When I first bought Suda51′s Killer7, I was so frustrated by the game that I had to put it away and move on to other things after playing it for no longer than one or two hours. A couple months later I tried to play it a second time and started over from the beginning and even though I got farther than the first time I played it, I still became ultimately annoyed by it and put away to once again move on to other things. Many months later I decided to commit myself to actually finishing this game that had been laying in my shelf for some time and I actually did and I walked away from it thinking that, even though it wasn’t a perfect game, it was one that was absolutely worth playing. This is what first piqued my interest in Suda51′s next game, No More Heroes.

Released for the Wii on January of 2008, No More Heroes is a game with a far more American flair than the vast majority of games that come out of Japan, yet it still manages to include elements that are innate to Japanese culture resulting in a mishmash of locations and characters that is strangely enthralling. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the main character, Travis Touchdown, who is an otaku that fights with a lightsaber he won in an online auction.

Set in the fictional city of Santa Destroy, No More Heroes is the story of Travis Touchdown as he kills his way through the top ten ranked assassins in the world with the simple goal of being #1. The story is extremely straightforward though it does provide decent twists towards the end. The game’s structure is straightforward as well: after you kill the Rank 10 Assassin at the beginning of the game you’ll need to earn some money completing odd jobs and assassination missions to pay for the next match’s entry fee after which you’ll enter a closed area, defeat a number of enemies, reach the next ranked assassin and, upon his defeat, you’ll be sent back to the “No More Heroes” motel to repeat the process once again.

Santa Destroy itself serves as a hub for all this craziness and comes complete with a GTA-like map as the city itself is relatively large and you could easily get lost without it. This is where you complete your odd jobs and assassination missions and there’s a few more places you’ll want to visit every now and then including a gym that increases your strength and health, a place where you can upgrade your beam saber and a shop to buy clothes among others. Santa Destroy itself is rather sparse and there’s unfortunately not much to do outside of earning and spending money. You can ride a bike to ease travel and look in dumpsters for free t-shirts and cash but that’s about it.

The combat system is really solid and has good Wii remote implementation. You attack with your beam saber by pressing A, lock into enemies and block by holding Z and dodge in any of three directions by pressing the respective button on the D-Pad. One of the more original game mechanics comes in the form of a high and low stance based on how you hold the Wiimote, vertically or horizontally, that determines where you’ll hit the enemy and the Death Blow which is simply a prompt that asks you to swipe the Wiimote in a specific direction after you’ve drained an enemy’s health resulting in an always satisfying death to that enemy, and any others in the way, by decapitation, being sliced in half and whathaveyou. Add to that beat attacks (punches and kicks that stun after a few hits), charge attacks, roulette based power-ups and wrestling moves (with specific Wiimote motions and all) and you have a deceptively deep combat system. Unfortunately, some of the more nuanced elements in the combat, like the super Death Blow, counter and shadow dodge (which I didn’t learn about until the very last boss fight), are never explained fully, if at all, which hurts the game when you think all there is to it is just button mashing.

The highlights of the game are undoubtedly the ranked fights themselves as they happen to be where you’ll encounter some of the strangest and most memorable characters ever put in a video game. I don’t feel like ruining any of the surprises but rest assured that they packed a lot of character and personality into characters that barely appear for more than 20-30 minutes each. I think the order in which these characters are ranked could’ve been better as some of the later assassins aren’t nearly as good as the early ones but that might be purely subjective on my part. Also worth noting is that the sections that precede these boss fights tend to become shorter, simpler and just plain forgettable the further you get along. I was expecting a huge battle royale with dozens of enemies before my fight with the Rank 1 Assassin but that never happened.

On the technical side of the things, the game looks extremely dated sadly. Jaggies hurt the look of the game more than anything but appealing character designs and models, along with those fountains of blood, stop the game from becoming a complete eyesore. The HUD has this intentionally pixelated look that is strangely endearing and the game has so many odd interface choices that somehow work extremely well and never cease to surprise you. When was the last time your character saved his game by taking a dump? As far as sound goes, the main theme starts to get repetitive after a while but the music itself goes all the way from good to excellent, the voice acting is terrific and the sound effects are fitting and work extremely well.

No More Heroes is a game that is ultimately more style than substance but it’s hard to not lose yourself in the world of Santa Destroy. No More Heroes is not a perfect game but, in spite of this, Goichi Suda’s latest manages to be the most thoroughly enjoyable game I’ve played on the Wii yet and, like Killer7 before it, it’s a game that is absolutely worth playing.

Final Score: 9/10