No More Heroes had me screaming for no more overworld.
The game began promisingly enough as the main character, an arrogant and otherwise unlikable nerd laughably named Travis Touchdown, explained to me how a woman would climb into bed with him if he killed the highest ranked assassins in the United States of America. His weapons of choice were a "beam katana" about this close to a lawsuit and a variety of pro wrestling moves. Then he promptly beheaded two bodyguards and the game began.
Actually playing No More Heroes was where things went downhill. About half the game revolved around combat with the beam katana or wrestling moves. In other words, mashing the A button until an arrow popped up and swinging the Wii remote in that direction to decapitate the enemy in some way, or pressing B if stars were above the opponent's head to perform a wrestling move. Things like high and low moves gave the illusion that there was some depth to the combat, and I suppose it could be played strategically that way, but button mashing got the job done just as well. Until the game actually decided to mix things up in the last two levels, this was all I found myself doing on the way to a boss battle. I won't say the combat wasn't satisfying, since the sheer brutality of it all ensured that it was, but its novelty wore off not even a quarter of the way through the game. It didn't help that all of the enemies I fought were basically brain-dead and waiting for their turn to be cut into little bits of meat. To make matters worse, there were only two types of enemies: ranged and close-combat, all dressed up in different skins for each level to make it seem like I was facing new opponents but all fighting exactly the same (if they chose to fight at all).
The boss battles were a bit better, since they were composed of some very colorful psychopath waiting for their turn to unleash some crazy attacks. And while they were enjoyable, boss battles suffered from the same repetition. They all fought differently but were all beaten the same way: finding or creating an opening and then attacking as much as I could until the boss could magically block all my attacks again, then repeating the cycle. But in defense of these little duels, many of the boss characters were pretty memorable just because of how bizarre they were: some kind of murderous magician, a superhero who shot a laser from his crotch, and a schoolgirl samurai just to name a few.
While combat made up half the game, the other half was composed of one of the most completely and utterly awful overworlds I've ever come across. Every time I was finished slaughtering a boss and his or her cronies, I was returned to Travis' home town of Santa Destroy (yes, that is its name) and instructed to come up with the cash to enter the next fight. I would go about this by performing some menial labor such as mowing grass, and then taking on the higher paying assassination missions that were unlocked. Oddly enough, the menial labor was much more fun than the assassination missions, although if there were a choice I wouldn't have done either of them at all. The actual jobs didn't bore me out of my mind like the assassination gigs, but they weren't the most fun side quests I've ever come across in a video game, either. The problem with the assassination missions was that each and every one simply involved killing every person unfortunate enough to be there with several variations in how I had to kill them and two variations in the setting (every single one of these missions took place in the same couple settings over and over again.)
There really wasn't much to do in the way of goofing off, either, which happens to be most of the point the developers missed when making an open world environment. No ramps to jump off of, Travis' bike could mow down trees but for some reason flipped over when it came into contact with anything else, cars couldn't be crashed into, and there was only a handful of pedestrians in the whole town, who simply got knocked over when hit by a cyberpunk motorcycle traveling at full speed. With all the fun sucked out of being in an open world, all that was left to do was go to the stores, which weren't particularly interesting either. One upgraded my powers, one let me learn new wrestling moves, another offered beam katana upgrades, and the other changes of clothing. Oh, and there was Travis' motel room, too, which didn't really offer anything interesting other than a save point.
But strangely enough, for its long list of faults No More Heroes was interesting enough to see through to the end. Even if it's not a very good game, there's no other game quite like No More Heroes, which, strangely, makes it worth buying or at least renting, just to take a break from all the grey and generic shooters out today. If there was a game that was best described by "better than the sum of its parts", it would be No More Heroes, since against all odds it takes so many bad design elements and brings them together into something better than what they would originally appear to be, putting them into a game that's not terrible, still not good, but simply okay.