Travis Touchdown has been pulled back into his assassin ways after a tragic event has occurred in his life and Sylvia's back with a promise of more "meal courses" if he makes his way up the new ladder of assassin's. Yeah, not really much story to go over, heheh. Let's go over some points.
Gameplay
= Do It Again - The mechanics in No More Heroes 2 are just as they were in the first game with some slight changes. You still just mash A and B to win but the beam combos (when you hold the remote up for high attacks and down for low attacks) are smaller and felt pointless. Instead of streaming high and lows together seamlessly like you used to, now you have to time when you go from high to low and vice versa so that the combos deal the most damage. Yes, it takes more skill which can be fun, but instead it doesn't deliver as well as in the first game. In the first, you could use B to dole out a short melee attack to break defense, hold B to charge a dizzying attack, or mix a melee into your combo to make a dizzying finisher. Now you can't do any of those. You now have a low and a high punch combo that needs to be initiated on it's own meaning you can't interrupt your current combo to melee. You need to stop attacking and wait until Travis is done before you can melee. There wasn't much point to it since there's no true reward for using it to go through a block. Overall, the combat feels more technical but it doesn't feel like there's any reason for it.
+ Superpowers GO! - The jackpot powers are back but they just don't work like they used to. When you're attacking opponents, there's a tiger in the corner that gets more and more worked up as you pull off consecutive hits. It also gets lazier the more you get hit. Eventually after pulling off so many attacks, the tiger turns red and starts huffing and puffing. The slots will also start rolling after every kill with the chance of giving you some instant-kill techniques. You have two choices at this point; You can use the tiger energy at will to attack faster and harder for a set amount of time or you can wait until the slots bless you with dark-side powers. For me, they felt less powerful than they used to be but there's also some more useful and cool ones that you have the chance of winning so I guess it's a little bit of a trade-off.
= I'm The Boss of You - This is a game where the one thing you REALLY look forward to is the next boss. After the quality of the first game, I really expected some very interesting personalities. All I got was what came off as a bunch of fodder. First, almost every last one of them was barely given any depth into their character. Every battle felt like, "Here he/she is, kill'em". Then when you were fighting them, they seemed to only use 1-2 attacks that didn't really do much to you. However, there were times they would knock you down and keep you there through a string of cheap hits. Every last assassin was memorable in the first No More Heroes but now they just fade into the background. If it wasn't for their awesome designs, they'd be totally forgettable.
= Hey, I know you! You're... - There are two extra playable characters in this game but you only get to use one of them in 2 levels and the other in one very short and boring level. I wouldn't make it a complaint that I couldn't use these characters in the rest of the game. I would complain that they weren't implemented in a spectacular fashion and I would've preferred that I only use Travis. It was fun using them while the feeling lasted though. It was just interesting in general to see these two characters as something more than just background noise.
= I'll Be There In One Sec... - No more overworld hub for No More Heroes 2. Now you get an overhead map and you just choose where you want to go. I don't like it as much because I liked collecting things around Santa Destroy and riding his bike made me feel cool. I also kinda felt that if they were going to streamline travel so much, they should have just opened the areas into another menu instead of loading the whole area, finding out there was nothing for you at that destination and then having to load back out to the map. If it was more seamless, it could've been better.
= The More Weapons, The Merrier - There are new beam-katanas to use. You can switch between them on the fly and they all have their own high and low combos. I ended up using only two of them though. It was just another case of great design and okay implementation.
+ Get a Job! - All of the jobs are now in 8-bit form with 8-bit sounds and 8-bit tunes. All of them feel like they're their own game within themselves as well. It was awesome to see so much effort go into these little games. I believe there are 8 of them and they range from the mundane, such as pizza delivery and coconut collecting, to the odd, like collecting trash in space. Unfortunately, there's not too much that you need money for so it causes these games to be almost obsolete.
- What To Do With My Time and Money... - There's almost no point in doing anything besides the main assassinations. You can perform a job, work-out to raise your strength and stamina, buy clothes, buy new beam-katanas, and complete revenge missions. It's just that you won't want or care to.
I found the workout games to be slightly annoying. You play through the mini-games to raise your stats. They were fun the first couple times but it just sucked that if I didn't win the work-out mini-game, I'd have to pay more money just to give it another go.
With most of the activities in this game, you're either rewarded with cash or nothing. And cash doesn't do much for you unless you like buying the clothes or still need to purchase the two available beam katanas. You no longer need cash to get to the next assassination and there's nothing else to spend the money on. What gives?
Story and Presentation
+ Where has the time gone? - No More Heroes 2 takes place in Santa Destroy but in the future. Apparently Santa Destroy is booming with corporations and new residents and it's portrayed well-enough. It was interesting, looking at how all of the old places you used to swing by in the first game had changed into new apartment complexes and company buildings.
= What is this? I don't even... - The story is standard fare for a No More Heroes game I guess. You really have no idea what's going on the majority of the time. It doesn't really take itself seriously either, often breaking the fourth wall referencing gamers and noobies that don't care about what happened in the first game. Unfortunately, it seems like there's less within this sequel. In the first, there was a hidden agenda within its plot. I can draw certain messages from this game however. It seems like they treat this game like a do-over.
Instead of making a sequel to please die-hard fans of the first, it seems like they want to dumb it down a bit for new comers, changing things that turned off the less hardcore. Certain bosses reflect ones from the first game, coming off as easier versions of their counterparts. In fact, Travis goes so far as to exclaim that one of the bosses at the end "was a true warrior" due to the battle being vigorous, challenging and fun, perhaps speaking from the hardcore gamer's perspective that challenge is good, that when you choose the easier path there's less for you to gain.
They made the jobs less mundane to perform, went to a more conventional control scheme, took out the overworld, added "relevant" side missions instead of random assassination challenges, they even gave a purpose to playing with your cat which didn't have a point in the first game.
It seems like mainstream gamers look at No More Heroes and ask, "why?"; Why play with your cat when it doesn't do anything? Why buy clothes? Why kill these random people when it has nothing to do with the story? Why would anyone want to play a game this hard? I could go on and on about things that a lot of gamers thought was pointless and stupid in No More Heroes. The point is, besides the fact that the first was trying to make a statement, was that it was still fun. It didn't take itself seriously, and every aspect of that game showed it. It also showed that it was smarter than what there was to take at face value. It was simple touches like letting you interact with your cat that make you feel like you matter in that game. You gain an identity in that world.
No More Heroes 2 looks at all those why's and and answers them with change. You didn't like riding around in an empty overworld, here's a hub. You wanted a point to interacting with Jeane, here it is. You wanted easier bosses, there you go. You don't like grinding and honing your skill to get better, well now you don't need to. All throughout the game, it feels like it forgot its core individuals that loved it so much until it recognizes them towards the end, challenges them with a REAL boss battle, and then proceeds to make a statement that THAT was what is special to the hardcore gamer; The eternal challenge, wanting to get better, wanting to be better than anyone else, wanting to share your experience and strength with others like you. That's what the first No More Heroes was about. That's what the hardcore play games for.
I guess you could sum up No More Heroes 2 as a statement about what games would be if everyone always made their game to pander to every complaint. The result is just something shallow and often dull, at least to those who like it when their games are challenging and don't necessarily come down to your level just so you can understand everything.
Graphics
+ Don't you look sharp! - Everything looks to be overhauled in No More Heroes 2. The character models are more detailed, there's visually more life in every cutscene, and everything now has jiggle physics: Travis' hair, his clothes, pants, body fat, certain *ahem* body parts. An example would be to think about what things would look like if development studio Team Ninja applied their "special" physics to everything in a game. It doesn't look awkward though, in fact it actually looks quite good. It's just kinda funny when you notice it. The one thing I would complain about though is that some of the textures and pictures are blurred or of a very low resolution compared to how they used to pop in the first game. It tends to make the clothing a bit more boring than it used to be.
Sound
+ I LOVE THIS SONG!... WHAT?! I CAN'T HEAR YOU! - That would be me if I wasn't living alone. The majority of the music in this game was just so damn good! I eventually just ended up turning all of the sound effects down so I could hear the music louder. I would kill for the soundtrack.
+ Bam! Pow! - All of the sound effects are consistent and clear. In the first game, you tended to have a lot of sound effects not come through. There isn't this problem here. Other than that, it's just standard fare. You wouldn't buy new speakers for these sounds. You would for the music though *wink*.
- Who said you could touch my radio? - Could have just been me, but on some of the levels the wonderful, beautiful, delicious rock music just cut out for no reason and it'd stay off for the rest of the level. POR QUE!?!?!
Should you buy this game?
It depends. I'd split it down the middle for these two groups. If you've never played No More Heroes or didn't like it the first time around then yes, go and buy it now. You'll walk away with a game that's fresh and fun. I can't see you being disappointed with it. If you're like me who thoroughly loved the heck outta the first, rent this one. From what I've been seeing, there are those who like it and there are those that think it was just terrible. My advice would be to play it without expecting it to be like the first game. Adding on to that, there's also a hard mode and a boss rush mode to work through to extend your playtime. Overall, I completely agree that it's worth the full retail price should anyone choose to buy it.
As a side note, I would like to apologize if this review was hard to read. No More Heroes was and still is a VERY important game to me personally. After playing the second one, I was so confused. I didn't know what to make of it. It made this review extremely hard to write. Writing this though was almost a therapy for me. I finally worked out the way that I perceived this game and I feel much better for it. I apologize for my digressions within this review and I vow to make a better review the next time.
No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle was developed by Grasshopper Manufacture and published by Ubisoft. Played through "Mild" in under 10 hours using the Wii Remote and Nunchuk control setup.
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