There’s something to be said about how Grasshopper Manufacture has been able to put out a new console game every year for the past three years, something that feels a little unusual for a developer with their track record. There’s also something to be said that every time they do release a new console game, that’s my personal game of the year. And while I’m still struggling to collect all of my thoughts on the game, I think it’s safe to say that Killer is Dead has done it again for me this year. I mean, a friend of mine gave me his copy of the Last of Us which I haven’t touched yet, but I don’t think you have a mechanical arm with a drill attachment in that game, nor do you get to fight a giant alien kaiju. How could it top that?
 

What is it about Suda51 and his company’s games that keep me coming back for more? I think David Brothers nailed it pretty well in his own write-up on KID just a couple of weeks ago. It’s style as substance. I can’t think of a single triple-A title from the past few years that has the same punk rock swagger as No More Heroes, you know? Yet I was getting a little worried for a bit there. Shadows of the Damned and Lollipop Chainsaw aren’t QUITE as far out as NMH and Killer7 were, and that’s possibly due to the collaborative process involved, with Shinji Mikami on Damned and James Gunn on Lollipop. Still, I was concerned that my favorite screwball developer was being seduced by more mainstream sensibilities, however ridiculous that sounds. I realize it makes me sound like a dumb hipster, but the fear was there nevertheless.

Killer is Dead more or less puts those doubts to rest. It’s definitely their most stylish game to date, with the visual sensibilities of Killer7 and No More Heroes realizing their full potential. The graphics still aren’t necessarily the best, but a little bit of art direction can go a long way. Everything is bathed in shadow here, very much like Killer7, only not quite. The shadows aren’t deep black as you’d expect, but more of a blue/purple gradient. Occasionally irritating, but I’ve never seen anything like it before and am very tempted to give it a try in my own art soon.

The story is where most of my frustrations lie, but at the same time, it’s where I had a big sigh of relief. Shadows of the Damned and Lollipop Chainsaw barely had stories, and were pretty straightforward, whereas Killer is Dead recalls the obscurity and disjointed confusion of Killer7. Dark matter from the moon which is possibly malice given physical manifestation infects people (and on one occasion, a machine), turning them into cybernetic demons called Wires. A very body horror kind of thing, come to think of it, flirting with some of the ideas Shinya Tsukamoto tackled in his breakout movie Tetsuo the Iron Man.

(speaking of body horror: the first “boss,” Tokio? He’s definitely based off of James Woods as Max Renn in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome. The brown leather jacket and button up shirt are practically the same, and the gun arm he has is fused to him in a similarly creepy fashion, especially in the concept illustration that’s in the art book which comes with the game)

Our hero, Mondo Zappa (Mondo=World, and I’ll bet Zappa is a reference to rock legend Frank Zappa, though I‘m hardly familiar with his work and how it could tie into the game) is an assassin who is hired to kill targets, typically people who have been changed by the dark matter. He’s an amnesiac, but in an interesting twist he’s also the kind of guy who doesn’t care that he can‘t recall his past. You don’t even know he has amnesia until Dolly shows up, screwing with his dreams. Also unlike previous Suda51 protagonists, while he’s great at killing, it’s not something he has any passion for. All he cares about is seducing women. He has no real charisma, which is frustrating, and yet that also makes him interesting in how it permeates through every aspect of the character. I’m still figuring him out, especially because, as things are revealed through the story, they only bring up more questions.

And that’s good, because, even if it doesn’t give you any satisfying explanations for anything, it still makes you think, unlike nearly every other videogame coming out these days. I feel the same way now that I kind of did when playing Killer7 (to which this game is frequently referred as a “spiritual successor”), where nothing really makes sense and you’re just along for the ride. Not a single character is particularly fleshed out, but that feels intentional. Again, Mondo doesn’t give a shit about anything except looking at girls in their underwear, so it makes sense that that’s how he’d see people, right? He doesn’t bother getting to know anyone, even those who live with him.

Oh, yeah. The Gigolo Missions, which the internet has kind of gone nuts over. Awful. They’re a kind of weird inversion of No More Heroes. Travis Touchdown loves killing, but needs money for the execution missions with the awesome boss fights, and in order to get that money you have to do dumb job minigames like mowing lawns and picking up litter. Which makes sense, slog through the shitty stuff to get to the good stuff, and it served as a nice commentary on gaming in general, working your dumb job to make money to buy an awesome game that lets you kill people. But here, it’s different: Mondo takes on awesome assassination jobs in order to make money to spend on stupid gifts to give to girls in order to seduce them, but you have to work up the “guts” to give them these presents by…ogling them in their underwear? Suda has said these missions are supposed to be like when James Bond seduces ladies for information, but, but…it just isn’t the same thing. I don’t feel like some swank lady‘s man, I feel like some dumb nerd who doesn’t know how to talk to women, and makes up for lack of communication skills by buying them things and staring at their chest when they’re not looking. And then the game rewards you for that?

(Scarlett is the only exception: first you have to find her in each stage, then you have to do a certain number of her somewhat difficult combat challenges, THEN she decides to sleep with you. Presents don’t work, she wants you to tear shit up first, only violence turns her on, and I can actually get behind that…)

It’s degrading towards women, yes. It’s sexist and stupid. But…it’s just so goddamn dumb that it feels intentional? It’s lowest common denominator bullshit, appealing to creepy basement dwelling nerds who can only get off on anime girls or whatever, but it’s just so obvious that I feel like he’s trying to simultaneously point the finger at those people, trying to insult them, but it isn’t quite working?

I don’t know. No matter how you try to look at it, those missions are a total failure. Hopefully Suda and Grasshopper are aware of this and will do better next time.

Aside from Suda51 himself, Grasshopper also has another big personality among their ranks: Akira Yamaoka, who left Konami and the lucrative Silent Hill franchise (made popular largely due to his music and sound design) to join them. I always liked that he basically abandoned the series that made him a huge name in the gaming industry in order to be a part of a scrappy little team that cranks out weird games that will never sell as well as even the worst Silent Hill games. Like leaving a multi-platinum world famous rock band to join some punk band that nobody’s heard of. Since defecting to Grasshopper, he’s done some amazing soundtrack work, with Shadows of the Damned probably being his best to date.

The soundtrack to Killer is Dead, however, doesn’t quite feel like his stuff as much as that game does. I feel like it has way more in common with Masafumi Takada’s soundtrack to Killer7 more than anything else, which makes sense. The collector’s edition came with a CD that has 25 tracks from the game on it, and while it’s all good, none of it really stands out or does much for me outside of the game itself. When I’m playing, it’s perfect, it suits the game beautifully, but removed from the gameplay and visuals it loses a lot of its power. Still, it does what it needs to, and I love the softer, jazzier tracks, which I’ve never heard from him before.

This write-up is already way too stupidly long, so let’s just touch on some other things that I like about the game really quickly: while the bulk of combat is you mashing one button to hack things up with a katana, there is quite a lot more going on, with dodging and blocking being super important, and it feels a bit like God Hand in some ways. The way things go slow motion when you dodge at the last second is lifted straight from No More Heroes, but at least here they actually tell you about it and explain it. Moon River looks EXACTLY like Anne Hathaway, I think. Bryan was my favorite character. Nobody writes dialogue like Suda, and it felt good to have those talks between Mondo and each boss, even if they weren’t quite as engaging as the conversations in NMH. The one thing that amused me about the Gigolo missions was the whispered “MAGNIFICO!” you’d hear if you gave the girl a really good present, a callback to Shadows of the Damned. I liked Scarlett’s challenges, even though I couldn’t beat half of them until after I finished the game. They reminded me a lot of the side challenges in God Hand. Oh, and the “Please Stand By” cut in the Russia level on the train. Not the Zaka TV reference that’s in Killer7 and NMH, but I laughed so hard at that. Also breaking the fourth wall a good three or four times in the most casual way, I love Grasshopper for that.

I feel like if I replay Killer7 soon, I’ll be able to make even more connections between the two, because Suda emphasized that they’re close, but no one else has really brought that up in other reviews, so who knows whether there are more connections or not?

Someone on Tumblr did a nice batch of articles about this game too, one involving a couple of Freud’s psychological theories and how they apply to Mondo and David, and two about how the game’s characters relate to chess pieces. Way smarter than anything I’ve written, check them out if you’re interested.

Also if you're interested, I've written on this website about No More Heroes, first impressions for Shadows of the Damned, and Lollipop Chainsaw.

So it’s been a while since I’ve done something like this, and I’ve been wanting to flex my writing chops a bit in this manner for a while now. Here we have, in no real particular order, a bunch of thoughts and feelings on a bunch of things I’ve been reading, watching, and playing lately.

BioShock Infinite: Damn good game with a crazy ending that really got people talking, which is more than most videogames even strive for these days. After beating it, I became increasingly disappointed in several of the choices made in the story, especially the way it shifts away from Columbia and the crazy racism and religious beliefs and started focusing more on Elizabeth and Booker. I was much more interested in the game’s social commentary than in the quantum mechanics stuff, and I’m hoping some of the upcoming DLC will shift the focus back on those aspects. That ending is a really good visualization of…of…multiple universes and such, though, and I like a game that doesn’t hold your hand and expects you to have at least a passing familiarity with early 20^th century American history in order to kind of grasp what’s going on.

The Hunger Games: On a whim, I tried watching the movie on Netflix. I made it maybe 20-30 minutes in before giving up. It’s atrociously shot, more like a Shinya Tsukamoto film without the drill penises and screaming. Seriously, just the worst camerawork I’ve seen in some time. Unwatchable. I’ve started reading the book, and noticed that just from what little I watched, the movie also expects you to have already read it, which is a terrible idea. The book itself? I’m not far enough into it to have a decent opinion on it, but I am enjoying it somewhat. I’m not seeing how it caught on and became so enormously popular, but it’s not bad at all.

Kingdom Come, by JG Ballard: Ballard’s final novel before he passed away, about a dome-enclosed supermall in England and the crazed culture that builds around it. Like Columbia in BioShock Infinite, it’s an atrociously racist society, with consumerism as the primary religion. It starts off as a murder mystery, the novel’s protagonist looking for the man who shot and killed his father, and spirals into something larger and scarier from there. Not exactly what I was expecting, but this was my first time reading any of Ballard’s work outside of a few of his short sci fi stories.

Copra: Michel Fiffe’s self-published monthly action comic pays tribute to superhero comics of the 70’s and 80’s with explicit references to Dr. Strange and Suicide Squad, while simultaneously putting to shame every single book Marvel and DC are putting out today. The sixth issue dropped this month, concluding the first storyline, and it is the best monthly comic I’m reading right now. Fiffe is a beast, and every issue has at least a good two or three incredibly inventive sequences. Drop whatever crappy cape comic you’re reading right now and go pick this up. The first three issues are collected in the Copra Compendium, with the second collection coming soon.

Hawkeye: Having said that up there, Hawkeye is pretty good too, largely due to the crazy tricks David Aja has been pulling in the artwork. It may not deserve half the Eisner nominations it got, but it is quite enjoyable and a breath of fresh air compared to all the other crap that the Big Two print.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon: I have never played a Far Cry game before. I don’t really know what they’re about or anything like that. A friend convinced me to play this, however, by getting me to listen to the insanely good synthesizer soundtrack and watching a couple videos of the game in action. The game is every 80’s action/sci-fi movie cliché rolled into one, taking place in the dystopic future of 2007. The dialogue is hilarious, and the game’s hints during loading times are great, as are the tutorials. I’m usually not incredibly fond of shooters, but I will enjoy anything that’s drenched in neon with a killer synth score.

Adventure Time and the Regular Show: Fucking hilarious, wonderful cartoons. How have I never watched these before? They’re just so great. And weird. Good weird. I shouldn’t have to explain them to you.

Ren & Stimpy: Man, that first season holds up well. Weird, creepy, hilarious, unsettling, and a lot smarter than I remember it being.

Iron Man 3: Much better than I was expecting. Plot is full of holes, the villains’ motivations are…fuzzy, to say the least, and the final showdown at the end almost put me to sleep, but there are some really genius bits in there. I wish the movie had dialed back on the humor a little and focused a bit more on Tony’s PSTD/anxiety attacks. That could’ve developed into something really interesting, but in a movie with a ton of other stuff going on, it just becomes almost pointless as it gets buried in fanservice. I loved the handling of the Mandarin, and that entire Miami sequence in general is great. I heard some people this past weekend at the comic shop complaining, about how Tony is barely in the suit throughout the movie? I was okay with that. I liked that more, that it was trying to show Tony as more than just some handsome smart guy who says funny things. Still, WAYYYYY better than the Dark Knight Rises, that movie was just crap…

Upstream Color: The movie I have been waiting to see since it was first announced. It’s my movie of the year so far, and I kind of doubt anything else will top it. Shane Carruth’s Primer is one of my favorite films and I never imagined he would be able to top it, but he has. The soundtrack is wonderful, feeling like you’re in an aquarium, and is a big part of the movie’s atmosphere. It moves like a dream, showing more than telling, making you pay attention and search for clues, piecing together what’s happening as it happens. I need to watch it again, as I still don’t completely grasp it all, and I’d like to write something more on it, but I just haven’t chewed on it enough yet to come up with anything worth reading, especially regarding the (forced?) romance between the two main characters and how it appears to be a literal representation of how it feels to fall in love. Still, it’s sublime, you can pause it at any moment, frame it, and hang it up in a gallery, it’s that beautiful. The sound design is incredible. In a perfect world, we’d have more beautiful, intriguing movies like this to think and talk about. I can’t wait to see what Carruth does next.

Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain: My girlfriend got me into Bourdain’s No Reservations shortly after we met. I love that man, and this is the book that made him famous. I’m only a little more than halfway through it, I confess, but it’s wonderful, and reading it before bed is a bad idea because it always makes me hungry. Bourdain writes in a way that is intoxicating and addicting to read, and it’s his own personal account of his experiences hopping from one restaurant to the next, an ugly but exciting look at what goes on behind the scenes in the industry. I’ve got another book or two of his waiting to be read, and I hope they’re just as good.

Change: This 4-issue miniseries written by Ales Kot, illustrated by Morgan Jeske, colored by Sloane Leong, and lettered by Ed Brisson is incredible. Dense, too. I need to reread it to really wrap my head around it, especially since I kind of read the issues out of order on my first go, but it’s unlike anything else in comic shops right now. It’s strange and dense, vibrant and alive, and I love it. Like with Upstream Color, I want to see more like this.

There are so many more things I’d love to write and talk about, but not enough time and space here, and I’m kicking myself for just realizing that I’d left out the music I’ve been listening to lately as well: Colleen Green’s Sock it to Me, the Shirks, Electric Ills. I’d like to talk more in-depth about Power Glove’s soundtrack to Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, Slime Girls, the new song Anamanaguchi dropped the other day from their upcoming new album, and more. But alas, I cannot.

So. What have YOU been reading, watching, playing, listening to? What’s been on your mind lately?

[Brett]

Lollipop Chainsaw is the one game I was really looking forward to this year, and it did not disappoint.

I WAS a little concerned at first. Suda51’s games seem to be getting increasingly dumbed down as they become more slick, when you look at how Grasshopper has progressed from developing the insanely dense and obtuse Killer7 to…a game about a cheerleader who fights zombies with a chainsaw. And yeah, it is a little disappointing that these games aren’t quite as thought-provoking, unpolished, and…maybe insane isn’t quite the word, but what I’m trying to get at is while the narrative for Flower, Sun and Rain will have you ripping your hair out in confusion (if the gameplay itself hasn’t caused an aneurysm), Shadows of the Damned is just about shooting demons in Hell to get your woman back, not a whole lot to think about there.

So yeah, a little part of me wishes Suda51 would throw out another game with a story that requires a lot of research to grasp and gameplay that can be just plain inconvenient, but at the same time? Lollipop Chainsaw is just so much damn fun, even if it is rather shallow.

Here’s the big thing about it that appeals to me: this game is like a tribute to the bizarre splattergore films that guys like Yoshihiro Nishimura have been cranking out over the past few years. Specifically, I’m reminded of Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein girl, but the flying zombies in the game (propelled through the air by blood spurting from their leg stumps) HAVE to be influenced by the final showdown in Tokyo Gore Police. James Gunn, director of Slither and writer of the Dawn of the Dead Remake, is in on it too, and you can see his fingerprints all over it in the dialogue and the silly references that the game throws out.

That’s another thing I love. This game is HILARIOUS. Juliet is so vapid and takes this localized zombie apocalypse all in stride, while her severed head boyfriend Nick gets all the best lines as he freaks out and questions what the fuck’s going on. The zombies themselves say some great shit too. I can’t get over this one fat zombie who declares “they’re selling popsicles for fifty cents!” And, for some dumb reason, I always laugh at the football player zombie who shouts “ten hut, ten butt fuck!” It’s crude and oh so juvenile in so many ways, and I think that’s one of the reasons I love it.

You could beat the game in about 4 hours if you just run through it, yes, but I take no issue with this. Between work, making art and comics, and the other stuff I do, I’m cool with playing a game that’s not going to take me 50+ hours to beat or whatever. I can jump in, play a level or two, and I’m good. And I can’t stop replaying certain levels of the game either. I mean, I was gearing up to write this review, and instead decided to go replay the 3rd stage. That’s how much I enjoy this game. Yes, it’s a little repetitive since all you’re doing is hacking up zombies and occasionally playing a minigame of Zombie Basketball or something, but trust me, it’s FUN.

The soundtrack goes a long way too. In fact, I’m fairly sure it easily ranks among my top five favorite videogame soundtracks ever. Akira Yamaoka ROCKS THE FUCK OUT in a way I haven’t heard since his work on Contra: Shattered Soldier, which is also in my top 5 faves. Here’s my favorite track from the game’s prologue stage:

There’s also a lot of great rockabilly and bone-crushing metal. You have the option of picking any five tracks (you unlock more as you progress, of course) to make a playlist to listen to while playing, which is a huge plus to me. And, since this game is published by Warner Brothers, there’s a lot of licensed music thrown in too. Every time you use your Sparkle Power (one hit kills + invincibility), “Hey Mickey” starts playing. I think this is the first time I HAVEN’T outright hated that song. Another stage has you slaughtering zombies on a rooftop to “Pac Man Fever.” Of course, not all of the licensed music is great. Not even Lollipop Chainsaw can get me to enjoy Skrillex or Five Finger Death Punch.

Also? The boss battle tracks are all scored by Jimmy Urine of Mindless Self Indulgence, who also voices the first boss, Zed. He does a FANTASTIC job of it, too.

People knock the game a bit because the graphics aren’t too great, but that’s a charming thing to me. I have never played a Grasshopper game with mindblowing visuals, and I’d kind of like to keep it that way, it suits the punk band influence that Suda51 comes from. Still, I’m so happy that this game is so goddamn colorful. They use a great comic book aesthetic for everything too. I’ve always loved the visual aesthetics that Grasshopper has used in their games, so this is definitely no exception. The game has also received criticism for having a ridiculously sexualized protagonist, but that doesn’t bug me. Juliet is a cartoon character, and it’s hard to get upset over her appearance when she’s just so damn bubbly and kind of badass. No one really comments on her appearance or threatens to rape her or anything like that, and past the opening cinematic, it’s not like the camera is always up her skirt or down her cleavage. If anyone’s truly being objectified, it’s Nick, LITERALLY. I think this whole thing is just Suda51 poking fun at and satirizing gaming trends with no real overall statement about uh, feminism or anything. And that’s unfortunate, but it’s not really a problem either. Actually, Jonathan Holmes did a great post on Destructoid where he interviewed Jessica Nigri as Juliet and wrote quite a bit about the central ideas of objectification in the game. Give it a read.

Okay, I’m well over 1000 words so let’s wrap this up: Lollipop Chainsaw is AWESOME. Go play it. Or not! It’s up to you! This is just how I feel about it, you may think differently.

Regardless, you gotta admit, with the way the gaming industry is these days, we should be thankful there are still dudes like Suda51 who do things differently. That man is my hero. RESPECT.

[Brett]

So DC Comics is now a couple of weeks into their huge new deal, the DC New 52. Fifty two new first issues essentially relaunching the DC Universe proper and releasing them simultaneously in comic stores and digitally. It’s a huge move, one that feels just a little bit desperate, but it’s nevertheless a bold and interesting thing to do. However, my knowledge of and interest in the DCU has always been extremely limited largely to just following specific creators. Still though, their overall excitement and the heaps of exposure they've been getting still got me interested in a few of their titles…

…Only the fringe stuff, of course. DC’s pantheon of superheroes never really appealed to me as much as Marvel, and I’ve never tried to puzzle out why, nor will I.

It all started, for me, with OMAC. Everyone involved are clearly trying their hardest to be like Jack Kirby was when he created the character. Keith Giffen is doing his best to draw like Kirby, and while the colorist is also trying their best to make everything into a shiny plastic mess, it still works. The writing is juvenile. The first issue is 20 pages of OMAC busting things up and smacking strange villains around. Like the Build-A-Friend chick! Her face PEELS BACK to reveal twin laser cannons, where a skull (mechanical or not) should be! And those crazy Gobbler things. They just line up to get smacked down by OMAC in these horribly bright colors, spouting off silly dialogue, AND I LOVE IT. There’s a genuine sense of child-like glee in the book that’s infectious. It’s crazy, not in a Grant Morrison talking about time centipedes way, but in an odd, sincere, childish way, like some of the superhero stuff I would make up when I was in elementary school. And I mean that as a compliment. I hope it stays weird, and I hope it stays silly. It’s nothing groundbreaking, and admittedly I’d rather have actual Kirby art than someone aping Kirby, but still, it’s a lot of fun.

I wanted to buy Animal Man, but it sold out and I can’t find a copy. Arg. Well, I guess I could get it on ComiXology, but I don’t want to read it one panel at a time.

Which leaves me with the only other comic I bought, Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE. The title alone hooked me. I had to know if DC were really trying to reference Marvel’s Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD stuff and, well, the truth is that no, they’re actually trying to be more like the DCU equivalent of Hellboy and the BPRD. I’m not complaining. Frankenstein and his Creature Commandos (get it? GET IT?!) are like if the Universal movie monsters got together as a special ops team. There’s a winged vampire dude, an amphibious scientist chick, a mummy whose identity is unknown, and a werewolf. In the first issue, they’re dropped into a town that’s been taken over by monsters that have mysteriously appeared. Their commander is Frankenstein’s father, Father Time, who for some reason is a little asian girl with a domino mask. Their base of operations is a tiny sphere that they have to be shrunk down and teleported into, created by Ray Palmer, the Atom. And here I was thinking OMAC was nutty. Read this paragraph again. If a team of horror movie icons fighting monsters doesn’t appeal to you in any way, I don’t want to know you.

Apparently further down the line, OMAC and Frankenstein are going to cross over. It’s meant to be.

Looking at the checklist of all of the other titles, there’s nothing else that grabs me in the same way these do. I don’t know how the merging of the Wildstorm universe with DC is going to play out (awkwardly?), but I don’t think there’s much reinventing the wheel going on. Yes, they’re starting from scratch (for the most part, there may be some continuity snags here and there I’m sure, but I am indifferent), but it’s not like they’re radically re-envisioning these characters and stories, which is kind of a shame. I keep wondering if we’ll ever see something new and monumental out of the superhero genre like the Dark Knight Returns, Elektra: Assassin, or Watchmen, something that breaks the rules and changes the way the game is played. Chances are? Not very likely.

Ah well. At least there’s a comic about a bulky blue guy with a shimmering mohawk beating people up, I really think the world needs more of that.

[Brett]

“People like us, we’re sharks attracted to blood. You smelled blood too, didn’t you? Isn’t that why you’re here?”

I’ve been thinking a lot about No More Heroes lately as compared to Suda51‘s other, more recent works. Shadows of the Damned was great, but left a bit to be desired, and while Lollipop Chainsaw looks fantastic, it’s just…I don’t know if it could top No More Heroes.

No More Heroes, for the uninitiated, is…well, I’m having a hard time putting it into words. It’s an action game, but with a lot of mundane side jobs like picking up litter and mowing lawns. It’s crude, violent, the graphics aren’t pretty, you save your game by going to the toilet, the open world is largely empty with very little to interact with, the simple barely-there plot turns grossly convoluted and confusing in the final act, and the whole thing has this gleeful punk rock attitude in just how manic and sloppy it is. And for being a game where you recharge your weapon by shaking the Wii remote like you’re jerking off, there’s a weird degree of subtlety to it. It’s my favorite videogame ever, and its protagonist, Travis Touchdown, may be my favorite videogame character as well.

"You got it old man! And for some reason I feel this sense of euphoria..."

So we’ll start there. Travis Touchdown is a nerd and a loser, despite having a sweet motorcycle and wicked jacket. He lives in a motel alone with his cat and collects action figures, watches anime about pubescent girls with magic powers, and that’s about it. But he’s also the ultimate badass killer too. Travis is like a stereotypical gamer nerd, and No More Heroes is his videogame fantasy. Make no mistake, this game is the ultimate adolescent wish-fulfillment scenario: the sad nerdy guy who picks up an awesome weapon and sets out on an epic journey to save the day and get the girl. Quick, name a science fiction weapon that anyone, geek or not, would recognize and would totally love to have, if they don’t already own a fake one. If you guessed a lightsaber, you’re correct! Except George Lucas has a copyright on that and so what Travis purchases in an online auction to become a badass money-making assassin is a beam katana, but make no mistake, that’s what Suda51 was thinking about when he decided on what weapon to give this nerdy character. By day, Travis watches wrestling tapes (tapes, not DVDs, yes), plays with his cat, and takes small jobs like pumping gas and cleaning graffiti off buildings in the city of Santa Destroy. Then he uses the money he makes from those jobs to take on assassination gigs, climbing the ranks of the UAA to become the top assassin and hopefully get laid. The dichotomy there is a clear statement on what being a gamer (or an artist, or, I don’t know, porcelain doll enthusiast) is like, taking up crappy part-time jobs in order to pay for your real passion. It’s really quite genius. The side jobs are not much fun, but they’re not MEANT to be, and doing them just means that when you do get to the killing, it makes slicing folks in half and hearing them scream “MY SPLEEN!!” that much sweeter.

"Don't die on me too quickly. I want to gorge myself on this sense of fulfillment till I vomit."

That split in gameplay content aside, the game would still otherwise be a simple, shallow affair were it not for the game’s boss battles, the icing on the cake. Watch that cutscene again up there. Every boss battle starts and ends with a scene like that. The boss assassins are all colorful characters to be sure, but those scenes really develop them as flesh and blood people, and that in dealing with these guys, Travis is most definitely in his element. Here the anime-loving dweeb waxes philosophical as each boss details his or her motivations for killing, and what their life is like. The first boss, Heavy Metal, lives a pampered life in a gorgeous mansion, Dr. Peace is a grim, Dirty Harry-style killer, Shinobu is out to avenge her father’s death, et cetera. All of them have a greater motivation than the scrappy punk Travis, who just wants to be number 1 and get some tail, not caring about much of anything else, but as he goes on to face each one, you can detect a change taking place in him. This is illustrated in other ways too, like how the open world of Santa Destroy is just…empty, with only a few shops to go into and no real interaction, because none of it is important to Travis. It’s like how I could tell you where all the local comic shops are in the tri cities, but when it comes to the places they’re around, I’m not sure because I don’t really pay much attention to them. I identify with that.

So yes, this a game that’s very socially aware in a strange way, but the mere fact that it’s socially aware separates it from nearly every other single game out there. Like many of my favorite works of pure genius, all the intelligence is hiding under the dick jokes and gore.


And then there are all sorts of little touches that make me smile: Enemies spewing fountains of blood and coins as they die. The cartoony scream Travis lets out if you accidentally drive his motorcycle off a ledge. The top-down shmup stage that’s a dream. Collecting luchador trading cards. The awesome t shirts you can get. Having new techniques literally beaten into Travis. The music for the gym being a slight reference to Eye of the Tiger. Having to hold the Wii remote like a phone to listen to Sylvia before each boss fight. The distorted voice announcing the boss’s name, followed by a quip from the boss, followed by a wailing guitar. The posterization effect and the guitar chord on the loading screens. And so much more.

The game is a huge influence on me. It’s probably the most popular of Suda51’s, especially since it’s the only one to spawn a sequel. No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle is quite different from it’s predecessor while delivering more of the same action and wackiness that made the first so great. I don’t think I enjoy it QUITE as much, but…well, it warrants its own write-up in the future, yes…

"See you on the other side."

[Brett]