Goichi Suda is unlike many game directors in this industry. His games are offbeat, full of bizarre pop culture references, and always seem to star assassins. Let's not forget to mention that the man himself has a tendency to show up to press events wearing a Lucha Libre-style wrestling mask. Though his games have seldom seen wide success, they have provided many veteran gamers with a good break from the military shooter of the month or RPGs with too much hair gel and the other safe releases the rest of the industry tends to rely on. Suda achieved fame outside of Japan through the high profile Killer 7, a story of a man with multiple personalities, each of them assassins. While the game's visual style and bizarre story were lauded, the gameplay was secondary and it bombed at retail. Their latest game, No More Heroes, sets out to rectify these shortcomings.

Players assume the role of Travis Touchdown, a stereotypical otaku with an insatiable thirst for all things anime and pro wrestling. Travis lives in a tiny motel room in the American city of Santa Destroy. After winning a beam katana in an online auction, and running out of money to spend on anime and video games, Travis becomes an (unlikely) assassin. After being commissioned to kill a chap named Helter Skelter, Travis inexplicably finds himself ranked as the 11th best assassin in the world, and being the competitive type he is, sets his sights on attaining the top ranking (which he believes will give him the opportunity to score with the seductive and mysterious Sylvia). Of course, being a useless bum, Travis has no way of making the entry fee, having to take on an assortment of part time jobs and mini assassination missions between each assassination assignment.

The first thing you'll notice upon booting No More Heroes is its striking visual design. While not quite as profound as the cel-shaded styling used in Killer 7, No More Heroes does use vibrant colour and some very nice shadowing techniques to achieve a similar effect. Some other cool effects have been used liberally throughout the game, particularly the blood spatter effects resulting from executions (I was playing an imported version, these spatters have unfortunately been censored from the version to be released locally). The game also uses a number of visual and audio cues which are heavily inspired by 8-bit games, such as pixellated health bars and icons on the maps, and simple midi tunes when a mission is successful. Character designs are also amazing; each assassin is just as madcapped as the last. My personal favourites were the special effects artist who doubles as a cheap-shot-taking superhero, and the old lady whose shopping cart transforms into a giant energy cannon. The game is filled with insane characters and pop culture references straight of out left field.

Cool special effects and whacked out character designs are present to compensate for the game's technical shortcomings, however. No More Heroes attempts to present a free-roaming game world, but due to the smaller team at Grasshopper and the lower power of the Wii, Santa Destroy more often than not comes across as an empty, jagged, blurry mess of a city. When more than half a dozen characters are on screen, or the action begins to heat up, the game's framerate is quickly reduced to sludge. It's something that feels unpleasant when you start playing the game, but eventually deal with. The game has an excellent musical score, with a bizarre mix of rock, techno and pop tracks, and some amusing, purposefully cheesy voice acting and dialogue.

Upon starting the first mission, you'll quickly discover that No More Heroes is a particularly energetic game. Attacks are initiated by pressing the A button and the remote does not directly control the beam sword. Instead, No More Heroes uses the remote's motion sensing abilities to determine whether it performs a high or low attack, and a flick of the wrist in the indicated direction will execute a finishing blow. Considering the amount of enemies Travis encounters in the game, you are pretty much constantly moving about. The B button can be used for a hand-to-hand attack, which will usually stun an enemy, allowing for a beam sword combo or a wrestling move. Be careful to keep an eye on your beam sword's power meter – whenever it runs low, you must manually charge it with an amusing, but rather lewd (on screen and in real life) remote thrusting action. Whenever an enemy is disposed of, a poker machine wheel will spin at the bottom of a screen, and if it matches three of a kind, Travis will receive a power boost of some kind, such as the evil black and white dark side power or the highly amusing, Dragon Ball Z inspired super power.

The combat system truly shines when fighting the other assassins, as you'll often have to use every trick in the book to find and exploit a given weakness. Each assassin is like a typical boss encounter on steroids. Each opens with an amusing cutscene which usually serves to highlight both Travis' awkward coolness, and the boss's insanity – usually ending with Travis at a disadvantage. Assassins are tough, having much greater offensive and defensive capabilities than other enemies, with many also having one-hit kill moves (though an on-screen remote indicator usually shows players when their life is at stake). Once defeated, the assassins will typically run into some weird spiel about either regretting their choices, or remarking at how they could be beaten by a loser like Travis, before meeting their bloody end.


Between ranking missions, Travis gets dumped in Santa Destroy with the task of making hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for registration for the next fight. Unfortunately, while players are free to roam around Santa Destroy, it is also mostly devoid of anything to do, merely serving to pad out the game with pointless travel time in addition to the time spent on side missions. Side missions are amusing at first – picking up garbage, pumping petrol, mowing lawns, sweeping a beach for landmines and taking on small fight missions, but after a few ranking battles, you'll dread the thought of having to repeat these missions over and over. Santa Destroy contains a few stores where Travis can buy new clothes and movies to watch on his TV, a gym to train his strength, life meter and combo abilities and a beam swords workshop where he can buy new beam swords and upgrades. Travis has a rather funky looking motorcycle for city driving, but the thing handles like a brick and takes a good hour or so to get used to. Players of reasonable skill will have seen everything No More Heroes has to offer in 12-15 hours.

No More Heroes can be a very enjoyable game, but players have to be prepared to endure some seriously monotonous tasks in order to get to the best bits. The game has fantastic art direction, awesome character designs, side-splitting humour and some seriously fun fights. On the other hand, it's a technical sloth and has more padding than one of those giant novelty sumo suits. No More Heroes at its best is utter brilliance, but at times can be even less stimulating than reruns of Neighbours. It's well worth playing, but will not be everybody's cup of tea.