This review contains spoilers

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.

Reviewed on Sep 10, 2021


8 Comments


2 years ago

great review, this captured a lot of my same feelings about this game grasping at good ideas and interesting themes but being inhibited by unfun combat and boring/frustrating boss design
Good stuff

1 year ago

"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." Except if you look at the extraneous parts of the game, the ability to dig for money that gets you nothing much and the unexciting 'chores' sections I think anticlimax is very possible as a developer decision here. Especially considering how downright cruel the 2nd game gets in this regard (seriously the final boss of that game is 1 of the most anticlimatic fights I've experienced in a game). Otherwise I think you're right, but I think the lack of satisfaction with fighting a majority of the bosses is intentional.

Consider for the fact the brain fight cutscene quite literally being a giant geared up military cock that is halted right in the middle of it. How the 2nd to last fight (the grandma) is a 1 hit kill cat and mouse game. Does that make it more enjoyable or thematically compelling? For me it does, but its definitely something I can see varying among players especially since the style of combat here is not seen anywhere else so it comes off sort of wasted. Like the closest game I can think of to reflect these combat motion controls is maybe Monster Hunter Tri. Anyway otherwise I think you're entirely on the money.

1 year ago

Also Suda is by design not a 'mainstream' developer from my understanding. He was writing anticlimaxes like this since the wrestling game he wrote. There's a lot of self branding as a gamedev punk and in his Travis Strikes Again game he legitimately gives shoutout to like dozens of indie games through various shirts you can wear. He's a lot more connected to that underground than you would probably anticipate. Heres just a quote you can dwell on:

“I think my inspiration is to mix together many kinds of different things, and to bring parts of all the things I like into my games. You could definitely see that in Killer 7, and it's there in No More Heroes as well - it's a real mixture.
You know, you can see on the screen, in No More Heroes you sit on the toilet to save the game - I guess making a game for me is a bit like that. When you take a shit, everything you've consumed is all mixed together, there are all sorts of things in that - and that's the same kind of idea, I think." -Suda51

[source] (https://www.eurogamer.net/grasshoppers-suda-51-interview)
i think that is a fair interpretation, it's just not something you can actually assume with confidence IMO

1 year ago

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1 year ago

Capitalized the k in killer7...I'm afraid I must invalidate this review...
😭

26 days ago

Excellent analysis.