This review contains spoilers
Some thoughts (i will keep adding to this as time passes and edit it until it feels complete.)
No More Heroes 1 was a really fresh, fun game and gave me a lot of food for thoughts regarding the world we live in. It is a very mixed and dense little package of a game. What I mean is regarding the world we live in, NMH feels like it commentates on games but it specifically also feels like it is critiquing or making fun of "system" and being bound by "system" wether that system is violence or money. Critiquing the construction of a system is something suda51 has done before but the way he does it here is quite something. It is all over the game critiquing the systems and the structures. Bottom line it is kind of a fight to capitalism and the improvement based society. Everything has to be a next step in the ladder, everything has to be more and more. another grind another few more hours of work to death. Travis is somebody who falls into this trap through Sylvia the girl who manages the UAA and all of his fights because he has a sexual desire for her. (Sex, violence, power, wealth are all correlated in ways in NMH but i need to think about it more)
When we talk of the end of the game it is kind of like the ultimate finger up the ass, it is ripping away satisfaction of the player in a glorious way but it is also showing the empty journey of the system climb and how for whatever you climbed it the hole inside of you as you live in some damp motel did not grow any bigger nor any smaller. It was a complete empty journey. After that we have the beautiful fight between Travis and Henry in which they talk about escaping too paradise, this is directly referencing back to death, the only way to escape all of it, the wealth, the murder, the desire, the senseless cycle they all live in is by death. There is an illusion of free choice from the system but there is no true freedom. No More Heroes 1 talks about the horrors of "system" and the loss of freedom, the continuation of cycle violence and a world that constrains you to its systems and can only live through the systems.
I'v seen people mention that the No More Heroes title comes from a song, I also wanted to add that I believe it is in direct correlation and context to other videogames where the protagonist usually is the hero (especially quite some hack and slash titles had this motive) but in fact in No More heroes there is no hero, not even the protagonist.
No More Heroes 1 was a really fresh, fun game and gave me a lot of food for thoughts regarding the world we live in. It is a very mixed and dense little package of a game. What I mean is regarding the world we live in, NMH feels like it commentates on games but it specifically also feels like it is critiquing or making fun of "system" and being bound by "system" wether that system is violence or money. Critiquing the construction of a system is something suda51 has done before but the way he does it here is quite something. It is all over the game critiquing the systems and the structures. Bottom line it is kind of a fight to capitalism and the improvement based society. Everything has to be a next step in the ladder, everything has to be more and more. another grind another few more hours of work to death. Travis is somebody who falls into this trap through Sylvia the girl who manages the UAA and all of his fights because he has a sexual desire for her. (Sex, violence, power, wealth are all correlated in ways in NMH but i need to think about it more)
When we talk of the end of the game it is kind of like the ultimate finger up the ass, it is ripping away satisfaction of the player in a glorious way but it is also showing the empty journey of the system climb and how for whatever you climbed it the hole inside of you as you live in some damp motel did not grow any bigger nor any smaller. It was a complete empty journey. After that we have the beautiful fight between Travis and Henry in which they talk about escaping too paradise, this is directly referencing back to death, the only way to escape all of it, the wealth, the murder, the desire, the senseless cycle they all live in is by death. There is an illusion of free choice from the system but there is no true freedom. No More Heroes 1 talks about the horrors of "system" and the loss of freedom, the continuation of cycle violence and a world that constrains you to its systems and can only live through the systems.
I'v seen people mention that the No More Heroes title comes from a song, I also wanted to add that I believe it is in direct correlation and context to other videogames where the protagonist usually is the hero (especially quite some hack and slash titles had this motive) but in fact in No More heroes there is no hero, not even the protagonist.