarily halted by copy-protection as the game asks us to use a specific word from the game's manual as passcode. following this, the player is unceremoniously thrust into the game proper and finds they must contend with an arcane control scheme. z moves left, x moves right, the enter key fires hearts, the quote key jumps, and the / key will stop jump momentum at any interval, bringing you down to a platform.

according to the manual, top banana's world is facing calamity: "not from slimy aliens or evil wizards but from direct consequences of our own greed and stupidity." in plainer terms, corresponding to the systems of the game itself, the manual lets us know the goal is simple: reach the top of the stage, prove your skill and courage in the material world, and become the top banana after seeking ultimate wisdom in the Mind-Scape. along the way you navigate perilous floods and you vanquish foes, among them bulldozers and emaciated individuals, with the power of love, akin to an off-kilter love-de-lic experience. it would be a straightforward endeavour were it not for some frankly eerie sound design, evocative of silent hill and siren, setting the tone for the experience. note that i wouldnt make that comparison lightly. this is compounded further by some genuinely eye-straining and cluttered visuals.

and this is where my interests in top banana as an ineffectual and rudimentary, but otherwise somewhat functional platformer end and my interest in top banana as an aesthetic experience begin, something of a vulgar, perverse mother 3. because it's clearly not up to snuff as an arcade platformer - controls are slippery, the ruleset is abundantly unclear, visuals are sometimes indecipherable, the effects of powerups are very rarely beneficial - despite being obsequious to the general rule of thumbs for a variety of very difficult arcade platformers, ie directing the player to adhere to a strict choreography in order to progress effectively. but it is, in many ways, something of a forward-thinking experience that could only have been constructed by a multimedia collective, not fully dedicated to games but instead interested in their form, structure, and conveyance. a lot of the spritework and textures in top banana wouldn't feel too out of place in something from jack king-spooner's body of work (like a boss that's a cross between a police helmet and a spider), with the claustrophobia of its platforming feeling not dissimilar from itch.io works, or something like problem attic. and obviously the sound design is very much worth mentioning too, with its rainforest stages all sounding like a turbulent mix of either raging fires in the distance or generic jungle ambience; the mind can't quite decide initially. all told, the game's environmentalist journey has you traverse hollowed-out industrial cities, crumbling religious temples, and a "psychedelic hip-house", the haze and splendor of a mind flayed, as you fight against your "fears, dreams, and illusions". kind of earnestly bleak stuff, kicking you back to the starting point ghosts n goblins style, without any felt impact on the world or its inhabitants but instead jeering and laughing from the game itself. love, self-actualization and self-prioritization, and spiritual enlightenment aren't enough in the face of the world's evils, it seems.

i also think it's noteworthy that it takes its environmentalist bent to the furthest extent it can, releasing with environmentally friendly packaging and even allowing for a supposed large breadth of freedom with regards to editing sprites and sound, kind of riffing on that sustainability. put your money where your mouth is and all that, serves as a nice implicit acknowledgment this medium is a nightmare wrt exploitation of environment

it's really quite fascinating playing something that feels modern in sensibilities and tone with relation to the medium, despite releasing into a media zeitgeist already dominated by themes of environmental preservation as it relates to encroaching technological advancement (with even dinosaurs ending with its cast confronting corporate-engineered apocalypse). no doubt in my mind rainbow islands is the better game but there's something about this games tailored spitefulness im enamored with. it's cynical and cruel, i kind of love it. KICK IT TO EM.

surprised to see not too many people have played this given its place in arcade history. anyways, undeniably one of the most 80s games of all time. miami vice-esque buddy cop outrun sim where you take down escaping criminals, thwarting the machinations of kidnappers, mobsters, and eastern bloc spies alike. also unbelievably phallic, not just in the central conceit of smashing another car from behind but also every time you successfully hit the target vehicle your partner will say things like 'pleaaaaaase!', 'oh man!!!!', 'bear down!!!', 'more, push it more!!!' etc. not especially good, this aside

honourbound to leave it at played instead of completed, but i've played enough to call. knowing me, i will 1CC all the tracks one of these days, but i do think getting to that point is more difficult than power drift, hang-on, and outrun, respectively. despite its uncompromising difficulty and reliance on route memorization, super hang-on is yet another point of evidence in favour of yu suzuki being the archduke of arcades, a true romantic in every sense of the word. suzuki and co. have a singular, striking vision of what games should be - tires should be wailing on the tarmac, all games should be expansive journeys, bright and bold skies should be your voiceless narrator. more committed to individualist and insular mastery than outrun's chill vibes - a game that recognizes giacomo agostini and dale earnhardt were the last samurai. debatably a better soundtrack than outrun as well, just a totally impressive package from top to bottom. master the roads contours, treat every passing corner as a duel, and hang on for dear life

(this specifically reflects the game gear version. also, first of many to come on this list) something about taz's hunched-over, careless gait, the screen shaking with every step taken, and the extremely discordant soundtrack is deeply funny to me. taz's whole life is beastly misery, he outruns a boulder, ends up careening through a damp mineshaft in a minecart, accidentally skiis on a tree branch as soon as he steps outside, all while looking the most miserable and terrified ive ever seen a sprite look. a lot of platforming mascots look like they enjoy their line of work. not taz, he didn't sign up for this. taz is being cosmically punished by the soundtrack to some bastard child of that one sonic rpg's soundtrack and 100 gecs, he knows it, you know it, youre basically firing multiple gun rounds at his feet telling him to dance, poor wretched creature

mercenary trades in the claustrophobia and heavyweight physicality of killzone 2 with a futuristic and tech-savvy sheen communicated by means of brighter environments and a domineering user interface. the contrast is generally in accordance with the venal impulses of mercenary's campaign; 2's approach to the war theater, marked by excessive grime, endless soot, and the threat of red eyes piercing the veil of dust, is perhaps better suited for the life of a grunt soldier.

still, it was a surprise to see how many of the little flourishes animating killzone at its best (by which i mean 2, and pretty much only 2) were present in mercenary. movement is still largely bulky and encumbered; this is still a shooter that rewards hip fire; weaponry is animated so as to give the impression that at any perilous moment they could malfunction completely, their power too great for feeble hands. even so, mercenary reflects a more digital approach to warfare, denoted largely by the extensive tools at your disposal, the reduction of all enemies into incoming profit, and the portable nature of the vita itself. if the medium is the message, then mercenary, which seamlessly blends together a very traditional control scheme with touchscreen controls in a convenient portable environment seems to demonstrate a kind of uncanny trait not quite present in some other shooters. given that the narrative crux of the game is in part to protract the war so as to establish a foothold in its gun-for-hire market i don't think im necessarily wrong to point that out; it feels casually inhumane in a way killzone 2 doesn't.

of course, it should be said that, for better or worse, the work of a mercenary seems to present fertile grounds for video games on which the foundation can be set for harmonious interactions between systems and narrative. with combat and commerce fueling every exchange players can ensure they're earning more profit to accrue more resources by partaking in constant battle. the loop of growth and accumulation bolsters the loop of running and gunning, and as portable games promise wanton fun and endless playability, it's only fitting that a mercenary premise was chosen for a spin-off. the dev team seems to have shown full consideration for this by structuring the campaign through allegiance osmosis, setting the games battles to coincide with key events in 2 and 3, and reusing assets where it can be deemed necessary. all told, it's a game that checks the boxes, but not one that necessarily inspires or compels. it's telling that despite being the games amoral center the game makes implicitly clear that you, as the player character, are fighting for, ostensibly, the right thing. both sides of the conflict aim to bring a quick end to the war through means of crimes against humanity; you taking a stand against that should be read as self-preservation and enterprising behaviour rather than fighting for any lofty ideals, but the introduction of a little shitkid you have to protect kind of relents and signals that your deeds are rooted in heroism more than anything else. of course it's all a pretty schlocky premise to begin with but it's nice when things commit to what they already are rather than try to have their cake and eat it too. compare this to the mercenary work of something like ace combat zero, where your allegiance to a particular faction never changes most likely because they remain the highest bidder, but your actions within that frame of time - whether you were a consummate professional or a destructive tyrant - are constantly contested and questioned in-universe, with neither approach representing a clean or savoury stance on combat.

solid romp overall, just barely enough to actually like. visuals somehow still hold up with a certain charm to them but mission structure usually devolves into the same three things

im stunned this version of outrun doesn't get more recognition. it's really pretty excellent, existing as an unabridged remake of outrun in the sega ages budget line for the PS2...but it's more akin to a sequel. the original arcade mode, whether you prefer to play a jpn cabinet or 'overseas', can still be accessed, of course, and there have been a few minor tweaks so as to maximize outrun's tranquil and contemplative atmosphere - checkpoints grant just a few more seconds of bonus time, crashes send you hurtling forward with increased momentum, switching gears is a bit more trouble-free. time and difficulty can also be tweaked as well, so this is really outrun as the ultimate carefree experience. but this iteration also throws in a time attack mode and an 'arrange' mode with three newly implemented remixes of outruns triumvirate of songs that sees you take on a diamond shaped route as opposed to a pyramid. while it always ends in the same way, there are more sights to see and routes to take that make full use of the PS2's capabilities, and sega made the smart decision of re-implementing rivals from turbo outrun. they won't steal your girlfriend this time but they're legitimately challenging foes that offer a bit more nuance to route selection and scoring, especially if one's aim is to take down all seven rivals. in the scenario that you've let the rivals slip, if you want to surpass them you'll have no choice but to follow them through branching paths which often means you wont find yourself taking the same few paths time and time again...it becomes outrun configured as close to pure instinct.

it's probably actually deserving of a 5/5, but ill sit on it for a while; it's obviously not quite as visually appealing and how you feel about your vehicle's size and distance from the camera in relation to the original might vary from one playthrough to the next. still, this is a complete and total iteration of an arcade classic, retaining that 80's spark of adventure and mastery over play-induced zen.

changed my mind on a third go of it - although i cant stress enough how utterly alien it feels if youre playing it after outrun, especially on your first attempt. a lot of the mechanical additions and alterations here admittedly do make sense from a design point of view, especially if one was looking to produce an economical sequel to outrun. why don't we introduce a rival? why don't we introduce a boost? why don't we double down on visual effects? why don't we introduce upgrades? textbook stuff.

unfortunately, while the game can offer small doses of fun, i think it tampers with a sacrosanct formula - one centered largely around purity - far too much for its own good. if i had to chalk it up to a design maxim, i would say the goal in turbo outrun is to 'try to feel cool', whereas in outrun the goal is 'being cool'. crucial difference there. outrun is a skill-based, meditative game that asks you to feel breezy wind pass through your hair and to soak up locales, and it accomplishes this by offering three distinct tone-changing tracks to set whatever mood you feel you can groove to. in turbo outrun's railroaded experience (both mechanically and sonically, you don't get to pick music or routes this time) you're chased by cops, deal with oil slicks, and are harrassed by some punk loser who can steal your girlfriend if youre not driving faster than him. this is madness, sega. she's my girl.

when you first encounter dr. naomi in NMH3, she's eking out a kind of solitary existence in travis's basement, resigned to her fate being entwined with a 'creepy-ass otaku' and promptly aiding him through all his savagery and debauchery. there's obviously still a lingering a mild undercurrent of disdain in their interactions, but dr. naomi is otherwise shown to be genial enough to continue to upgrade travis's gear. although it's not like she had much of a choice in the matter - her unexpected transformation into a cherry blossom firmly anchors her in the game's primary base of commerce, allowing her to fulfill her pre-established role as a fixed vendor from the convenience of travis's motel.

the question of how exactly dr. naomi became a disfigured and hardy tree given artificial life isn't necessarily central to NMH3's narrative, but i find it worth thinking about because it continues NMH3's perpetual tendency to allude to works of all kinds unceremoniously. in this case, the easiest analogue would be twin peaks: the return; in the 25 years between season 2 and the return, a character slowly and inexplicably evolves into a fleshy and gnarled tree pulsating with electric currents. this is nothing more than an incidental tribute - and not unexpected after something like 2018's the 25th ward references to twin peak's third outing - but an homage to the return will always make me reflect a bit because it is such an extraordinarily well-structured, thematically cogent, and thoroughly excising metatextual work that it still is every bit as arresting and affecting as the moments i first watched it some four years ago.

NMH3 poses as a ‘return’ of sorts as well; in reality, however, TSA, with its title literally referring to travis’s absence from the throne, is more likely to fit that bill. TSA was also a metatextual work – about travis and GHMs absence from the limelight, about what had changed over the course of close to a decade, about GHMs works, fears, and their future. in several respects, TSA may as well be NMH3, bringing a close to travis’s character arc and positioning itself as a vector for GHM’s next project.

these elements effectively make NMH3 a lot more like a big-budget reunion than a fully-formed closer to a trilogy, something comparable to a no more heroes: gaiden or no more heroes: the after years. i say this in large part because, in contrast to TSA and especially NMH1, NMH3 is markedly straightforward and almost juvenile in its affectations. i don’t envy anyone attempting to continue a series which defied continuity and explanation the way NMH1 so deftly did, but this is our third time returning to this nexus, so the hope would be that there’s an actual reason to be with these characters again, to inhabit this world. so to briefly sum up: to an extent, i think even NMH2 toyed around with the idea of franchise iconography and the role travis had foisted upon him in that world. TSA was, as was previously said, a game about absence, reflection on and mild interrogation of the indie space, about games themselves and the feuding ideals animating their development, about artistic love and loss.

what’s NMH3 about? we’ll get to it, kind of, but for our purposes it’s worth establishing a few things first, namely that this is a pretty significant departure from NMH1’s jodorowsky and seijun suzuki-influenced blend of inviting contradictions and abrasive lampooning (although it’s worth noting suda apparently has never seen branded to kill lol). if anything it’s kind of the opposite which makes it kind of wild that it released after TSA, NMH1 is very pointed about the intersection between stifling economics, dead end americana, and fan obsession with foreign work, whereas 3 is kind of like, ‘im travis and im 40 and kamen rider is still so fucking cool’ (not that hes wrong, just that that kind of adoration and those adolescent proclivities go totally unchecked here). still, it shares less in common with the kind of vulgarity-without-sincerity romp that NMH2 produced and honestly a lot more in common with suda’s short fiction, especially post 2010? im thinking very specifically about ranko tsukigime and kurayami dance, both works that are ‘closed-off’ or ‘shuttered-off’; they have a very definite beginning and end but everything that happens in between is a dense mix of dream logic, parodic undertones, perverse ironies, ‘i say it like it is’ genre statements – very much storytelling as irresolvable and inconclusive. shared between all three, there’s a strong narrative centering on non-sequiturs, an emphasis on artistic collaboration, and torrential floods of absurdity and surrealism fueling the game. hell, so many artists, such as animation teams like AC+bu, are common to both ranko and NMH3, even.

and i think for sure a lot of these constituent elements are present in other GHM/suda titles (that inability of narrative to resolve itself is a staple of NMH1), it’s just the explosiveness and the frequency with which you get barraged by these specific traits are at a fever pitch in those works. kamui shows up here in NMH3 and he basically does as kamui is wont to do, offering a bit of a skeleton key for understanding some of these works:
“[Things] had become quite the confusing mess. But somewhere inside that confusing mess hid the truth. What is real, what is not? … There is only one thing that is real. I am here in front of your very eyes.”

i think this is where my problems with NMH3 come into focus. i think NMH3’s invocation of that dizzying mess kamui alludes to is half-baked and barebones. unlike ranko tsukigime, NMH3 isn’t an absurd sidescroller that can be finished in 40 minutes. unlike kurayami dance, NMH3 isn’t a sub 30 chapter manga. NMH3 is a 12-20 hour adventure game. so while it shares much in common with these narratives, just the protracted nature of it results in maybe the last thing i expected a NMH title to be – just kind of boring? it’s a profound skeleton of a game in so many different ways, there’s not really a full-bodied texture so you’re left with a lot of entirely separate and only somewhat interrelated elements. how you feel about the game is left up to how you feel about any one of those constituent elements. for my purposes, i think a lot of this game has the seeds of something really special, but comes up pretty short.

when we catch up with travis touchdown again, he’s in the middle of doing something i think a fair amount of us do and are unwilling to admit – he’s looking up footage of a game he’s already finished, looking to vicariously (and perhaps voyeuristically) re-experience some of those same emotions, to temporally connect himself with a younger, more idealistic version of himself. i recommend watching it here, if only because in the same way NMH1’s intro frames the game, i think this is meant to be NMH3’s primary invocation of all its themes, running parallel to the game, and i like the remake angle the opener plays with because it feels like an implicit acknowledgement that so many sequels are really just remakes if you unpack them a bit.

in the proceeding cutscene we learn quickly about antagonists FU and damon’s origins, lovingly animating an ET-esque tale of nostalgic childhood tenderness gone somehow wrong. FU promising to return no matter what is a bit of cheeky writing, and the transition seamlessly shifting between aspect ratios as the scene shifts to the modern day is a great touch as well. damon (based on known shit-for-brains john riccitiello, a can of worms im not really interested in opening in this review), has apparently used FU’s powers to position himself in a place of executive power since the days of his mirthful childhood, and signals FU back to earth, where he pretty much immediately sets out on planetary conquest. in the original reveal trailer this is revealed as its own fakeout IP in the form of goddamn superhero, right before travis crashes the party. the kind of IP conflict this opener promises – between a resuscitated old franchise built on subjugation of nostalgia and clearly alluding to the MCU, in conflict with the brazen punk nature of NMH – is the kind of fertile ground NMH3 is built on, but fails to really capitalize on.

after that, the two plotlines intersect. travis is interrupted and called to action before he can figure out who deathman is, sylvia immediately begins fulfilling her designated intermediary NMH role, some dire shit happens, and the game kicks off proper with revenge serving as the impetus for taking down FU. it’s here where we’re introduced to the systems of the game, harkening back to NMH1. we can explore an overworld on foot or on bike again, participate in side activities like gig work, and hunt for small collectables and trinkets. structurally, however, it’s difficult for me to say this was worth it. performance is taxed to a degree in the open world and it’s barren in a way that feels unacceptable, fragmented across different islands, some of which are inaccessible from beginning to end. but even on spicy difficulty where i played, you only need to check out some of the barebones gig work a couple of times just to see what’s there, and you’re more than comfortable to just engage with the designated matches to advance in the narrative. they’re there because they worked in NMH1 and people like it, but they don’t recognize how interwoven those elements are into NMH1’s thesis. perhaps there’s a read in which you can argue it’s fun work for work’s sake – it’s nice to see travis turn the act of lawnmowing into stylistic expression – but it just feels noncommittal and compartmentalized.

which is another problem imo…NMH3 doesn’t have levels, you travel to points in the map to engage in little designated battles that take 2-5 minutes to complete on average to deflect from the fact that there’s no substantive content and to give the combat system some meat and heft. and i do think the combat is kinaesthetically really appealing, in a way kind of the artistic statement of the year, it’s so garish, the way the voxel art and weird low fidelity environments and excessive blood and splatter effects all coalesce into conveying an off-kilter unreality, but it sucks that the combat is what’s on center stage and nothing more. even if the enemy designs are generally serviceable and the gamefeel is solid, i found myself wanting more than contextless skirmishes. midoris one of the better fights in the game purely because there’s actually a level here with good ideas and imagery relating to her character and background fueling the stage before travis’s competing subconscious infects the scene and they fight in a tokusatsu rock quarry.

NMH3 in that respect represents NMH at its most gratifying. it just feels good, despite it all. part of this is that your slot machine upgrades don’t grind gameplay to a halt to do some other weird mode of gameplay for a bit but they all naturally come together to form random bursts of unrelenting power expression. gold joe is probably my favourite fight in the game – soundtracks fuego, mechanics are simple, gimmicks unique, and the fight is very readable without compromising too much on difficulty, it fits the style of game NMH3 is trying to be the most. and that’s where that slot machine integration comes in because it’s entirely possible to stunlock these guys into oblivion when all is said and done, combining a smidge of luck with some of the very minor okizeme nuance present in the game – i basically one hit killed FUs first phase because i got luckily enough to trigger mustang twice through errant slashes and he got stuck in my cage of fishermans suplex torment. i still don’t really know what his moveset looks like in the later stages of the fight. that’s a gratifying thing in my books, perfectly in line with NMH’s ideals.

still, it’s a bit uninspired and tame otherwise in how it achieves that expression, and i wish there was a bit more meat on its bones. it’s technically the best NMH combat system, but it achieves this through:
- configuring dark step as witch time
- having enemy types
- boring death glove DPS mechanics
which is really kind of a shame because it’d be nice to have more in the way of formal experimentation, particularly after some of the crazier death glove abilities in TSA. this is basically killer is dead 2 for all that that’s worth, and it’s not particularly interested in tying any of these combat mechanics into a greater core. it’s just a Component in an, again, extremely compartmentalized game, unlike NMH1’s brand of, to this day, really unique bushido/lucha combat. it feels homogenous with action titles i’ve already played, yknow?

that retreading, homogenous feeling, is what’s most disappointing about NMH3s conveyance of narrative. everything in the opening establishes some ideas and themes that lose a lot of their momentum as you engage with the game, throwing in NMH1’s subversions of boss battle identity and coyly alluding to it at times as an unsatisfactory way to shake things up. i think where NMH1 and TSA are pretty unpredictable, NMH3 is firmly predictable and monotonous - there aren’t as many hooks to engage with, not as many quiet moments to reflect on…i imagine there will be some sects of the internet who think NMH2 deserves a reassessment after this and my answer to that is a hearty no, that game’s just absolutely miserable to play, but even that title has something like the captain vlad fight which i really liked! and a fair amount of my positive feelings on NMH3s battles mostly stem from whether or not they were fun to engage with on a more tactile level rather than leaving me with some narrative or aesthetic thread to deliberate on. the multimedia, ‘binge streaming’ format the narrative is conveyed by feels holistically appropriate in this sense, because it really is No More Heroes as unchallenging content, No More Heroes as brand ip, No More Heroes as obligation…in a world where games more than ever unironically resemble NMH1’s implicit criticism of the open world city format, what could or should NMH3 be bringing to the table? because it’s just more of the same here.

if travis feels at odds with it, subsumed by it – i think that’s the fairest way i can read this game, even if it doesn’t feel like something the game is perhaps entirely committed to. sylvia is travis’s partner but you wouldn’t guess it in this game, she’s resigned to her designated role as matchmaker and manager, pitting travis against battle after battle to keep his bloodlust sharp and flowing (which maybe in some perverse sense means someone like her is inadvertently the ideal partner for travis), but that elides that she absconds every time travis attempts to talk to her more meaningfully. and i think maybe what the game attempts to stab at is that complete and total death of meaning in the macro sense as we prefer to engage with things in the micro sense. im pretty sure this is why it ends in the dizzying manner that it does, even if its post-credits scene is something a great many of sudas works already do (ranko, SOTD, etc). travis’s life is now battle for battle’s sake; the game doesn’t think to ask how he feels about that because it’s clearly still duty to him at this point in time, but one of the only other meaningful connections he’s fostered is someone like bishop who he can just sit back and crack open a cold one with, sitting through miike film after miike film having these podcast-esque discussions as this weird place of respite. sylvia even thanks bishop for taking care of travis, so it's clear she's aware to some extent of what he's being put through. still, his inability to connect with sylvia does frustrate him but there’s not a lot he can do about that given she’s been shuttered off into the role his life demands of her. hell, so cyclical is the absurdity in travs's life that characters from separate narrative continuities like kamui and midori (with kamuis malleable and impermanent physical appearance fittingly shaped to appear as a younger otaku in this title) explicitly allude to glamour camping in this universe, because, well, it seems like there’s a vaguely interesting show going on here – why not change the channel for a bit? in that sense i do think some of the spirit of KTP is in this title, but not in a particularly substantive way. i should also probably point out that i didn’t expect any of those narrative threads to be in this game, because that’s insane, and i specifically wanted for NMH3 to be another expression of NMH, however that might manifest. but if these are ideas NMH3 wanted to chase, i don’t think it needed to explicate them necessarily so much as it needed clarity and focus; after all, much of NMH1’s thematic strength is expressed in the margins. i kind of liked ranko, and i greatly enjoyed kurayami, both of which are similarly works defiant of continuity that still feel complete and total, whereas this is just distended for much of its runtime.

maybe the other fair thing to point out is that my favourite narrative content in the game is usually in the smaller moments, particularly the optional bad girl arc players can choose to engage with wherein travis attempts to console her by making anime recommendations. classic stuff there. but otherwise things just kind of happen with hardly any sense of importance or dramatic rhythm, and while it’s unrelated, you can sense that the most in the game’s pared back soundtrack – a surprising wealth of these tracks are lacking in pulse or energy, particularly the battle tracks which are composed by nobuaki kaneko. he later went on to form the band red orca – their debut album features so many of the tracks listed in this game that have all been given extensive and lavish production, whereas in NMH3 they’re all significantly pared back cascades of white noise. not as relevant to the discussion here, but feels like an apt metaphor.

i really think it’s admirable that a game like this can swing for the stars, but not every chance at bat will be a home run. i expect that this will become something of an MGSV-type debacle in a few months time, since it’s clear that covid production, budget issues, and technical problems took a butcher’s knife to this game, with it being confirmed that there’s over an hour of cutscenes missing from the game and probably even more content missing as well judging from suda’s own description of what’s absent, such as boss fights and fully developed areas. but, all the same, im really not sure it’s a game that can find life in its wounds like MGSV can be said to accomplish…but it’s all the more frustrating that it’s impossible to say, as well. maybe there’ll be a director’s cut, but it seems highly unlikely given that this is travis’s last hurrah and marvelous has the rights to the IP. it ends up offering an interest contrast to killer7, a game salvaged in a similar edit that brought everything into comparable focus. with NMH3, the dominant sense is that everything is disparate and disconnected. i can say that trying to make any semblance of cohesive statement on this game is hell, which explains my overwrought nature this time i suppose, but then, NMH3 is like that too. meditation on weaponized nostalgia? ouroboric game about audience’s inability to let the past die? a work about the futility of mechanics-oriented design? impossible to say, but i could have appreciated its resistance to any easily read interpretation (in part because i think treating works purely in terms of the message they purport can be a reductive lens) if its parcels of content were more meaningfully engaging, but they unfortunately arent. by the end of all these competing conceptions of media, it's only fitting that they all meet at their 'final destination'. it is what it is. see ya in the next one

i have a fondness for games where you get what you paid for. within two minutes of opting for a 'new game' in rogue warrior, your squadmates - thinly-veiled samuel l jackson and thinly-veiled robert de niro - are blown to bits by grenade shrapnel. dick marcinko, voiced by mickey rourke, both of whom are somehow channeling the greatest, paunchiest, and most inebriated of steven seagal, is the only man left alive. your commanding officer tells you you've gotta pack it in and come home, the operation's a bust. dick sweatily rejects this proposition and offers a sound rebuttal; fuck no, he's got commies to kill. not ten seconds later dick 'stealth' kills someone and, verbatim, says 'lights out, motherfucker.'

so at the low cost of 0 dollars, i pretty much immediately got what i wanted. quintessential self-aggrandizing, vulgar, lunatic digital autofiction for SICKOS. you clear a cramped room full of baddies and mickey rourke gravelly mutters 'the soviet fuckin union can fondle my hairy nuts'. you prepare to rappel and he claims 'like my ex-wife used to say, you go down before you can get in.' you snap some poor DRPK dudes neck and he practically yells 'suck my balls, my hairy fuckin big balls, wrap em around your fuckin mouth, im gonna shove it up your ass.'

on top of this - and im not sure if this is just rpcs3 or not - the game has easily the fastest boot-up-to-gameplay time ive seen in the seventh generation, perhaps not surpassed until the current gen. skip past everything and you clock in at 10 seconds. what the fuck, how is dick marcinko utterly trouncing fighting games at what they should already be doing and never accomplish, this is insane.

it goes without saying i only discovered that after the game crashed like, easily over ten times. it crashes more than i do after a night on the town. i thought it was just rpcs3 acting up but no, it's rogue warrior, mickey rourkes alcoholic rage is too fuckin much for the console to bear with. so my 3/5 here is a bit tenuous, i really wish it didnt freeze up so often - it forced me to restart a few levels. i also think it could have been a better game if dick had emphatically refused to use ak-47s because they were too marxist. even so, it ends with a mickey rourke rap, guys. certified western kusoge, more of a searing indictment on america than anything wolfenstein has to offer.

gameplay? it's quick and dirty. mastery of stealth? get the fuck out of here, what the fuck are you talking about. dick marcinko might have borrowed venom snakes trademark greasy ponytail, but that's not the only thing he borrowed from one of the snakes; your supressor-equipped pistol has infinite ammo. you actually die surprisingly easily, but so do your foes, and you heal every bit as quickly too - mix that with breakneck pacing and you have a rhythm and tempo seldom seen in these first-person shooters. it was also vaguely refreshing to play - as ardwyw pointed out in his duke nukem: forever review, we've largely moved away from this understanding of first person shooters into a more arena-centric take on the formula. extrapolating from this trend, i think it reflects a broader movement in games to center their cores around their systems and mechanics. i cant exactly fault this - to design a game and design it well is a noble endeavour and remains one of the best ways to ensure a title has lasting legacy. but there's less of an inclincation to preserve a spark of adventure in games these days, and i think if doom eternal's anything to go by, there's such a thing as reducing expressiveness by tightening design so much it it may as well act as a vice crushing your ribcage. rogue warrior isnt exactly the kind of thought-provoking game that should prompt these ideas, but maybe that's part of the point as well. as rourke hurls yet more insane obscenities, i cant help but feel entranced over its appropriate two-hour runtime. we didn't know how good we had it back then.

also, the 'i want games that are shorter with worse graphics that are developed by people who are paid more to work less' crowd is being awfully silent on this game 🙄 makes you think