No More Heroes - My 0.02$
I remember a glorious time when the word 'linear' wasn't a swearword in the gaming world. No, seriously. There was once upon a time when action games didn't have to rip off Grand Theft Auto or Halo in any way, shape or form.
But we are currently living in the recession where developers have to play it safe, and what makes people more bags and bags of money than sandbox games?
I'm not much of a sandbox gamer. I personally like my games to have a coherent and well-told story so I can have some level of attachment to the character. I also like them not to always look like someone spilled coffee on the graphics and added a bit of grit and overdid with the bloom effects.
Seriously, what is this sepia toned thing with almost every next gen game I've run across?
But rants aside, it's time to talk about No More Heroes. I played a bit the game, I think a little over a year back on a friend's Wii, and the combat was a bit more than satisfying. It was actually pretty fun! (Wow, a video game being fun? God forbid.) I tend to avoid bloodbaths on the principle that if you need gore and shock value to keep your players playing, you're probably trying to compensate for some major flaw in your gameplay. Thankfully, this is not the case with NMH. The combat is pretty intuitive and addictive as hell. Yes! Finally, what the Wii is really for! Fun, intense light saber beam katana antics! Not bowling with grandma. But yes, for a long time, my extent of playing through NMH was two missions, mowing someone's lawn and playing with a kitten.
Oh yeah, did I mention there's a kitten in the game? And you can play with it? (It's oddly addictive).
I'd wanted to get the game since I first tried it out. After all, it finally seemed like they were putting the Wii hardware to good use, and making games that weren't just geared at the desperate housewives too chickenshit to cheat on their husbands, and the under-seven and over-seventy crowd. This was a game for, well, people who play video games, have grown up playing video games and will continue to play them. But because it's one of the few games on the Wii actually worth paying money for, I tell you what it was a bitch trying to find a used copy or even a new one at game stores. Remember that recession thing I mentioned in that above rant? Yeah, I'm fucking cheap. :\
So, a few days ago, I picked it up and I'm well half way through it which is more than enough for me to form an adequate opinion without spoiling too much of what is looking to be a pretty cool, if thus-far surreal plot.
Graphics: Ah, the eternal debate of whether or not graphics make the game. The answer is very much a resounding 'no'. Just look at the latest atrocity to the Prince of Persia franchise; looks utterly stunning, but the game itself is mediocre at best. However, visuals do add an atmosphere to a game that can help keep the gamer interested in the characters and environment. It's like the hot fudge on a sundae.
There is no denying that the Wii will never match up to the XBox360 or the PS3 in terms of graphics. But what NMH lacks in poly count, it more than makes up for in sheer style. The characters and environments are colourful and as well rendered as well as possible, all the while having this look of a comic-book ink and wash. The characters stand out from their environment but still fit well into their world which makes battles intuitive and it's nice not having to discern coffee-and-grit-coloured enemies from a mud-and-grit-coloured environment for a change. It also veers well away from the uncanny valley by not attempting realism so much as believability. Everything works in the world as seamlessly as the hardware will allow.
Gameplay: The meat and potatoes of a good game is how good it feels to play it. How does NMH measure up?
Pretty damn good. Not perfect and I'm going to start off with the major flaws of the game which there are a grand total of three.
1. Linear and Sandbox do not mix well.
Here's my biggest beef. The game story and gameplay progression are every inch linear. There are side jobs between missions and the occasional bit of mucking about buying clothes and playing with kittens or watching wrestling programs, but really not many side stories or missions that could have much of an effect on the ending. I'm told the game has two endings, which makes it pretty much as linear as any given J-RPG. But it suffers from the eternal complex that if it doesn't have some element of a sandbox game, it can't hang with the big cool titles. So what element of sandbox games did it take? Not much on the element of choice since it's a linear story. How about stealing cars and running over grannies and giving the cops the run-around? Nah, though that would have worked pretty damn well in the game.
No. It's a giant fucking world between you and your jobs/missions with little to do in-between. Now, there are two games I can think of off the top of my head that do this. Shadow of the Colossus where it worked very well and Jak II where it... well... didn't. Why did it work in SotC? Well, the world may have been desolate of human inhabitants, but there were trees to climb and lizards and fruit to snack on, and great open spaces where, let me tell you, riding your horse was just plain exhilarating. It was pointless, but still immersive. In Jak II, you had a giant city, hover cars and a jet board and it sounds cool at first but then you get to the crawling traffic or hoards of pedestrians that grind any progress to a screeching halt unless you just say fuck it and let the guards chase you. It was pretty damn annoying, especially when you just wanted to get to the next mission. NMH, for me, falls between the two. Traveling the long distances between places doesn't have the constant and irritating obstacles of Jak II, but it also has none of the grandeur or immersion of Shadow of the Colossus. Traveling in this game is... boring. And while it's certainly not enough to rip you away from the game, it's certainly jarring. I mean, one minute you're completing an action-packed mission or doing a quirky and fun side job or in my case, playing with the fucking cat and the next, it's just a long and boring ride between point A and point B. Boring does not belong anywhere in this game. Bad Suda51. Keep the sandbox elements to sandbox games. Linear games do not need giant blocks of useless space taking up the game! It doesn't add anything except needless time.
...Rant over.
2. Occasionally awkward controls.
I... actually can't complain too much about this. There's always something a little awkward about the Wii remote and maybe it's just me. It certainly seems the developers worked their asses off to make the game controls as intuitive and easy to use as possible. This is more a general complaint about the Wii hardware but it does hurt the game a little.
3. That fuckinggoddamnstupidfuckingbloodyidioticfuckmcnuggets SLOT MACHINE THING. AGH.
Okay, if you haven't played the game and have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm going to quote my good friend the Instruction Manual.
DARK SIDE MODE
When you defeat an enemy in Death Blow mode, slots on the bottom of the screen will start to spin. If three icons match, you'll enter one of five Dark Side mode types. It only lasts a short while, so make the most of it!
This is just... annoying and distracting. The combat is disgustingly fun and challenging on it's own. I wouldn't mind if these special attacks required some skill of Wiimote waving or combo button smashing, but left entirely to chance? Am I the only one where Travis will get Anarchy in the Galaxy or fucking Cherry when there are only like, two enemies left after you've defeated the rest of the fifty or so with plain old combat?
Yeaaaaaaaaaaah, thought so. This is the one bad thing about the combat because it's utterly random.
But let's move onto the good aspects of the gameplay. 1. It's intuitive, which is a feat worthy of canonizing for anyone who develops for the Wii. So many games feel clunky and awkward, but NMH just feels right. It has it's moments where you're fighting an enemy and you'll scream "NO UP. UUUUP YOU SON OF A BITCH." But they clearly worked hard to make this game not just playable, but enjoyable. 2. It's fun. FUN. I miss games being fun and not just wheeling characters between collections of long, overblown cutscenes. NMH really stands on it's own in this regard.
Story: I've had the game pretty much spoiled for me with a collection of cutscenes on youtube. At the point in the game I'm at, I can't really comment much on it because it is mostly a surreal,over-the-top kind of black comedy steeped in anime, pop-culture and violence. Kind of like if Quintin Terantito decided to make video games instead of movies. In fact, the more I think about it, it has a lot of parallels to Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill...
The story seems pretty random at first, but the world does have logic and rules, even if they're not the kind we subscribe to in the real world.
Conclusion:
So how does NMH measure up? In my opinion, it's one of the best games out for the Wii. In fact, it's one of the best games out for any of the current gen consoles. It's stylized, it's nice to look at, the gameplay is beyond solid, it's funny, and the story is good. And most of all it's fun. I like games that are fun. There should be more of them.
For the sequel, I'm hoping they trim the unnecessary excess because in some cases, less is more.