Believe the hype of No More Heroes
No More Heroes is a beat 'em up game exclusively for the Wii. It stars Travis Touchdown, an assassin trying to rise to the top and become #1. The storyline is pretty straight-forward. You are killing ranked assassins until you're the best, all in order to "do" your employer, Silvia Crystal. Having this said, it is self-explanatory that this game is comical. It parodies Japanese Anime and doesn't really take it serious. The story is nonetheless enjoyable and some of the cut-scenes are laugh-out-loud hilarious.
Travis is no ordinary protagonist. He lives in a motel, collects anime and porn,bought a beam katana (lightsaber) off the internet, has a pet cat named Jeane, and only cares about being the best (and "doing" Silvia). It's still easy to root for him however. When you start the game you choose a difficulty and then it throws you right in. You can start off with a tutorial to learn the controls or you can just skip them and start playing. The controls are rather quite simple to get used to. You move Travis with the analogue stick on the nunchuck, attack with your beam katana by pressing A (pressing A repeatedly will result in a combo), grab stunned foes with B, control the camera with the control pad (D-pad), lock on with Z, toggle camera behind Travis with C, and recharge your katana with 1.
The best part about No More Heroes is the gameplay. This isn't a typical beat 'em up where you just mash buttons the whole time. Because it is on the Wii, it utilizes and takes advantage of its motion controls. When you are fighting enemies you of course repeatedly press A to attack. But when your foe is almost dead, an arrow automatically pops up in the middle of the screen indicating which direction for you to swing the wii-mote. By doing this, you activate a finishing move that will almost always kill the common enemies and others surrounding you. Of course since this is an M-rated game, it will have a vast amount of blood everytime you kill an enemy. When you grab a dazed opponent with B, you then have to do a motion with both the wii-mote and the nunchuck in the same formula as the finishing moves. These grabbing moves are wrestling type of moves because Travis loves wrestling. Another motion feature is recharging the beam katana. Everytime you strike an enemy with your weapon, your battery meter starts to deplete. If the battery isn't full of its charge, then you can press 1 anytime to start the charging process. This is done by shaking the wii-mote left to right. The funny thing about this is what Travis does on-screen when you shake the wii-mote. Lets just say he positions the hilt of the katana between his pants and starts "doing specific motions with it."
You progress in the story by completing missions and defeating the ranked assassin in that mission. In order to start a mission, however, you'll have to pay a fee with LB Dollars (the game's currency). When you're not doing a mission, you'll be free-roaming the city of Santa Destroy, CA. To earn money you will have to play side missions. There are two different types of side missions. One type is the normal, killing X amount of enemies to earn X amount of cash. There are different locations,variations, and monetary values of this type, but it still follows the said formula. The other type of side missions are unpolished mini-games that makes you collect stuff for cash. This is the only part of the game that isn't good. You'll accept the quest and then will have to do motion based mini-games that seems like they were tacked on. For example, one of the mini-games is a coconut collector mini-game. You have to hit trees for coconuts to fall down then pick them up and carry them to a location. There are different variations to these types of mini-games but all of them aren't very fun at all.
Once you have enough money to pay for the main mission, then you go to an ATM and transfer your fee there. You can also use money to buy extra clothing, learn new moves and upgrade your skills, and buy new katanas and upgrades for them.Your fighting stlye changes when you equip a different katana. Also while free roaming (you use a big motorcycle to get around) you can find money be digging with your katana, and you can find T-shirts in dumpsters. You can also find special items called Lovikov balls. Whenever you collect at least seven of them, you can go to a special place that can teach you a special move or feature.
No More Heroes is a very entertaining game. You even take a crap whenever you save your game! Having this as a Wii-exclusive really says that "hardcore" games can be made for the Wii.