Review – No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle
The eccentric sex starved light beam wielding otaku is back! Travis Touchdown makes his return up the ranks of assassins to avenge the death of his best friend Bishop. Is the sequel a better game than the original or is it much more of the same? keep reading to find out.
Presentation: No More Heroes is an eccentric, gory, punk rock, mature, hilarious over the top beat em up action game developed by Grasshopper and published by Ubisoft for the Nintendo Wii. Although this game came out sometime ago, i have finally gotten around to completing it. Yay backlogs!!
Story: The story kicks off when Travis receives a package one day with his best friends head in a box. At that time, Travis Touchdown was officially out of the United Assassins Association after attaining the top spot. Travis managed to walk away from the events of the first game. Well, after receiving his friends head in a box, Travis wants back in the assassin tournament to kill the people responsible for murdering his best friend. The number one ranked assassin also happens to be the owner of Pizza Bat. Pizza Bat is huge popular corporation in Santa Destroy.
Sound: The signature No More Heroes tune was present. I really liked all the music in this game. The music really added to the various locales and created a atmosphere that makes to want to fight. The dialog is awesome but cheesy. All the voice actors were good including the crazy assassins you fought throughout the game. Everybody had character and a wackiness to them. When Travis makes wicked kills he has a line for every occasion that makes you laugh. One liners and cussing are a plenty in No More Heroes 2. Overall, i found the dialog hilarious and fitting for the eccentric atmosphere of the game.
Gameplay: This is were the improvements came. The overall structure of the game was improved over the first. In the first game it was, fight assassin, work repetitive job for entry fee, fight assassin and repeat. The first game was very repetitive imo. In No More Heroes 2 it isn’t repetitive at all. You have a menu overlay that lets you choose what you want to accomplish at any moment. If you want to fight the next ranked assassin you can. If you just want towork jobs for extra money you can. If you want to train to get more health and hit points you can. If you want to go shopping for new threads you can. You can do all of the above anytime you want from the new overlay menu.
The boss battles are what makes No More Heroes well… No More Heroes. You have wild crazy boss battles that takes you into outer space fighting as mechs to fighting on a cliff on your motocycle. All the bosses were memorable with hilarious dialog. Some old bosses even make returns to take down Travis. The boss fight locales were plentiful. From old hunted houses to bank vaults, to outer space to twilight grassy knolls. The locales were all good and fit the boss you fought well. The difficulty was toned down in boss battles. I didn’t die maybe six or seven times the entire game. Regardless, the battles were frantic and took some thinking to defeat most of them.
I want to talk about the side jobs. The side jobs are actually good in No More Heroes 2. Every job and training exercise is done in 8-bit glory. For instance, the pizza delivery job reminded me of Mach Rider from the NES days. Awesome huh. Every job in the game was entertaining, simple and 8-bit awesome!
Much of the core gameplay regarding the hacking and slashing was the same. Travis still has the weiner that regulates his stamina. You also have the ecstasy gauge that fills up while fighting that can grant you awesome powers while fighting. Another cool aspect of No More Heroes 2 was the fact that you had the opportunity to play missions with Shinobu and Henry (Travis’s older brother). the change up was nice but Shinobu’s missions were kinda drab and boring. You could also choose different weapons…dual lightbeam katannas ftw! The fixed camera was horrid, and made the fighting confusing at times. Other than that, the gameplay was fun and satisfying.
Replayability: No multiplayer component to speak of. I wouldn’t know how a multiplayer component would even fit this game. The game’s challenge was toned down so you might want to play it on a harder difficulty after you beat it. The time it took me to complete NMH2 was seven hours. Keep in mind, i didn’t do as many side missions, jobs, training and shopping. I pretty much went from ranked battle to ranked battle. If you do everything after every battle the game can last twelve or more hours.
Final Verdict: Although i am late to the party on this one. No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle is improved over the first on so many levels. No More Heroes 2 makes playing as a sex starved, otaku, Lucha libre, light beam slicing assassin exhilarating.
8.5/10
