"Remember to limit your gaming to 10 hours per day."

Do you want to play a game featuring long discussions on Takeshi Miike's body of work, no less than 15 late title cards, and a protagonist who frequently enters into a "fuckhead" fugue state? No More Heroes 3 is the game for you!

The last time I picked up one of these was way back in 2010 when Desperate Struggle was released. It's been a while, but now that No More Heroes 3 has made it off the Switch and onto a proper video game console (and after hitting 30$ for the limited edition...), now seemed like a pretty good time to jump back into Santa Destroy and see what Travis and the gang have been up to. Only I don't recognize like, most of these characters. Oh, oops, I didn't play Travis Strikes Again! Oh well, nobody else did either.

It's fine, though. No More Heroes 3 is so bizarre, so disjointed, and slaps so much of Suda51's charm that jumping in and letting it all wash over you is still a good time. In fact, it reminds me of something I used to do called "Anime Roulette," where I'd throw on a long running anime series and jump into a random episode, no context. Sometimes it's nice relinquishing all knowledge you might have about something and letting it take you on a ride, and No More Heroes is pretty well suited to that. Maybe it helps too that it's (intentional?) poor localization makes dialog feel off-kilter, stilted, and a bit hard to follow. That might sound like a negative, but it's really not. If No More Heroes was trying to be anything other than itself, I probably wouldn't like it as much. Especially considering the actual gameplay can be kinda crummy!

I never really cared for the way these games segment their boss battles. I get that the goofy little odd jobs you pick up are part of the No More Heroes' sense of humor, and there's some pretty good ones here (like a toilet unclogging minigame that is inexplicably livestreamed, typically to a dismal audience of two or three people), but by about the middle of the game repeating the same jobs over and over again to satisfy the ever-growing monetary requirement starts to drag. No More Heroes 3 jerks you around between long stretches of tedium and flashes of excitement when you're finally able to take on the next member of Fu's gang of violent space superheroes.

Boss fights were always the real meat of these games anyway, with all the odd-job junk serving as mechanical filler. The quality of the bosses in No More Heroes 3 definitely makes up for how dull some of the interstitial gameplay can be, and outside of only one fight, I thought all of them were pretty strong, with my favorites being Velvet Chair Girl and Sonic Juice. I also love the touch of having each chapter end on an anime outro and a fake Netflix "next episode" countdown screen, and seeing the rankings update to reflect Travis' long climb towards number 1 is satisfying.


BUT IS IT A SUMMAH GAME?

You thought I was done with this? Did you really think I was gonna let the Summah end with fucking Mario Sunshine!? Guess again! You've been had!

Santa Destroy is set in California, and you know what comes to mind when I think of California? That's right: Summah! I think of reaching into a bush made brittle by the Summah heat and pulling out a scorpion, putting him in my pocket and trading him in to street vendors for money. I think about taking hard 90 degree turns in my Not Legally Actionable Akira motorcycle, colliding with a small fence and flying thirty feet forward like a missile. I think about amassing a large contingent of stray cats who want to cool off with me in that sweet Summah AC [Editor's note: air conditioning in California is a hoax.]

So, the question must be asked: Is No More Heroes 3 a Summah game? Well, there's only one way to tell: subjecting it to one final battery of Summah tests, of course. This included now tired and true testing methods like submerging the disc in various substances, exposing it to direct sunlight, and playing Beach Boys songs on loop for 24 uninterrupted hours with my boombox that's got the one bad speaker. I also ground the disc and used it in a smoothie to judge it on flavor and freshness. So, how did No More Heroes 3 perform?

Well, I'm glad to say No More Heroes 3 earned a 7.7 on the Summah Index Scale, which means it's Certified Summah. It stood up to fluid testing, and through the smoothie taste test it was determined it to have notes of coconut and lime - a classic Summah combination. The only area in which it underperformed was on the Beach Boys Endurance Test. It couldn't even make it through Kokomo before exploding.

And with that, the 2023 Summah Games series has reached its conclusion. I now return to the Earth, to my long slumber, but mark my words... There are Summah games yet to be found, to be tested and shared with all of you. I'll see you again next June and together we'll once against have us a Summah!