I admit, I’m biased. Suda51’s games may not be of the highest quality, their gameplay may leave a lot to be desired, and his stories are weird, esoteric things that an entire thesis or two could be written about, but I can’t help but love everything he does. I guess I just love the crazed auteur who takes a look at what’s being done in a specific medium, nods his head, strokes his chin, says, “ah, I see,” and then turns and does something COMPLETELY FREAKING DIFFERENT. Alejandro Jodorowsky and David Lynch did it with film, David Mack and Alan Moore did it with comics, Daniel Z. Danielewski and others have done it with novels, but you don’t see it much in the world of videogames.This is with good reason, of course. Videogames are an interactive experience, and if you purposefully design your game to frustrate or fight the player, you’re insane and likely not very popular. And yet Suda51 does it with every game he’s released, but No More Heroes 2, the sequel to my favorite Wii game, is by far his most accessible game, like if Jodorowsky directed a commercial film for the masses.
You don’t need to play the first game to get into No More Heroes 2. Here’s all you need to know: Travis Touchdown, loveable loser, got his hands on a beam katana and took up being an assassin as a way to make money. He fought his way through the top ten ranked assassins for thrills and at the promise of getting laid, which never happened. Along the way, he met some wild characters, had some crazy fights, and broke the fourth wall. After reaching the top rank, he turned his back on the world of assassins and, I dunno, just sat on his ass for three years watching his cat gain weight. Which is where this game starts off. Travis is once again climbing the ranks, this time from rank 51 instead of 11, and also with another purpose in mind: revenge for the murder of his best friend Bishop.
No More Heroes 2 is a better game than its predecessor in nearly every way. While the combat remains the same, it’s much more polished. It’s just as visceral and satisfying as ever, and you’ll have no trouble getting into the groove of decapitating people left and right or piledriving them into the ground. You can switch between different beam katanas in the middle of combat this time around, though it’s an agonizingly slow process and once you get your hands on the Rose Nasty you probably won’t look back, but it’s still a nice touch. Blocking is a lot less automatic, making you work harder, but it makes those kills all the more satisfying. A wider variety of enemies also keeps things from getting too repetitive, but there are some later levels where you’ll come close to getting sick of all the hacking and slashing…until you turn into a tiger and start killing people left and right as they piss themselves in fear, that is.
The job minigames are still there, though all of them with the exception of one are now old-school 8-bit games that you may swear you played or possibly even owned on the NES when you were a kid. With a few exceptions, you’ll keep coming back to them, not just for the cash to buy clothes, but also to get a better high score and just because they’re simply fun. Training at the gym has also been given the 8-bit treatment. But if that’s not your thing, there’s also Travis’s cat Jeane, who seriously needs to lose weight, and an overhead space shooter based on Travis’s favorite anime, Bizarre Jelly 5! There’s no shortage of things to do when you’re not too busy hacking people to pieces.
Graphics receive quite the upgrade too, with a much more streamlined presentation, though it still has that lo-fi, somewhat ugly look to it. Some people may hate that, but I love it, and I feel like it’s a part of the game’s overall style. There are no real design “mistakes” in Suda51’s games, they’re almost always deliberate decisions, but that’s another story entirely. The voice acting is just as good as in the first game, and the script is chock full of great, quotable lines, while the music has gotten harder, darker, more guitar-driven to suit Travis’s quest for bloody vengeance.
While it is the most accessible of Suda51’s games, it still has its fair share of weird bits. The bosses don’t seem to have as much personality as the (very talkative) assassins from the first game, but they’ve certainly gotten stranger. You’ll find yourself fighting a football player and his cheerleading squad in a giant robot, a schoolgirl who is your biggest fan and wields a flute/double-beamed lightsaber, a ghost, and more. You can turn into a tiger, as I mentioned before. Takashi Miike, the infamous Japanese director, makes a cameo appearance. A guy whose head you cut off gets back up and has a conversation with you. And there’s still more where that came from.
As much as I’ve been praising it, it’s still flawed. I mentioned the repetitive later levels, and some of the boss battles almost feel like an afterthought. Also, while the game gives you the chance to play as Shinobu, an assassin from the first game who can actually jump unlike Travis, her levels are annoying and you want to just get her levels over with to get back to Travis. The camera still isn’t perfect, but then, I have yet to play a videogame with a perfect camera, y’know?
It seems at once both wilder than the first game, but also tamer, strangely. Both games are the product of putting all of Suda51’s favorite things and influences into a blender, devouring the concoction, and crapping it back out, which he has stated more than once in interviews. You can tell that too, especially because the first game felt like a massive explosion went off in your face, an explosion of awesomeness. No More Heroes 2 feels much more focused and calculated, maybe too calculated. That “everything but the kitchen sink” mentality is still there to be sure, but it lacks a lot of the charm of the first game. Weird quirks and hiccups in the first game, like the barren open world, have been polished away, leaving a much more pristine game, but that feels almost wrong given the punk rock, dirty style that’s on display here.
Nevertheless though, it’s a strong successor to the Wii’s greatest sleeper hit, a dizzying bullet aimed straight at the brain, and a gaming experience that’s truly unforgettable. In this day and age where games are starting to feel all too much alike and blur together, it’s great when something so maverick and gung-ho kicks down the doors and does whatever the hell it wants with little regard for what’s mainstream and popular, and does it in a way that‘s badass.
Also, did I mention you can transform into a MOTHERFUCKING TIGER? Game of the year, right there.
[Brett]
