No More Heroes is exactly the kind of game that should be on the Wii. It’s a unique new IP, doesn’t suffer from the waggle effect and isn’t a quick cash in on the Wii’s popularity or a mini game festival. More importantly it’s also one of the few Wii games squarely aimed at mature gamers and make no mistake this is truly an M rated game. There’s sexual innuendo, decapitation, blood spewing from enemies like fountains, incest and more! Here’s the two sentences run down of the story. You play as Travis Touchdown whose hobbies involve anime, wrestling and killing people. After becoming the 11^th ranked assassin in the world he decides that he might as well go all the way to the top. The rest of the story doesn’t matter much but is pretty entertaining none the less.

I spent the first hour of No More Heroes thinking about how disappointing it was. The overworld was probably my biggest gripe; it just felt clunky and lifeless. No one interacts with you, people walking on the street will slide in whichever direction they are pushed, and cars stop when you get near them. The graphics work well enough during the battles and cut scenes but are noticeably lacking most other times. The side missions are a bit uninspired. The motorcycle doesn’t handle very well. Everything worked but it all had an unpolished feel to it.

Once I got to the ranked battles though, I completely forget about all the annoyances of the game and had a blast. Collecting money to unlock the next ranking battle at first seemed like it was going to be painful but luckily you earn most of the money to enter the next battle in the pre-ranked battle massacres. Normally it only takes one or two side mission to earn enough for the next battle. Of course you can also spend your hard earned cash on weight training, new wrestling moves, beam swords and clothes.

You definitely tell that the development team focused on the right areas of the game: the combat and the boss battles. After paying the entrance fee, each the ranked battles start by letting you slaughtering a couple dozen grunts on your way to the final battle area. These areas range from mine filled beaches to baseball stadiums and parking lots. Combat is simplistic; hit A to attack with your beam sword; hit B to kick or punch all the while keeping the wiimote help upwards for high attacks and low for low attacks. Once you do enough of either you then slash the wiimote/nunchuck to execute a finishing or wrestling moves. Upon killing the enemy you’re rewarded with a ridiculously large shower of blood and coins. Occasionally Travis will also enter darkside mode which lets him shoot energy from his beam sword or kill enemies with a single blow, among other things. One neat feature is right before the boss battle Travis gets a call which requires you to use the wiimote like a cell phone.

As for the bosses they each have their own quirky personality. Each boss is a new challenge and requires a different strategy to defeat. One of my favorite things in the game was the cut scenes that introduce each of the bosses. One of the final (and best) cut scenes virtually requires rewatching it on youtube.

It’s odd thinking back on No More Heroes. I began playing it with somewhat high expectations and was almost immediately disappointed. Once I got further into the game most of my complaints dissolved into to a deluge of blood, coins and joy. Had some of the graphical issues been ironed out and the overworld further fleshed out like the Godfather: Blackhand edition which I played earlier in the year this could have been an easy candidate for game of the year.

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