No More Heroes is a 2007 Wii game directed, designed and written by Goichi Suda, better known as Suda51, and developed by his studio Grasshopper Manufacture. It is about an otaku named Travis Touchdown who wins a beam katana in an online auction and, more or less by accident, ends up in the United Assassins Association, where the only way to stop the assassins ranked above him from coming for him is to kill them first. It is one of the strangest games of its generation, and one of the most alive.
Travis
Travis is a loser with a lightsaber. He lives in a motel, he loves wrestling and anime, and he treats the assassination business as a way to pay rent and impress a woman. Suda writes him with affection and contempt in equal parts, and the game’s humor comes from Travis never quite understanding the story he is in.
The Fights
The ranked assassins are the game. Each is a boss fight built as a set piece, with a personality, a gimmick and a death scene, and they are the reason to play. Between them, Travis fights through linear stages of ordinary goons with a mix of beam katana slashing and pro wrestling moves. On the Wii, the finishing swings are done with the remote, and the suplex-and-slash rhythm is the most satisfying thing the console’s motion controls ever managed.
Santa Destroy
The city is where the game stumbles. Santa Destroy is an open hub where Travis takes part-time jobs, assassination contracts and other odd work to earn the money he needs to upgrade his gear, buy items and pay the entry fee for the next ranked fight. That fee is the game’s structure and its problem. Mowing lawns and collecting coconuts to afford the next real level is a joke about video game grinding that is also, unavoidably, video game grinding.
The Style
Everything else is style, and the style is the point. The pixelated menus, the 8-bit sound effects, the wrestling references and the deliberately empty city are a collage of everything Suda loves, and the game is generous with it. No More Heroes looks and sounds like nothing else, and its confidence in its own weirdness carries a lot.
Later Versions
The game later reached PC and Nintendo Switch, and the Switch version is the easiest way to play it now, with the motion controls intact for anyone who wants them.
Where It Falls Short
The hub is dull, the side jobs are filler, and the stages between bosses are repetitive enough that a player who loves the fights will resent the road to them. The camera can fight you. And the satire of grinding does not make the grinding less tedious.
The Verdict
No More Heroes is a great set of boss fights inside a mediocre open world, made by a designer whose voice is worth the trouble. It is the first in a series, and it is still the one with the most to say.
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