No More Heroes

Travis waggles his beam katana your way

Describing No More Heroes in a sentence, or even a paragraph, is like trying to sum up the works of Shakespeare simply by saying he was a man that lived a long time ago, and quite liked writing. That said, the latest offering from Grasshopper and the quite quite mad designer Suda-51 is a celebration of videogaming in its purest form - interactive entertainment in worlds where anything is possible.

Suda-51 is of course the crazed genius behind the stylised-to-abstraction Killer 7, but where that action game almost became lost in its admittedly brilliant tangents, No More Heroes keeps players enthralled with diverse and rewarding core gameplay - that provides Suda-51 with a firm foundation on which to build his trademark oddness.

The first thing that strikes you about No More Heroes is the visual flair with which Grasshopper have crafted the game world; encapsulated in the down-beat Californian town of Santa Destroy. Artistically, the vision is almost flawless, No More Heroes looks every bit as wonderfully cell-shaded as Killer 7, complete with unusually well-realised scenery and colourful characterisation a-plenty. Its an otaku's wet dream, but the limitations of the Wii hardware are apparent in the jagged edges, low-res textures and occasionally jerking frame-rates; one can't help but wonder what Suda-51 might deliver with the Xbox 360 or PS3 under the hood.

That said, in gameplay terms the Wii and Mr. Suda work very well together. The main game is of course built around combat, the premise actually being a deceptively simple one. Hero Travis Touchdown must use his beam katana (a light saber by any other name), to cut his way through 12 assassin-types in order to become the number one bad ass in town, of course, en route to defeating these boss figures, all of whom are equipped with varying weapons and skills, you'll need to first slice your way through hordes of minions, all the way being teased by the alluring Sylvia, a curvaceous French girl who acts as your guide and motivation during parts of the narrative.

Carving your merry way through these foes isn't as repetitive as the premise suggests; while the game uses a Wiimote-Nunchuck combination for control, Suda-51 has opted to keep Wii gestures for hugely pleasurable finishing moves, rather than simply mirroring a sword on the Wiimote. You'll instead use the buttons for most battling moves, before being prompted to deliver a finally blood-splattering end wave with the motion-sensor. It works surprisingly well, and there's enough diversity in the combat (because of both the control system; the enemies; your environment; and the story, such as it is) to keep you entertained throughout the 10 to 12 hours of the singleplayer experience.

In Europe, publisher Rising Star have been persuaded to tone down the gore, so instead of the liberal claret during battles, you'll be bombarded with black pixels. Luckily, this is off-set by the coins you'll collect at the same time, which you can use to improve Travis' abilities. Various power-ups, occasionally prompted by the lucky dip fruit machine-thing at the bottom of the screen, add further variety to the experience, and the number of diversions are myriad.

While the plot may be simple in theory, for example, the dialogue is wonderfully eccentric, and always keeps you glued to the screen. Likewise, the main foes you face have some simply bizarre methods of assault. One enemy launches missiles via a false leg, another will try to lock you in a case used for a magic trick. The diversions are plentiful, and there's even a nod to sandbox titles like GTA in the driving sequences through Santa Destroy, between missions. Off the leash, you can buy new clothes, visit the gym, go shopping, perform mini-games to improve your abilities and practice, bolster your beam katana and more.

You can also earn extra coin by taking on side missions that seem to be deliberately mundane: washing graffiti off walls, delivering coconuts and other tasks seemingly unbefitting a murderous lunatic. Alternatively, you can just spend time in your apartment with your cat. Grasshopper also manage to shoe-horn in amusing references aplenty taking in everything from Star Wars to karaoke. Imagination is not something that No More Heroes can be accused of lacking.

Musically, the style is maintained to perfection, and you can almost picture Johnny Depp strutting his stuff in the role of the arrogant porn-obsessed Travis. The gameplay, for all its refinement, isn't without the occasional repetition, and sometimes its difficult to overlook the lack of overt variety, even when the detailing does disguise it very well indeed. Technically, the game also suffers ever so slightly, even if the ever-present artistic merit does largely cover this.

Minor flaws aside, the Wii clearly needs more games of No More Heroes' calibre, and No More Heroes, like Killer 7 before it, clearly demonstrates why the gaming landscape would be a more barren place were it not for Suda-51's sporadic and occasionally mad-cap diversions.

86%

By Luke Guttridge