February 4th, 2008 by JSnake
Plenty to do
While I briefly touched on the game's charm before, I feel it requires further elaboration. It largely contributes to what makes No More Heroes what it is. The game is built around 'style over substance'. There are tons of little touches that give the game an incredibly unique style. From Travis' apartment room decked out with various action figures and video game consoles, to the flat-out bizarre characters, you will be smiling throughout the game.
No More Heroes has a rather surprisingly large amount of replay value. For one, there are 49 Lovikov balls hidden around the game's world. They can be distributed over seven sets of hidden abilities. There are also over one-hundred trading cards to find and there are dumpsters hidden throughout the city that hold either money or T-shirts with which to outfit Travis to your liking. There is a harder difficulty level to unlock upon completion of the game (which is actually really hard). If you are committed enough, you could be playing this game for quite a while.
Performance
The game falters a bit on the technical side. It is plagued by many performance problems that shouldn't be there in the first place. Everything is fine and dandy when you are not outside, but the frame-rate drops to the low twenties when you are. There are also a few hiccups when the action gets really intense in fight scenes, but it is not as bad as when you are driving around outside. I find this rather odd as there is a lot more happening on the screen in those fight scenes. The collision detection can be kind of funky at times as well. You may accidentally run into a car when you are not even that close to it, only because the car's 'hit-area' is much larger than the car itself.
There aren't any other major bugs, but the performance problems are unacceptable when this game looks as if it could have easily been done on the Gamecube, let alone the Wii. That said, the game does look quite good as it uses shadows and shading very cleverly. While it may not be a technical masterpiece, it does look quite a bit better than most Wii games.
The fat lady
No More Heroes' music is quite good. While the main theme is reused for much of the game, it is not necessarily a bad thing. The catchy tune does its job quite well and gets the player into the mood of the action very fast. It is also a rather versatile melody as it fits the vast majority of the game a lot better than most of the rest of the musical score does. When you are not occupied with doing assassination missions, you will be treated to these other tunes. They are all catchy and while they may not always add to the enjoyment of the game, they don't detract from it either.
Overall, No More Heroes is one of those love or hate games. You may hate its repetitiveness and the bugs may be too big for you to swallow, but if you are able to look past that and are in the mood for an offbeat and fun (albeit flawed) action game, you will love it. It is certainly unique and definitely worth checking out.
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