Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes (Switch)

After No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle on the Wii in 2010 the series would go dormant for almost ten years, players wondering if the irreverent assassin Travis Touchdown would ever be seen again. When a new game was announced though, it took on a different shape than the action seen in the previous titles, Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes taking on a top down perspective for its battles that no doubt seemed a departure in form for some fans. However, the bigger change was where the focus of the story truly lies, as Travis Strikes Again isn’t so much a story about the former top ranked assassin as it is a reflective journey for Grasshopper Manufacture and its auteur director Suda51.

 

Nominally, Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes takes place a few years after No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, and much like in that game, he has retired from the assassin game only to once again be pursued by the family member of someone he killed. Badman is a former baseball player in a face mask whose tale is better told in this game’s post-release DLC rather than the main plot, but he attacks Travis hoping to avenge his daughter Bad Girl only for the two to instead decide to work together towards a means of bringing her back from the dead. Travis is the owner of the forbidden game console known as the Death Drive MK-II which is able to grant a single wish if someone can collect six Death Balls and beat the games they contain. While there is still some layer of abstraction, Travis and Badman essentially enter the video game worlds contained within the Death Balls to fight their way to getting that wish, but in doing so they also begin to learn about the creator of the system and games, Dr. Juvenile.

Entering these game worlds already can seem like a bit of a retrospective journey through different game types, their visual presentation and even certain gameplay aspects shifting based on what the games are about. An old neon-colored vector racing game for example adds a drag racing minigame to the action, but for the most part you will be swinging your weapon around to fight the Bugs that infest these often glitchy or somewhat incomplete games. A lot more of the focus behind this exploration through video games seems to be on examining the ideas behind video game development, Travis and whatever boss character inhabits the current Death Ball game sometimes finding themselves discussing concepts grander than a quest for a wish. Having a philosophical discussion about the relevancy of a game type with a sumo wrestler turned futuristic race car driver is certain an off the wall kind of experience and the visuals and area design do have fun changing to match the current game world you find yourself in, but it’s not hard to spot the thin veil hung over Suda51’s own musings as the game director’s personal history starts to influence the way certain characters reflect on it. Some of it will be with tongue-in-cheek references to lacking budget for a more extravagant confrontation with a character, but those flickers of an auteur director struggling to capture his ideas and the resistance he’s received can come through once you start to pick up on the theming having a tie to real life on top of Dr. Juvenile’s more fantastical and metaphorical twists to such a struggle.

 

However, Travis Strikes Again can get quite indulgent with its attempts to pay homage to the history of Grasshopper Manufacture, often without giving it much substance beyond shallow cameos. Most of the game is split between Death Ball action scenarios and the Travis Strikes Back long form story telling sections, Travis Strikes Back presented like an old black and green computer game with text slowly appearing and limited visuals. This style kicks off rather poorly with a long-winded segment that can provide a chuckle now and then but feels disconnected and more concerned with introducing characters who don’t really have much importance. While future segments in this style learn to be a bit cleaner about presenting their information, they are still often more concerned with alluding to previous games by Suda51 with the kind of insubstantial walk-on appearances that feel more like something out of corporate nostalgia pandering than an auteur’s commemorative look back on their development history. The character of Kamui Uehara from The Silver Case actually develops into a somewhat important character at least across a few appearances in this story-telling format, but otherwise the game is content to pay lip service to older games with weak cameos from games like Killer7 and Killer is Dead that are too basic for people who do recognize them to get much out of and without any in-story weight to make people who don’t know the reference have much of a reaction. There is some actual interesting intersection with Shadows of the Damned though as a portion of the game actually takes some time to incorporate its allusions into the current form of play while also commenting on the game’s development and meaning, but over in Travis Strikes Back it can feel like you’re walking around a museum without placards. Other times though it is instead doing work to place down pieces that will pay off in No More Heroes III, the game perhaps lost too much in looking at the past and future that it forgets to build things in the present.

 

While Travis Strikes Back struggles to provide much of true narrative interest and even squanders its attempt to be a reverent reflection on a creative career, Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes also ends up having issues in its main form of play as well. No matter the world you find yourself in, mostly you’ll be playing a hack and slash game about fighting small groups of enemies. Some levels may change your perspective on it like having a side view or pulling much too far out for an aerial perspective, but the fighting style remains familiar and adding strange things like platforming across donuts between the fights doesn’t help alleviate some of the repetition. You can play as Travis or Badman, swapping between them anytime unless you have another player along to play as the other, and they do have some small differences in things like attack speed and reach. However, their basic attack is a weak and swift swing you can hold down the button for to rapidly wave the laser sword or bat around, this mostly useful for hurting the most basic of Bugs. Most will require you to use your heavy attacks which are slower, stronger, and very committal. You have a dodge roll that has no invulnerability but can move you away quickly, but the game wants you to finish a current attack string if you put in the buttons for it so you have to learn when to go for the heavier strikes.

Picking your moment to go in with harder attacks when you know you won’t be hit would be a fine way to add some substance to the hack and slash action, but as new enemy types and bosses crop up, the fighting really comes down more to a set of four abilities you equip. Skill chips are found often as hidden goodies or rewards within levels and you can swap them around to make your preferred set of special attacks. Some have special effects like a projectile shot that stuns foes so you can get some heavy hits on them for free, others are pure damage like a lightning blast, and some like the twirling attacks are good for hitting multiple foes but have the risk of ending sooner if you get hit. With some support abilities as well like a healing zone and slowing down foes you do get more to do in a fight than smack foes around, but the battles still feel shallow because instead they become about the special ability cycle. Waiting for powers to come online so you can actually deal decent damage is more important than figuring out your moment to hit with the heavy attacks, although at least the cycle is broken some since every now and then a special move comes online where you can build it up to a more powerful version by using it often and avoiding damage. What doesn’t help the battle flow though is certain perspectives making the very similar humanoid Bug enemies blend together, and while that can sometimes lead to you being hit by an attack you didn’t know to expect, the game’s difficulty still doesn’t feel too high and its per-level lives system is too forgiving. Sheepman keeps recurring as a midboss fight though and takes too long to get new attacks despite frequent appearances and bosses can sometimes miss out on being interesting battles because your abilities make quick work of them or they don’t know how to really make you think about how to avoid them, so unfortunately much of your time in this game will be spent with a battle system that doesn’t do much to stimulate the player.

 

The Death Balls being different video game worlds does at least mean the game sprinkles in those alternate gameplay types, but they vary in efficacy as well. Having to rearrange the streets of a neighborhood is a visually impressive concept but only really made difficult when a pursuing instant kill face makes you have to constantly lure it away so you can then go experiment with the street turning and hope you do it fast enough it doesn’t reach you again. The vector racing game still throws in some basic battles between the all too quick drag racing, and the final level exacerbates things as it has a bad perspective, lasts far too long, and gets a little wrapped up in an homage that goes nowhere. It does cap off with the most involved and effective boss battle at least, but mostly you’re trudging through areas that might have something to say about game design in the narrative but don’t show much creativity in their actual format and action.

 

There is a bit of love peppered in for indie games as well, the game even beginning with Travis Touchdown playing Hotline Miami and most of the shirts you can wear are references to games from independent teams. Unfortunately, while these outfits are meant to be rewards for collecting coins in the levels either through battle or actually grabbing them, it seems some glitch lead to a messy solution as some players lost their shirt collection after an update and the fix was to give you a button to get all the shirts for free. While it was better than leaving players hanging, it saps some of the motivation for trying to get more out of a level. There is an unusual spirit that gives quirky advice to talk to and some ramen stands to visit that provide some surprisingly well-written and entertaining ramen reviews to read later, and having each Death Ball game have an associated game magazine previewing it helps with the game’s attempts at reflecting on things surrounding video games other than their gameplay substance. Unfortunately, Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes has more intent than follow-through in a lot of areas, the player expected to do a lot of the interpretative heavy lifting to make up for it’s failings in properly representing the ideas it wants to convey.

THE VERDICT: Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes wants to be a commemorative tour through Grasshopper Manufacture’s history and an introspective look at game development tribulations but it doesn’t quite have the commitment necessary for those ideas to flourish. While there’s humor and stylish presentation abounds, the hack and slash action boils down unexceptional ability cycling and the unique game worlds you enter don’t break away from it long enough to break up the tedium. Meanwhile, the story is too wrapped up in references to really examine its ideas or make fulfilling homages outside of a rare few cases, Travis Strikes Again not putting enough into the game side of things to really see its ideas through in an effective manner.

 

And so, I give Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes for Nintendo Switch…

A BAD rating. I brings me no joy to hand such a rating to Suda51’s self-reflective story, but the issue isn’t that it tried to be more than another assassin fest for Travis but instead that it didn’t commit to much of anything enough to realize it fully. If it wanted to be a anniversary celebration it should have tried interweaving things better rather than plopping in empty cameos that would only work if they were subtle background things rather than the focus of many of the game’s story sections. If it wanted to opine on game development it should have put more thought into how it designed this game to play, the departures in style not enough to really show off a collection of unique ideas and the action you spend much of your time with instead feeling plain at best and tedious once you’ve stopped being shown appreciably different foes. These battles take up too much time to be mere connective tissue between the navel gazing moments, but you can nearly see the flickers of inspiration to actually work on the game it’s presenting only for it to be lost behind the nostalgic or melancholic reflections on the process of making older games. It will explore a new idea only briefly though and even it’s most overt excursion into a previous Grasshopper Manufacture game world still ends up saddled with the weak action to interrupt a proper tour. Perhaps it is rather appropriate a conflicted auteur who has previously struggled to express himself faces the same hurdles even when he’s less beholden to major publishers or market concerns, but it can sometimes feel like we’re only getting the end of a chain of thought rather than the important surrounding lead up that would help it land better.

 

It’s not that important that Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes departs from the series format, but it needs some conviction in where it wants to head with its new angle. It can be indulgent in references and opine on game development if it likes, but it needs to invite the player in on it rather than hoping they’ll pick up the slack in making cameos and brief conversations on video game philosophy more meaningful. Execution is the issue, not intent, and if the ideas of Travis Strikes Again are going to lean more towards being an art piece than an interactive experience then the balance of attention should skew that way. Instead, you’ll be swinging your weapon around a lot hoping that maybe the next boss fight says something at least a little profound as you try to extract more out of this game than it is offering. It clearly wants to provide that experience, but it can’t keep its focus on important ideas long enough for them to land the way they deserve to.