| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| Wii | 7.00 |
| Overall | 7.00 |
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No More Heroes turned out to be a disappointment for me. Review scores for the game were very good, I very much enjoyed Killer 7 and was thrilled to see a free moving game done by Suda 51. But the game is to unbalanced at times, parts of it look great, others look like a cheaply made DC game. There is far too much repetition as well. NMH combat makes good use of the wiimote. Depending on how you hold it, up or down your stance will change. You can slash with A or melee with B which can cause a stun. If you stun someone you can do a wrestling move which commands you to do motions with the wiimote and nunchuck. Also when you hit an enemy to their death point you can do a finish move by swinging the wiimote in the direction of the arrow that comes on sceen. Action is fast paced with blood flowing all over the place, you will be swing the wiimote around a lot cause enemies drop very quickly. There are the usual dodge and counter moves you find as well as a few special power up moves. As you attack your battery of your fake lightsaber goes down, to refill it you need press the refill button then waggle the wiimote as fast as you can. Also when you do a finishing move on an enemy a slot machine thing pops up, get three of a certain item and you enter a certain power up mode. So all that sounds a bit crazy right, well it is, your screen is filled with all sorts of crazy bars and meters but the sad thing is that in the end it really is all about pounding on the A button and doing a wiimote gesture. The regular enemies rarely put up much of a fight, you can mostly just power right through them by slashing like mad. The two stances are supposed to allow you to attack an enemy if they block high or low, you do the opposite and you will hit them, sadly this is hardly used as eventually you will land your hits. Groups of enemies will run at you, sometimes all you need to do is attack one and your finish move will take out like 6 other guys. As you advance the game you earn more and more wrestling moves but whats the point when you cant choose what move to do and really they all seem to do the same damage. The bonus power mode is a cool feature, they do a wide variety of things but it only works during the main missions, never during a boss fight and never during some of the side missions which some are difficult to finish (the one hit death ones). There is really no depth to this combat system, it has all this extraneous stuff that is fun to do but totally unnessesary. Boss fights are the real star of the game and this is uneven as well. For every unique, boss fight that changes up the gameplay a bit there is the standard slash and block boss fights. Some bosses just have you learn their attacks and it just becomes a matter of repeating to block, dodge and attack the boss over and over and over. The fights last way to long for such simple patterns. There are those bosses that require something a bit different than just attacking the usual way, these will be the memorable ones. Honestly I was expecting more from these bosses but I was still satisified, if I had to just rate the bosses I would say they were a 3 on a scale of 5. To be fair the main action isn't bad, its unique enough to keep you hooked for the length of the game. The real problem with the game lies in what you do between the main missions and the hub world. The hub world in this game looks like someone took an unfinished Dreamcast game and just slapped a few areas of interest and called it a day. Its ugly, empty, devoid of anything fun. There are hidden stuff around to look for but you won't want to cause its no fun driving around this uninspired world they made. In this world you have a few shops to visit that will increase skills or get you a new saber. I like adventure elements like this in my action games but when its done in a fun way not this. In between missions you need to earn enough money to enter the next level. To make money you follow the same pattern, take a job at the job center, complete the job then you can access assination missions. Hey sounds like fun, well its not. The jobs are some of the most tedious crap mini games I have ever played in a game, stuff like, pick up garbage of the street, yay... The assination missions are nothing more than going to a small area where you fight like 10 enemies usually with a goal like finish it in a certain time or kill a certain enemy. Plus they start to repeat, there are only like 4 variations but you have over 20 missions. There are also random missions but that is always fight 10 enemies without getting hit once, these can be hard. So you do these boring side missions over and over again after every level. Thankfully as the game goes on the main levels start to have some variety to them. You will play all sorts of interesting mini games or use your bike in new ways. It was stuff like this that I loved in Killer 7 and its back again in this game, just so few times. If they focused on just making an interesting linear action game I feel the game could have been better. The levels end up being so short, you dread going back to the hub world. The plot is a bit pointless, there is no intrigue or mystery like in Killer 7. This game has a simple plot, still its a joy to watch some of these over the top cutscenes. I found the overall plot to be funny at times cause it does not take itself seriously and many times breaks the fourth wall to make fun of action game cliches. All the zaniness expected from a Suda game is here and really its what saves the game. The graphics are stylized in such a way that its beautiful to look at it when its handled well (meaning not the hub world). There are some great music tracks in the game and the sound of the action is powerful, I had to turn down my volume at times cause the sound of a lightsaber cutting people in half can be loud. I found myself liking this game just cause it was a mature well made original Wii game. It uses the wiimote functions well, the action is good, very repetitive but decent enough. Its a long game, many times it feels artificially so but at least its got plenty of content. Still its so unbalanced between quality gaming and boring crappy gaming that I can't appreciate this game fully. Its unique enough for me to say its worth a buy if you can buy it cheap. But its not in the same class as the best action games, not even close. Overall Score: 7.0 |
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Posted by Dvader Sun, 22 Jun 2008 06:40:37
Especially about the boss battles, very few of them lasted for more than a couple of minutes.