UNDER THE COVERS: No More Heroes

Written by Mary Celeste.

Images from https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/no-more-heroes-switch/

Under The Covers is a recurring column from contributor Mary Celeste, where he delivers a review of a featured game in a more intimate fashion than is traditional for a game review. Snuggle up and get cozy!

The original No More Heroes, first released in the west in 2008 for the Nintendo Wii, is perhaps the biggest junkyard of earnestness in video game history. Every moment, even the tedious ones (especially the tedious ones,) oozes adoration for the video game medium. The button prompts appear pixelated as though made to appear on an NES, and the graphic design of the UI agrees with this approach by never daring to display anything over SNES-levels of visual fidelity. In its striking simplicity and its unhidden adoration for itself and its forebears, No More Heroes holds every right to call itself The Most Video Game of all the video games ever made, for better and for worse

Directed by Suda51, No More Heroes is ostensibly a video game about Travis Touchdown, an otaku who loves wrestling and anime almost as much as he loves taking a shit without wiping his ass. He stumbles, somewhat intentionally, into the metagame of The Assassin’s Rankings, a sort of leaderboard that lists the best assassins who work with the United Assassin’s Association. By killing the tenth best ranked assassin in the world, Travis Touchdown finds himself on the list. Now a prominent target for would-be assassins, Travis finds himself in a position where the only way out is through – and the only way through is to kill his way to the top of the list. After getting the bombshell leader of the UAA to not decline an offer to have sex with him if he becomes number one, he agrees to do his best to become the best in the business. Travis resolves to win the game. We resolve to beat his game.

As stated above, No More Heroes switches between two distinct gameplay styles with the grace of a rubber band snapping shut on your hand: Beat ‘Em Up Action and Open World Exploration. These two styles form the meat and potatoes of the No More Heroes experience, the action segments being the meat and the exploration segments being the potatoes. The writing is the beverage that accompanies this meal. In the case of No More Heroes’ writing, I think that beverage would be a lightly cooled 2008 style Four Loko, ingested only moments before a heart attack. But we’ll get to the story a little later. For now, let’s dig into some bloody meat.

I played No More Heroes on the Nintendo Switch using the Pro Controller, which means that for the most part I didn’t get to experience the visceral feeling of whipping my wrist to the side in order to turn an enemy into a fountain of death during its beat em up action segments. Instead, I performed that action by flicking the right analog stick in the direction indicated on the screen. This was quite satisfying in its own way, and made me feel almost like I was playing a rhythm game – timing my motions with the inputs shown on screen in order to maximize their effectiveness. Generally the combat in No More Heroes is pretty mashy – mash the buttons to either attack enemies in a high or low stance with your sword or with “stun” moves. Mashing them with your sword depletes their health, and mashing them with stun moves puts the enemy into a state where they can’t act for a certain amount of time, and also opens them up to one of Travis’ many unlockable wrestling moves which deal big damage. While fun to watch, it’s generally more efficient to just slash the hell out of whatever’s in your way and then time your input properly to wreak havoc on nearby enemies with the finishing blow. The stun attacks and wrestling moves are great for bosses, but stunning them generally feels like sheer luck rather than something you can skillfully employ.

Those bosses, by the way, are really what make the game work. The boss fights are the meat of No More Heroes’ meat of No More Heroes’ meat and potatoes. The levels leading up to them often feel like little more than a warmup, letting the player brush up on their reflexes and figure out which weapon they want to use before the main event starts. One the player reaches the bosses themselves, they’re treated to fights that are almost universally fantastic, and they’re fantastic for a lot of reasons. I don’t want to talk much about No More Heroes 2 in this review, but one of the reasons that game fails where this game succeeds is because of their differing approaches to the boss fights. The sequel often just throws you into a room with some bizarre character, often not even telling you their name, and gives you a few jokes before letting the carnage start. This game gives you a lot more. Whenever you start a level, it tells you the name of the boss in this really fun, crazy little computer filter voice, and then you see their silhouette appear on screen accompanied by a voice clip. Stylish and Suda as all hell. Right off the bat, before you even start the level, you have an idea of what you’re in for with the boss. You know who they are, what they sound like, and you have a general idea of what they look like. When you finally reach the bosses, there’s a lengthy cutscene where the boss and Travis exchange words, and while there are plenty of silly moments you usually do get some level of understanding of who that character is. You know who they are, and you may even get a look into why they fight. Travis and the player are simply fighting to be the best. The bosses are fighting for their own reasons. Some of them fight because they have something to prove. Some of them fight because they have something horrible and twisted inside of them. Some of them fight because fighting is all they can do.

The fights themselves are great fun. Almost every boss has some sort of gimmick, whether it be Doctor Peace’s knockback weapon, Holly Summers’ hidden traps, or Speed Buster’s lengthy gauntlet. The few that don’t are just good old fashioned action game slugfests, where you really have to learn the opponent’s moveset and fight back with the appropriate response. These moments almost feel like a 3D fighting game, and despite the simplicity of the combat it always feels satisfying to shadowstep an enemy’s attack and deliver a series of pummels. The music, too, is stellar. The soundtrack was primarily composed by Masafumi Takada, who would go on to garner tremendous acclaim for his work on the Danganronpa series, and it is tremendous. The boss themes really add to the intensity of these battles, and the atmosphere is always perfect. Every fight feels earned, and every victory feels like an accomplishment.

So, what of the potatoes? No More Heroes’ action is too chunky to be the only thing you do. If that was most or even half of the game, it would just become a slurry of button mashing that would ultimately lose all of its weight. Suda and his team at Grasshopper Manufacture realized this. So, in order to enter each of these levels, the player must traverse an empty open world doing menial tasks in order to make enough money to pay the entry fee. If that sounds like it sucks, you’re right! It does suck! That’s why it’s great. These menial tasks include: Mowing the lawn. Cleaning up graffiti. Collecting coconuts. Killing 100 people in a parking garage. Assassination missions are just jobs. The bloody, thrilling life of a professional killer is treated with the same gravitas as collecting litter in the streets. Life means nothing. Living is work, and dying is someone else getting your paycheck.  As you roam the barren streets of Santa Destroy there are a couple of collectables to find and things to do. Shop for clothes, or find clothes in dumpsters. Collect a washed-up wrestlers’ kickballs and meet him in a shady bar in order to learn how to sprint (this is very useful, do this ASAP). For the most part, though, your time in this open world is spent driving to a job center and then driving to that job in order to make the money you need to enter the next level. It’s boring and tedious and not very fun. It’s an absolute chore, and it should be. For most of us, going to work is a chore that we have to do in order to make money. It’s no different for Travis Touchdown, even if his job sometimes involves mass murder.

Making a part (in this case, the majority) of your game deliberately “not fun to play” is the sort of thing that can absolutely ruin a game. I don’t think a video game needs to be 100% fun 100% of the time to be a great game, but I think you should generally try to make every moment of the gameplay experience feel rewarding or important in some way. These open world, job minigame segments don’t feel rewarding at all. In some ways it’s like a single player Mario Party – you go around the board, making money from minigames and finding them on the street so you can buy the star, or in this case buy the next actually fun level. As these levels go on, it becomes apparent that Travis is growing just as bored of the meat as the players are of the potatoes. He wants to be number one. We want to be number one. But the path to the end of this game is long, and it’s boring. It’s just another job. 

Travis wants to be number one because he thinks getting to number one will bring him satisfaction. He’s looking for Paradise, and the definition of Paradise is ever shifting. Sometimes, Paradise is a peaceful life in a beautiful mansion. Sometimes Paradise is death, an escape from that very life. Really, Paradise is different for everybody, and it’s different things to everybody at different points in their life. Ultimately, I think Paradise is the expulsion of burden. I started writing this review in January 2021, and it’s May 2023 right now. When I initially wrote this review, I pictured it as another small stepping stone in my path to being some well regarded video games industry writer. I wanted to be the best. In 2023, I don’t want to be a video games industry writer at all, and I certainly don’t want to be a well regarded one. I just want to be someone people like, and someone who sometimes writes things that some other people like. But there is still some small part of me that wants to be loudly adored and treated like some savant, not of video game reviews but of creative thinking in general. I mean, who doesn’t want to be considered a legend? Travis’ struggle to be his own legend is something we can all relate to. We all want to top our respective fields. We want to be praised, we want to be rewarded, and we want to feel satisfied with our positions in life. We want to climb into bed after any given day and feel like that day was lived well. Or maybe it’s just me.

At the end of the game, Travis Touchdown becomes number one. He becomes the highest ranked assassin. He hates it. He’s harassed constantly by people who, like him, want the top spot. The joy of the work only comes back to him when he finds a rival, someone that finally feels worth fighting. Another competitor to best. As long as Travis is running towards Paradise, he can feel satisfied. As long as Travis is fighting somebody he actually wants to beat, he can feel satisfied. Once he beats them, that satisfaction will drain away, and living will once again be a pale chore. With all that in mind, I kind of hope I never do anything greater than writing video game reviews for a small Nintendo fansite. I like to want.