No More Heroes

By Oli Welsh Published 19 December, 2007

No more gore.

No More Heroes has been troubled by some severe message-board turbulence lately, after news broke that Rising Star, publishing the game in Europe, would be sticking with the clean, bloodless Japanese version over the gore-fountain that Ubisoft is releasing in the US. Teeth were gnashed and wailing was typed over fears that the Manhunt 2 controversy and the relentless barrage of gutter-press opprobrium were driving gaming into the arms of the censor.

We may never know which version is true to the original vision of notorious director Suda 51, although going by his extravagantly violent Killer7, it does seem likely to be the bloody one. But either version can look like a clumsy marketing ploy, depending which side of the line you're standing; gore is a big seller in the teen-heavy, hardcore US market, and Ubisoft will be well aware of that. More importantly, the fact is that having spent some time with a near-finished version of the game, we're not remotely upset to be missing out on the guts.

No More Heroes has a pronounced retro arcade-game aesthetic - all fruit machines, power-ups, bleeps, tinkles and gratuitous primary-coloured pixellation. In that context, having bad guys explode in showers of coins makes just as much sense as having them dismembered in showers of blood. More, in fact. We feel that a river of body parts would have uncomfortably skewed the pitch-perfect tone of what is already looking like the funniest and most deranged game of next year.

'No More Heroes' Screenshot 1

Don't look at the angle of Travis' right wrist. We said don't look!

The closest comparison might be the lunatic God Hand, by Grasshopper's kindred spirits at Capcom's sadly defunct Clover Studio. No More Heroes is a gratuitously dumb button-mashing action game with sharp style, an irresistible swagger, and a surreal, self-referential bent. It's a game whose hero shouts the names of ice creams when he enters powered-up killing frenzy. ("Cranberry Chocolate Sundae!") It's a game in which you'll hear the phrase "he only looks hard because his mother is an ugly bitch" emitted by the Wii remote speaker in a terrible French accent. It's a game where you save by taking a dump. It's a game that admits it "could totally suck" in the intro movie. It doesn't.

As the garbled intro doesn't really explain very well, you are Travis Touchdown, anime-obsessed otaku, Mexican wrestling fan, cat lover, resident of the sunny city of Santa Destroy and light-sabre-wielding - sorry, beam-katana-wielding - wannabe hitman. You want to be the number one assassin in town, but you're only ranked 11, so you have ten bosses to take down, each one naturally possessed of a lair and a bottomless well of cloned henchmen to hack and quip your way through. This seems to be some kind of sponsored sport, since you'll need to cough up steep fees to the organising body - an assassins' league fronted by Silvia Kristel, the silver-haired love interest with the terrible French accent and very nice bra.

Earning the cash to participate in these hackandslash marathons is where Suda 51's declared attempt to bring the open-world structural teachings of Grand Theft Auto to Japanese gaming comes in. Travis tos and fros around Santa Destroy at will on his ridiculous motorcycle - an unfortunate collision between half a Transformer and a Sinclair C5 - executing side missions, either silly odd jobs (picking up coconuts for a raving stall-holder who claims they are God) or small-scare assassinations of heavily armed pizza restaurant chain CEOs.

'No More Heroes' Screenshot 2

The bike features a nitro boost, and the worst handling and collision detection this side of RealPlay Racing.

In all honesty, this free-roaming odd-jobbing feels very much like padding, and it doesn't half look like it, either. Even assuming the poor framerate is a PAL conversion issue that will be fixed before release, Santa Destroy is a laughably basic cardboard town filled with laughably basic cars which you crash into with laughably basic physics due to the laughably basic handling on your way to a laughably basic minigame chore. Technically it's at least a generation and a half behind the times, but far from unpleasant to play, and the game's great sense of humour and the quick-fire, throwaway style will carry you through. That, and the promise of more of No More Heroes' superb, moreish, satisfyingly crunchy combat at the end of the road.

At it's most basic it's just a question of mashing A to hit bad guys, and even that is great fun, thanks to spot-on timing and a real sense of impact to each blow. But there are multiple layers of sophistication and motion-sensing gratification on top of that. Arrows prompt slashing finishing moves, executed with flicks of the remote. In a lovely touch, pointing the remote up or down dictates high or low attacks to get around enemies' blocks. Melee attacks on B can stun enemies, at which point you can grab them for pile-driving wrestling throws, performed by gesturing with both Wiimote and Nunchuk. You can use powerful charged attacks as well, but these eat up your beam katana's battery, which is restored either by pick-ups or by a remote-waggling interlude.

Weapon clashes occur, where you need to spin the remote quickly to push the enemy off balance and move in for the kill. Fruit-machine slots spin after every kill; hit the jackpot and you'll enter one of several ice-cream-themed, instant-kill 'darkside' modes, whether it's firing fireballs from your katana or cycling through over-the-top one-button kills. It's heady stuff, gloriously tactile, expertly paced and smothered in spectacular effects that go some way to explaining why the environments and henchmen look so plain.

'No More Heroes' Screenshot 3

Observe the darkside mode tiger, top right. He's officially the cutest power-up meter in videogames.

The presentation is magnificent throughout, loaded with innumerable joyous little touches, from the assassins' leaderboard presented like the high-score table on an 80s arcade machine, to scattergun, punky wipes that cover the screen in toilet paper or stickers. There are plenty of meaningless but attractive trinkets for completists to obsess over too: T-shirts, trading cards and J-pop videos, all of which can be examined in Travis' motel suite. You can feed and pet his cat too.

Although the lead characters are etched on the screen with razor-sharp cool, No More Heroes isn't as visually striking as the demented Killer7 was, and it's a good deal more conventional and accessible too. To avoid getting samey, it will need some variation built into later skirmishes and boss fights, but we trust the inventive Grasshopper Manufacture to come up with the goods on that score. It's shaping up to be a basic game that does half of what it does very well, and the other half badly but with such enthusiasm and infectious sense of mischief, you won't care; and it's a dead-cert for left-field, cult-classic status.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (46) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Ciaran #1 4 years ago

    I really want to like this, but the more I read about it the more doubt creeps in...

    Will probably have to rent it first to make sure.

  • Hangman #2 4 years ago

    looks like a naff , crazy japanese version of headhunter. with swords!

  • asphaltcowboy #3 4 years ago

    I've seen some videos and I think it looks pretty bad. Really old skool problems like bad turning circles, constantly respawning enemies and a bad camera. The graphics are kinda cool, but the shadows are massively too strong/black. It just doesn't look very interesting and I'm surprised there are so many people on gamersyde that are excited by it!

  • AcidSnake #4 4 years ago

    it will need some variation built into later skirmishes and boss fights

    Isn't the code completed already?
    I thought it was already on sale in Japan (with no-one bothering to buy it)?

  • JohnnyWashnGo #5 4 years ago

    I am getting the same feeling for this game as I got for Chequered Flag on the Atari Jaguar.

    Let me explain... I anticipated the game from the moment I heard about it. I was expecting a Virtua Racing style game that I could proudly show my mates and enjoy playing. Instead I got a 3D turd of a game which was an insult to the workd 'game'.

    Now here I am in 2007 with the same feeling on anticipation but this time mixed with the sadness I felt from playing Chequerd Flag and worrying that this could be the same type of disapopintment.

    If this game has giant square floating cats in it, I am gonna cry :(

  • Rirekon #6 4 years ago

    @ Ciaran; Unfortunately I don't think Nintendo allow rentals for the Wii, they certainly don't in the UK :-(

  • bushwod #7 4 years ago

    @Rirekon

    You what? You can rent Wii games online?
    http://ww w.lovefilm.com/browse/list.html...

  • gaztech #8 4 years ago

    I can live with giant square floating cats but I can't help but agree with Ciaran, the more I read about this the more doubt creeps up in my mind this is a one trick pony that i'll stop playing a third of the way in.

    I love the HUD in all its dot matrix glory with the mad cat animation in the top right but I cant help but think if all this is slash, slash, enemy dead it'll die on its arse.

    Please please please be good

  • MoGamer2006 #9 4 years ago

    Had this on pre-order for ages but just cancelled it - nearly all the previews have been noting some serious problems that have no chance of being fixed pre-Western launch, so I'll save my money.

    It's not as if I haven't got enough gaming goodness to keep me going through Xmas and into the New Year - Mario Galaxy, Half-Life 2, Contra 4, FF12: Revenant Wings and Battalion Wars 2 are all still untouched!

    And there was me hoping I'd be able to go through Zack & Wiki a second time to find all the treasures... as the mighty Alan Partridge once said "Never gonna happen... never gonna happen".
    Edited by 1 at 19/12/07 @ 14:46

  • Pike #10 4 years ago

    Looks fucking shit.

    Just as much awful style over substance as that horrible looking Killer 7.

  • pyrat6 #11 4 years ago

    but I want giant square floating cats. In every game.

  • DrDamn #12 4 years ago

    A sword wielding game on the Wii sounds great, but the control mechanic ...

    "At it's most basic it's just a question of mashing A to hit bad guys, and even that is great fun, thanks to spot-on timing and a real sense of impact to each blow. But there are multiple layers of sophistication and motion-sensing gratification on top of that. Arrows prompt slashing finishing moves, executed with flicks of the remote. In a lovely touch, pointing the remote up or down dictates high or low attacks to get around enemies' blocks."

    Mash A, point the remote to do high or low and gesture flicks for finishing moves. WTF?

  • Hughes. #13 4 years ago

    I can't see it being a huge seller. Killer 7 did pretty poorly on multiple platforms, and the Japanese launch of this was an embarrassing non-event. I'm sure plenty of people here will buy it, but the broader Wii demographic won't have a clue what to do with a game like this.

  • JetSetWilly #14 4 years ago

    6/10 confirmed. Blood can't save this.

  • Pac-man-ate-my-wife #15 4 years ago

    /is the only person in this comments thread looking forward to this game

  • Zelos #16 4 years ago

    @Rirekon
    Even my local library rents Wii games in the UK (360, DS, PS2 games too).

  • figgis #17 4 years ago

    I like the look of it too

  • Eurolamer #18 4 years ago

    And me!

    I've played it. If you have any nostalgic feelings for old arcade machines and old skool arcade culture in general then you'll love all the little nods and touches to said genre.

    The combat does get a bit samey, but there are enough distractions to keep it fresh. Example: the second assassin you have to take out is housed in a big baseball stadium. All of his goons are dressed as baseball players, and one scene sees you returning baseballs thrown by them, Wii sports style, to take them out. Love it.

  • RedPanda #19 4 years ago

    Post deleted at 14:31:59 28-01-2012

  • GingerNathan #20 4 years ago

    Really looking forward to this, big fan of the mind F**k that was Killer7. Looking forward to another chunk of Suda51 fueled madness. :D

  • Garulon #21 4 years ago

    This looks the most awful shit imaginable.

  • mrharvest #22 4 years ago

    This looks shit. This looks fantastic. My copy was despatched last week.

  • manic_mouse #23 4 years ago

    Suda 51 games always look and sound way more exciting than they turn out to be. They're experts at fantastic concepts and artwork combined with mind-numbing gameplay and broken control schemes.

    Killer 7 was one of the best concepts of last gen, and it turned out to be a joke of a game.
    Edited by 1 at 19/12/07 @ 17:30

  • gaselite #24 4 years ago

    Santa Destroy is a laughably basic cardboard town filled with laughably basic cars which you crash into with laughably basic physics due to the laughably basic handling on your way to a laughably basic minigame chore.

    Just like GTAs 3-SA, then?

  • Feanor #25 4 years ago

    "You can use powerful charged attacks as well, but these eat up your beam katana's battery, which is restored either by pick-ups or by a remote-waggling interlude."

    This interlude looks a lot like wanking from what I've read elsewhere.
    Edited by 1 at 19/12/07 @ 18:11

  • Stickman #26 4 years ago

    It's from Japan so it must be superawesome!

    A button masher that's at least a gen and a half behind? Yes please!

  • Lemming81 #27 4 years ago

    Sorry but watch this:

    [link url=http://www.gametrailers.com/player/29073.html?type=mov
    ]http://ww w.gametrailers.com/player/29073...[/link]

    and tell me the blood and gore isn't part of the crazy game-world. The censored version will be missing part of it's charm, I'm afraid.

    PS> The coins were IN ADDITION to the blood. But far be it from me to do your research for you, Eurogamer.
    Edited by 1 at 19/12/07 @ 19:21

  • J.C #28 4 years ago

    No More Heroes has a pronounced retro arcade-game aesthetic - all fruit machines, power-ups, bleeps, tinkles and gratuitous primary-coloured pixellation. In that context, having bad guys explode in showers of coins makes just as much sense as having them dismembered in showers of blood. More, in fact. We feel that a river of body parts would have uncomfortably skewed the pitch-perfect tone of what is already looking like the funniest and most deranged game of next year.

    I will never buy the game, if its released like this im sorry.
    I want the blood and gore. if not, then i wont fucking bother its that simple.

  • haubitzer #29 4 years ago

    I love how everyone ignores that the coins were already there in the first place. Blood has been taken out. Death animations have been taken out. A downwards slash doesn't ridiculously split people in two anymore, it simply turns them into a black, nebulous cloud, a scathing indictment of ratings boards everywhere I'm sure. Instead of the goofy samurai aesthetic of people dying suddenly, bloodspray painting the room red before they topple hopelessly we've got some halfassed black smoke and writers everywhere trying to convince us it doesn't matter. Which, I guess, means the game is good. Huh.

    I just wish you'd join us in our "outrage" or whatever it is? Because we shouldn't buy games when they're treated like this.
    Edited by 2 at 19/12/07 @ 21:01

  • GRAW #30 4 years ago

    apparently, the yare now having blood in the pal version :)

  • Hamshira #31 4 years ago

    Please dont say "apparently" and then type something without a source. If the PAL version "apparently" has the gore in it, please provide your bloody sources! (see what i did there?)

  • Skeletor #32 4 years ago

    The over the top Kill Bill style gore is clearly part of the game.
    Censored version = NO money from me. It's that simple, Rising Star.

  • gaselite #33 4 years ago

    So, hang on, you'll punish the makers of the game by not buying it due to the fact that they've removed gore (already a spectacular non-issue in the first place), something they've done presumably to appease censors and thus try and prevent the game being banned or withdrawn from sale in a number of countries around the world?

    Ladies & Gentlemen, The EG Comments brains trust at work.

  • Pastici #34 4 years ago

    Bloody hell, how much are people going to bitch and moan. Whatever they were going to do to this game someone will find something to moan about. EG comments threads have been like sitting behind old people on a bus recently.

  • ChrisS #35 4 years ago

    I've just finished this - excellent game. If you didn't like Killer7 though, you probably won't 'get' this. The person who made the God Hand comparison is bang on - if there's one other game this reminds me of, it's Capcom's Looney Tunes beat-em-up. The motion controls are incredibly satisfying - each hit connects like a Viewtiful Joe punch. Who needs a Star Wars lightsaber game when you've got this?

    Preview's right about it being a cult hit - I reckon this'll get a couple of 5s and below from some US sites who miss the point of it.

    But it's hard not to love a game that's so in love with being a game - from the giant pixel icons for important places to the 8-bit shmup dream sequence. Or one where the main character shouts 'BLUEBERRY CHOCOLATE BROWNIE' when picking up a power-up. Or one with possibly the best Duke Nukem Forever joke you're likely to see in a game.

    Some people will adore this - and right now, you probably know if you're going to or not.

  • Skeletor #36 4 years ago

    "...something they've done presumably to appease censors and thus try and prevent the game being banned or withdrawn from sale in a number of countries around the world?"

    That's bullshit, they removed the gore to get a lower rating in order to maximize profit. The "fear of the evil censors" is just a sorry excuse and the full version is the US one. If you pay full price for butchered versions then you shouldn't be surprised about other publishers following Rising Star's greedy tactics.
    If this butchering for a lower rating becomes a trend I'll go for a modchip after all.
    I simply don't buy censored movies, books with torn out pages or butchered games.

  • gaselite #37 4 years ago

    That's bullshit, they removed the gore to get a lower rating in order to maximize profit.

    Yes.

    So, what exactly is the problem with opening the game up to a wider audience?

    Meanwhile there are at least two countries off the top of my head that would possibly give serious consideration to banning the game due to the amount of gore in it, those are Germany and Australia. The UK and US are far less likely, of course, but it's not out of the question. The heavily stylised look of the game would probably bail it out in all those cases, though.

    (The pages torn out of a book analogy is pissweak, by the way, if you take pages out of a book it loses part of its message and value as a text. Gore is purely visceral. It's very much one of those situations where this pointless, shallow bitching is symptomatic of widespread immaturity amongst the online gaming community, fuck me do they like to complain about the most inane shit imaginable.)

  • coach_mcguirk #38 4 years ago

    I really didn't get on with Killer 7. Loved the production design, but the nuts and bolts of gameplay drove me mad.

    I was already looking forward to this... but comparing it to God Hand just makes me want it even more.

  • Stickman #39 4 years ago

    Don't complain about the gore being removed, complain about it being shite.

  • Moschops #40 4 years ago

    I think it looks cool. Check out the website http://www.no-more-h eroes.co.uk

  • Skeletor #41 4 years ago

    @gaselite
    "The heavily stylised look of the game would probably bail it out in all those cases, though."

    Exactly, even in Germany KIller 7 has passed the ratings board uncut without any problems. I'm pretty sure that a normal 18 rating for the uncut version wouldn't be a problem at all.
    Telling the people that they chose to release the censored version in fear of a Manhunt 2 situation is a simple LIE. Unfortunately there are a lot of consumers who swallow those lies and marketing talk without any questions or criticism.

    "Gore is purely visceral. It's very much one of those situations where this pointless, shallow bitching is symptomatic of widespread immaturity amongst the online gaming community, fuck me do they like to complain about the most inane shit imaginable."

    Here we go...stupid and ignorant generalization. Whether gore is "just fx" or an important visual component of the game depends pretty much on the product/ work of art and your perspective. To me, the blood and gore in Killer 7 AND No More Heroes IS part of the whole experience. Toning that down means taking out a component of the whole thing...yes here's my book analogy again, dumbass. You don't have to agree, just stop bullshitting me and others about "immaturity" and "bitching" when all I do is using the comments function to let the publisher know: crippled product = no pay.
    Edited by 1 at 20/12/07 @ 17:01

  • Eighthours #42 4 years ago

    Reviewed by Press Start here:

    [link url=http://pressstartblog.wordpress.com/2007/12 /20/review-no-more-heroes/
    ]http://pr essstartblog.wordpress.com/2007...[/link]

    Your head might say no, but if you’re anything like in love with videogames as much as No More Heroes demonstrably is, then Suda’s latest is an arrow headed straight for your nerdish heart. At a hundred smiles an hour.

  • icycalm #43 4 years ago

    I hated it:

    http://in somnia.ac/reviews/wii/nomoreher...

  • Lemming81 #44 4 years ago

    @icycalm:

    I hope no one pays you actual money for reviewing games. That review was atrocious.

  • Skeletor #45 4 years ago

    @Lemming81

    Mind explaining why? While I don't like the arrogant tone of it, which sounds very often like "I know how to review games and everybody else - especially if he/she disagrees - knows shit", I really think he might have a point about the shallow nature of the fighting system and the poorly done urban environment. I still feel like playing it though I'm probably going to rent it first...

  • yetibreath #46 4 years ago

    Reason I never bought a SNES - blood was taken out of the Mortal Kombat release, no more stunning finishing moves. I was a big Mortal Kombat fan though, and have never heard of this before, looks kinda fun in a comedy vein(but no blood).