No More Heroes (Switch)
In many stories, even if the protagonist is reluctant to be a hero at the beginning, their sense of right wins out and they will keep fighting for a moral cause even if some other incentive ends up unattainable. A selfless hero who does what’s right is an appealing ideal, but No More Heroes’s protagonist isn’t like that. Travis Touchdown may be slicing apart assassins in bloody battles, but he’s not exactly the heroic type, motivated more by his desire to be the number one assassin and spurred on by the vague hint that the woman who introduced him to this world of wanton death might sleep with him if he does.
Travis Touchdown is perhaps more of an every man than even characters usually described in that way. He gets into the assassination business in the first place because he ends up low on cash, although when you view his motel room turned apartment with shelves stacked with an impressive anime figure collection and get constant funny voice mails about the overdue video tapes he has rented out, it’s easy to see this isn’t a guy who ended up killing for cash out of desperation. He’s an amoral man motivated first by selfish and sometimes base desires and he almost seems like the kind of cool killer a disaffected nerdy teenager might want to be, but while he’s clearly perverted and a bit dense, he has a certain devil-may-care approach to life that makes him an appealing lead. It certainly helps he never raises his weapons against someone who doesn’t deserve it and can even change his tune a bit when he meets certain other assassins who aren’t clear cut cases of cold-hearted killers, and the game presents everything with a general layer of humor that does lean it more into a ridiculous power fantasy where the offbeat protagonist is part of this warped view of game that quite appropriately is named against the idea of a heroic world.
Santa Destroy is the host of No More Heroes’s action and the city itself is a cynical mockery of urban decay. No one visits the beautiful sunlit beach because they know the water is toxic, restaurants are named for wrestling moves and will even hire people to kill potential competitors, and everyone seems rather frank about the rough parts of their lives while acting hostile towards customers. While the Switch release retains the somewhat limited and imperfect graphics by simply smoothing out the performance and appearance of the Wii release from over 13 years ago, Santa Destroy itself has that similar appeal as Travis where all of it sounds like a rough and miserable place on paper but the caricature is too over the top to let anything negative really stick to it. It does serve as a fitting host for Travis’s ladder-climbing task, Travis starting at rank 11 on the United Assassin Association’s leaderboard once he joins and setting up special rank battles to try and make his way to the top.
For much of the game, this formula is followed pretty closely, Travis only really meeting assassins once he turns up to fight them and their introductions needing to quickly establish who they are before they’re fought and killed. Many of them are over the top concepts designed first to be interesting boss fights or providing comedic moments, but No More Heroes is not afraid to take sharp swerves both in how Travis treats his foes, how the battles play out, or how extra story is injected into the affair. In fact, the game loads a lot of important detail into very little time near the culmination of the game’s story, layering on so many extra details at once that not only are the characters reeling from it but directly addressing how things could have been spaced out better. No More Heroes is not afraid to poke fun at itself throughout though and it feels rather appropriate to reach a point where the actual structure of the plot gets in on being satirized.
Luckily it’s not all absurdity buoying the experience as the action gameplay achieves an interesting mix when it comes to button and motion controls. Travis tackles his opponents with a beam katana similar in design to a lightsaber, the player able to swing it as much as they like by pressing the A button. However, whether that attack aims high or low is determined by if you’re pointing your joycon controller upwards or downwards, but the high and low attacks aren’t such an important part of the experience you need to constantly consider them. Instead, most fights against regular enemies will be about swinging the blade while making sure you don’t approach while they’re attacking, and if they do block then you consider whether you are swinging high or low to get around it. You also pack the option to break their guard and potentially stun them, Travis learning many wrestling moves over the course of the game he can unleash on stunned foes. Not only do these wrestling moves provide a flashy high damage attack, but you get to mime out the action with the motion controls and are invincible during the maneuver which can help you avoid damage when you’re being ganged up on.
When you head off to fight a ranked assassin battle you’ll often first have to make it through groups of regular baddies, these sections often surprisingly brief but working as good warm-ups before the more involved and difficult boss fights. The path to the boss isn’t just a mindless massacre though, the game usually throwing a few tougher enemies like gunmen who attack from afar or guys with their own beam katanas who take more effort to kill than carving them apart with rapid sword swings. Gimmick battles or special gameplay types crop up during these segments often too, like one where you need to beat a group of bad guys by hitting baseballs back through a line of them. You can also activate a slot machine spin when you execute a regular baddy, these sometimes activating special powers like slowing down time, giving you a powerful projectile attack for a bit, or activating the sinister dark side mode where enemies try to flee as you can approach them and instantly kill them with the right button press. The boss fights are the real showstoppers though, the colorful cast of assassins all bringing new battle considerations and sometimes even entirely new ideas on how to fight them like one where approaching the assassin as she unleashes powerful blasts from a massive gun is turned into an entire stage of weaving through safe places and trying to avoid getting shoved out into her attacks by regular goons.
Conceptually there is a wide range of boss personalities even if many of them are only part of the story for the sake of that battle. Someone like the “superhero” who uses disarming friendliness and cowardice to try and land attacks or the samurai schoolgirl who tries to insist you killed her father to fit into a narrative make the characters memorable encounters despite there being minimal depth behind who most of them are, but the battles themselves are definitely given a lot more thought. If you just swing your beam sword at them wildly you’ll find they won’t fold as easily as regular enemies, high health bars and strong defenses meant to push you to learn their attacks and respect their damage output. Projectiles, teleportation, counters, attack flurries, and more make up the heart of these and if you are a patient fighter you can spot them and either dodge, block, or strike as the situation demands to make for a challenging yet mostly fair and exhilarating skirmish. Admittedly some bosses later in the adventure do have long periods of waiting for them to make a move if you curb your urge to charge in, and since they’re the tougher fights taking the risk of moving in to speed things up isn’t often worth it. A few of the assassins do pack instant kill attacks, usually as punishment for attacking thoughtlessly or not taking their tells seriously, although the magician who otherwise has some fun concepts like turning the screen upside down can lock you in a box where you must shake your joycons incredibly quickly to avoid heavy damage and he can use this multiple times in a row.
For the most part though the fights encourage caution and landing those thrilling moments where your blade breaks through their defenses and maybe even sets them up for a wrestling move to cap off that window of opportunity. There is another limiter at play to discourage wild katana swinging and constant blocking though. While you can even block gunfire with little thought by holding guard, doing so will cause your katana’s energy to wane, and when it’s out of energy it can’t guard and becomes a puny club not fit for dealing decent damage. You must break away and shake it to recharge its battery, and while this sounds like it could be a nuisance, once you’re aware of it you can plan how to include it boss battles since they do have moments of quiet perfect for it. It’s a suitable way to push players towards fighting more strategically, the game able to build you up to better handle the tenser and stricter battles of the late game by impressing upon you the importance of thoughtful fighting.
However, taking down top assassins isn’t all Travis Touchdown does, partly because to get a shot at someone ranked higher than him he needs to pay a pretty decent sum. Between assassin battles you’ll be free to explore Santa Destroy atop your bike, this being the time you can buy new swords and upgrades, do motion control minigames to raise stats, and most importantly, find extra work to get enough dough for the next assassin battle. The first form these take are the part-time jobs, and while most of the game is about the bloody battles, these often take the form of pretty menial labor like mowing a lawn or picking up litter. Some of them are a bit sillier like shaking coconuts down from trees or collecting neighborhood cats by first distracting them with some play, but these mostly take the form of motion control minigames that are simple and either enjoyable diversions or can be completed easily enough they don’t overstay their welcome.
In addition to the little chores, there are assassination jobs in the city as well which are often battles with regular enemies with special conditions attached like a priority target you need to kill before time runs out or massacres where you need to kill everyone before mission’s end. Depending on your performances in both part-time work and assassin jobs you can end up paid more for doing well, encouraging you to take them more seriously and focus and thus even the regular foes who weren’t too big a deal to let damage you a little before become decent threats. There are also missions around town though where you need to beat a group of baddies without suffering a single hit that definitely show you how dangerous regular enemies can be when the conditions are right, and really showing an understanding of defense and enemy management is key to these extra money making opportunities. Thankfully though, not only do you get paid a hefty amount after completing a rank battle, by simply playing the newly available part time jobs and assassination missions and doing them well enough you’ll get most of the cash you need to continue. Oftentimes it can even be enough to buy all available upgrades at the time even without potentially doing the one-hit-kill missions, although this does require essentially ignoring buying new clothes for Travis unless you do want to add more chores to your play time. The final time you pay for a ranking battle also has a high price that can’t be earned too easily and the missions and jobs are often fairly simple and less than exciting when you have to repeat them, but for the most part No More Heroes does set up an interesting cycle of fighting your way to the assassination, participating in an interesting battle, and then doing odd jobs around town and buying upgrades before the cycle restarts.
THE VERDICT: No More Heroes has a distinct style and tone that make it a compelling playthrough as you can’t wait to see the absurdity the next assassin battle brings. Travis’s lack of charisma gives him a goofy yet somehow cool appeal and the assassins he fights are such extremely odd characters you’re always eager to not only go up against their challenging new tricks but just want to see what unusual concept is being pursued next. Jovially cynical and unafraid to pursue a silly idea even if that means you end up mowing lawns, No More Heroes pulls you in with its unusual cast and approach to story, hooks you with a battle system that is gloriously violent while encouraging strategy, and usually has a pretty good handle on game pacing save for when it starts to require a few too many extra jobs to get to the next juicy bit.
And so, I give No More Heroes for Nintendo Switch…
A GREAT rating. No More Heroes almost feels like the kind of power fantasy an angst-riddled teenager could whip up, with the nerdy Travis Touchdown being somehow a skilled assassin who fights incredibly strong assassins without much depth and a city full of biting criticism of modern life. However a self-awareness makes it work as a parody rather than an aimless indulgence, those moments where Travis must go and do some menial work to keep fighting the bloody battles perhaps one of the clearer moments of injecting reality into this otherwise extravagant embrace of bloodshed and quirky enemy concepts. Much of the focus is still on the blade-swinging action and the game does a good job both testing your handle of it and honing you to better tackle the bosses who bring more challenging tactics to the fight. That a few can pack moves that are essentially instant kills without dampening their appeal shows how well the game makes you want to face this unpredictable sequence of interesting battle ideas. The warm-up phase before a boss is often well-designed too, giving you some enemies to carve through, others that require a bit more effort, and usually some sort of gameplay shift to make the path to the highlight a bit more entertaining. Leaning perhaps too strongly on the money-making aspect of the game does weaken a few moments near the end of the story and it is a shame that an optimal path through the adventure involves ignoring the clothing store unless you want to repeat side jobs, but otherwise No More Heroes has a good handle on pacing save for little hiccups like the bosses who can be as patient as the player at times.
No More Heroes is an action game with such a strong personality it can still win a player over even with a protagonist who certainly doesn’t fit the heroic mold. The game portrays him both as pathetic and cool and never crosses the line where you could come to loathe him, his assassination work self-centered certainly but the path he takes to the top always putting bad people in the way of that beam katana. With the other assassins bouncing off him so well in giving them something to apply their absurdity to whether it be in personality or battle strategy, No More Heroes carries itself forward on excitement and creativity even when it will deliberately break away from both as part of its unique identity.