Some More Heroes

Earlier last year, I picked up a few games that I had missed out on such as Okami, Shadow Hearts Covenant and No More Heroes. I haven't played very much of the two former, but Suda 51's game enthralled me and took me on a ride that didn't end until after I had beaten the game on the first two difficulty settings. No More Heroes managed to not only be an awesome Wii game, but it brought me back to a simpler time when a good game consisted of beating up thousands of dead ringers whilst getting through a stage. It brought me everything I loved in early beat em ups like Final Fight or Streets of Rage and married it perfectly with a ridiculous story and some of the most engaging boss fights ever.

The art design of the game was one of the things that I remember best about it. Heavy use of shading mixed with highly stylized character designs meshed well together and ended up being palletable. Travis Touchdown was probably my favorite character just because he was incredibly shallow, yet strong willed in an era where the average protagonist in a Japanese game is going through an existential crisis every five minutes.

The only thing that I disliked about the game was (like everyone else who played it) the "open world" gameplay. That's the only term that really applies to it, but there isn't a damn thing to do in Santa Destroy aside from minigames and shopping. I wish they would have just provided the jobs and the stores in the same fashion they do everything in your apartment, just a menu to select from.


Fast forward about a year and a half and we have No More Heroes' Paradise announced for both Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. I kind of think it's a little silly to be rereleasing it on a higher res console as the stylized graphics hid a lot of the visual problems, but I'm hoping that it will get more gamers into playing what would have been my game of the year last year if it wasn't for Persona 4. Supposedly, they're cutting out the motion controls in favor of button pressings, so I guess that's another plus. Anyways, I'm looking forward to playing it a third time, if for nothing other than Very Sweet Mode.