This damn girl’s spun my head right around

Last week was without a doubt the most eventful seven days of my life to this point, and nothing really even happened between Monday and Wednesday. I am completely worn out right now, and should be catching up on sleep instead of blogging it up. Alas, old habits die hard.

In between all the things that keep me out of the house, I’ve been enjoying No More Heroes like it’s nobody’s business. It’s the biggest third-party Wii title for a reason. I know there are those out there who may not completely agree, but I think it’s totally living up to the hype I had built up around it, and that’s saying something because I’ve been watching it intently ever since the first trailer was leaked.

The most obvious victory for No More Heroes is the characters. Travis Touchdown is one of the baddest asses I’ve ever seen, and might even be more awesome than Dan Smith from Killer7. He’s an ex-pro-wrestler otaku who’s current job just happens to be killing. He’s blunt, crude, and quite possibly insane. And that’s before you factor in all the other UAA assassins, who are all reasonably interesting in their own rights. It’s just too bad that the main objective of the game is to make them all dead, because I wouldn’t mind seeing a few of those characters fleshed-out in a sequel/spin-off. Ah well, win some lose some I guess. Various other support characters linger about in the few main attractions of Santa Destroy, but none of them have nearly enough screen time. I say this because the few lines/actions/etc they are given are usually either straight-up hilarious or absurd to the point of hilarity.

Shinobu, the samurai schoolgirl, WILL murder you. Many times.

I suppose I should mention somewhere that the game is fun, too. The meat, which would be fighting the other assassins, is incredible. Like their personalities, each battle is completely different and provides many new and exciting ways to be killed. Hacking your way through legions of same-dressed goons on your way to each assassin showdown will provide plenty of fun too. Tons of games have had you battle through masses of enemies, but only No More Heroes makes it worth it by pure style alone. The animations and sound effects bring you right into the action, and within seconds you’ll lose yourself to the fight. Mashing the A button swings the beam katana, but every time you finish an enemy, you’ll swing the Wiimote to finish them off. Grabbing stunned enemies invokes a motion-activated wresting move, and no matter how you choose to dispose of the hordes of peons, each and every kill will be absolutely thrilling.

The biggest complaint point I’ve heard so far is the overworld. I’ll give those complainers a small degree of merit, because truthfully, it is pretty janky. Hitboxes on cars and people are enormous when compared to the actual models (which are blocky and poorly textured), and more often than not, when you’ve flown off your bike because you’ve rammed into a car at full speed, you won’t have been anywhere near that car. On the other hand, buried treasures and Lovikov Balls (essentially GTA “Hidden Packages”) are marked on the map. I cannot even imagine how to explain how much I like this. Yes, it takes the challenge out of finding them all, but I have never enjoyed hunting for unmarked baubles. Besides, you still have to manually search the entire city to find all the dumpsters, many which contain new T-shirts. So if you need that hunt-and-find element, it’s still there. In any case, fooling around in Santa Destroy isn’t nearly as bad as some make it out to be, but the city could certainly have benefited from a little more time in production.

I honestly could not mention everything I love about this game and keep this blog-post length, but at the same time, I don’t really want to spoil all the fantastic surprises, jokes and nuances that make the game so irresistible. So I’ll end on this note: No More Heroes is something to be experienced. If you have a Wii, you should definitely at least rent it as many times as it takes you to finish the game. If you don’t own a Wii, go steal one from a smarter family member or friend (but not me) and then play it. It’s not something to be missed.