How do you even judge a game like No More Heroes ? The brainchild of weirdo author Gōichi Suda, better known as Suda 51. No More Heroes is on the surface just another typical action game original released for the Wii. You play as Travis Touchdown, a young hot head Otaku rising through the ranks of an assassin organization to become number one. Everything from the box art, to the marketing and the opening cutscene presents itself as a prototypical action game. If you happen to be only slightly familiar with Suda 51, you will quickly pick up that everything on the surface is a lie. No More Heroes is in fact a both a giant love letter to nerd culture as well as a middle finger to how serious we tend to take that culture.

Travis Touchdown itself is the thematic center. Both a skilled swordsman that can dispatch his foes effortlessly, and at the same time the biggest loser you could think of for an action game. A sexually immature nerd, living in a shitty Motel, getting by with low rate jobs and hopelessly chasing a sexy blonde who's clearly only stringing him along for his money. Quite frankly, Travis is pathetic and on all accounts, is hard to sell as a relatable main character. But why do people like Travis ? To the point that No more Heroes has endured as Sudas most popular series with 4 full games. I think its the genius fact that you embody Travis in every aspect of his life. You see his most badass moments, at the same time having to commute to his shitty jobs every day. You can hang out in his tiny apartment, play with his cat Jean, then head over to Naomi's Lab to get the most powerful Beamkatana in the game. The entire game is build around being Travis Touchdown, warts and all.

And the gameplay also consists of this daily routine. Drive around the dead end beach town of Santa Destroy, get a job, go to your favorite stores or go to the Gym. The hub itself is probably the game's biggest criticism, and I'm not sure if its meandering nature is intentional or not. What can not be denied is that the frequent commute between places tends to slow down the game's pacing to a crawl. Between Rank fights, you need to pay large sums of money. That money comes from doing less than fun odd jobs and assassination missions. Its original release on the Wii had to of course simplify the controls. There is a skill level here with high and low sword stances, perfect dodges and wrestling moves, but overall it's not a deep enough system to carry the 10-hour story mode. The go-to strategy seems to be to grind the Death Match 100 mission as soon it becomes available. A pretty easy 100,000 rewarded from it, that will carry you through to the end, getting you to eventually max out all of Travis stats/gear and fight the secret final boss.

The bosses of course are the highest high point of No More Heroes. Always interesting and flashy, they will push you through the worst parts of the game just so you can see what's next. You'll be hard-pressed to find a game that is less predictable than No More Heroes. I love pretty much every one of them for how widely different they are in both gameplay and tone. Some are completely despicable like the insane Harvey Moiseiwitsch or Destroy Man and then others seem like they could have been allies in a different life like Holly Summers or Shinobu Jacobs. Of the 12 bosses, I can say only 2 didn't do anything for me: Speed Buster and Bad Girl. They really felt like empty filler with levels that seemd to have been short-changed on the budget side, although Bad Girl at least has a great design.

In the end No More Heroes remains maybe the most unique 7th Gen game and by the time that you're face to face with the final boss it has fully shattered the 4th Wall with a planet size sledgehammer. I'm still kinda shocked just how bold it's willing to mock both itself and its audience. Art is the only word I have to describe it, and I implore anyone interested in video games as art to play No More Heroes.