More blades, babes and blood than the original, Sudo 51 delivers tomorrow’s drug trip today. Still want your Shakespearoes now, huh?
Format: Wii Dev: Grasshopper Manufacture Pub: Rising Star Games Out: 28/05/10 Players: 1
“What have I missed?” Asks the ever-arrogant hero of the game, Travis Touchdown, the convenient opening line for an explanation of backstory. However, the reply isn’t what’s expected.
“Players don’t want to waste their time with pointless flashback. They just want to get to the game,” replies the mysterious Sylvia Christel, a French lady with a rather large bosom and an eye for Travis.
No More Heroes 2 is a game that knows its place, and openly mocks the video game industry to humour ends. The plot is much a rehash of the previous title. A path of assassins lie before you and being the number one killer. There are twist and turns along the way, but the plot so extraneous that you’ll soon stop caring. As soon as I found the ‘exercising the cat’ mini-game I gave up caring about plot progression. As has been with many games I’ve reviewed lately, this isn’t about the plot. The game even mocks the pointless nature of story in a hack-n-slash.
Mundane aspects out the way, the only way that you can talk about this game would have to be the experience of it all. This certainly is one of the more quirky titles available on the Wii. Even for veterans of the previous title, after the euphoric feeling of returning to this mad universe, there are still things that’ll leave you stumped and confused. As referred to earlier, you have a mini-game to exercise your cat, in order to make him lose weight. Some of the enemies are insanely designed; some character dialogue is the pinnacle of leaving you with question marks. The experience is strange, but it’s really enticing, something you can’t take your eyes off.
And when the gameplay starts, this same quirky sense of humour continues. It’s, pretty much, the same over-the-top Kill Bill action as the previous title. What is at the core of it is a traditional hack-n-slash mechanic with not much substance and exploration into combos. The complexity, instead, comes from maintaining a balance between attacking and retreating to charge. Of course, the rapid up and down movements closely relates to… a certain activity, but least said the better, eh? There isn’t much exploration beyond this, minus the occasional poke of humour and putting the player in compromising positions. Gameplay is strong, but it gets really repetitive, really quickly. You can tell they utilised the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality.
And now what does this make altogether? I had a hard time reviewing this. On one hand, it has genuine humour: this game represents a magnificently warped pastiche of the video game industry. To look at it this way, NMH2 is the Dead Ringers of gaming. However, the gameplay, no matter how strong the mechanic, does get repetitive. Eccentric, provocative and entertaining, but not an astronomical step up from the original.
Jason England
Tags: action, beat-em-up, hack-n-slash, no more heroes, rising star games
