Wii Warm Up: On how Travis can win your heart
by Chris Greenhough 
{ Oct 9th 2008 at 8:00AM }
So our secret is out: we're already totally hot for No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle. Aside from its name and the brief trailer we gushed about yesterday, little is known about the title (it might not even be a Wii game), but our love for the first No More Heroes means we're already unhealthily excited for this follow-up.We recognize that not everybody feels the same way, however. In the replies to our 9/10 review of Goichi Suda's Wii debut, a number of people suggested they were -- gasp -- disappointed by the game.
If you were one of those non-fans, what needs to change in the sequel to convert you?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Mr Khan @ Oct 9th 2008 8:09AM
Two gripes he should spend time alleviating are the quality of the city, as well as the quality of the combat
Motion Plus plz.
bones @ Oct 9th 2008 8:11AM
We were actually in the loved it camp. NMHs was a family favorite on the Wii. It got more play time than Super Mario Galaxy.
We are excited about the sequel and hope it comes to the Wii!
Hamster @ Oct 9th 2008 8:15AM
Well I loved No More Heroes, it's one of the most unique games I've ever played. My only complaint and request for improvement would be that the motion-controls (mainly regarding the wrestling moves) were a bit too stiff and I remember often being infuriated when my motions wouldn't register. It needs to be able to register more subtle movements. I also remember a couple of occassions when there was some annoying waggle-for-the-sake-of-waggle. But then knowing Suda, maybe he meant these bits to be annoying....
Nigeria @ Oct 9th 2008 8:18AM
I can't quite remember which it was at the moment, but one of the slashes, down-up or up-down, was rather unwieldy. The satisfaction of slicing an enemy in two was lessened when you had to swing more than once, you know.
The overworld was well half arsed. Aye, it was too big. I would say just scrap it, or shrink it - scrap it actually.A game filled purely with boss battles would be much more enjoyable.
After playing, and loving, Ninja Gaiden DS, I wouldn't actually mind it coming to that platform. Part of me would actually prefer it.
Mr Khan @ Oct 9th 2008 12:42PM
It was the downward slash that had problems, probably because people's instincts are to move their arm just slightly upward before moving it down, which registered wrong.
BDR @ Oct 9th 2008 8:30AM
MotionPlus + better/no overworld = GOTY
Roddie @ Oct 9th 2008 8:31AM
Good luck finding people reading Wii Fanboy that don't like No More Heroes, but I think anyone who disliked the first game is probably beyond help anyway ;)
Any negative aspects of the first game were too minor to detract from the overall enjoyment of it, but if they had to change anything, I guess I'd either like to see the sandbox aspect either fully realised or just simply removed. There's no point in being able to go around the city when there's nobody there and you're only ever going point to point (and the motorbike wasn't that fun to drive anyway). Also, if the sandbox element is retained, please make the city look less like a first generation PS2 game; don't try to tell this was a stylistic choice, it was categorically poorly rendered and painful on the eyes.
Whoever was complaining about the finishing slashes, I'd have to completely disagree; I thought they were an excellent use of the remote (probably utilising the IR function as opposed to 'waggle'), I never had difficulty executing them and ALWAYS found them hugely satisfying. If the game is to be released on the Wii (yes, please), then hopefully the the possibility of MotionPlus will only make this aspect of gameplay even stronger.
Grey Acumen @ Oct 9th 2008 10:59PM
Um, no, there was no use of the IR remote at all, that was purely motion, it was just good use of the motion controls. Enough to give it the visceral pull it needed, but not so much that it got tedious.
Roddie @ Oct 10th 2008 7:07AM
Actually, I think it was the IR remote; I'll have to test it and see, but if you compare it to the likes of Wario Ware where it can use the IR to detect the direction of lines being drawn across the screen then it makes sense, as it's a hell of a lot more accurate than the waggle when it comes to detecting direction.
BlackPeregrin @ Oct 9th 2008 8:44AM
Motion Plus. Easy as that.
Although it's not in dire need for 1:1 controls, it would be a worthy addition to the game.
meist3r @ Oct 9th 2008 8:46AM
I would love to see the power ups be involved in the story. Though the little joke the programmers did with the ultimate weapon upgrade to the end of the game was hilarious by itself but I would have wished that freaky swordsmith lady was more of a character in the story with specific quests to complete for upgrades than some uninspired shop animation. They designed it that way to focus the players attention on the jobs and assassinations but I thought it was tedious at best and could have been so much more fun if I knew that I was fighting for an upgrade and not just he money which I could have gotten by filling cars or mowing lawns instead. But maybe that's one of these psychological twists with this game. I also wouldn't mind getting a lot more workout varieties going, even though they were quite exhausting I found that to be a really fun way to immerse the player.
The overworld needs lots more landmarks, better transportation, a waypoint/warp system if you have to repeat a mission over and over just to earn some cash. Maybe a lot more (mini-)boss battles would be cool too. I really enjoyed the crazy characters and figuring out how to beat them was probably the most fun time I had with the game. I also would love to see a lot more finishing moves (I liked the QTE style takedown a lot and it can only get better with motion+).
nastysquar3d @ Oct 9th 2008 9:19AM
I was not a fan of the first game. I bought it, played a couple of hours and then sold it.
My main gripe: Camera... it was terrible, when running I was constantly getting turned around and lost because it was quite hard to maneuver.
Second gripe: Overworld was very bland, it was like a huge deserted city with nothing to do
Third: Didn't like the graphics. Don't get me wrong... cell shaded can be awesome and NMH should remain cell shaded but I think they could add more cells / shades of color take a look at XIII on the gamecube for what I mean. I felt NMH was too contrast-y
That being said I'll pick up this game if just #1 is fixed, I can overlook the other two
samfish @ Oct 9th 2008 9:33AM
I didn't like it very much. The boss fights were great, but everything else just felt kinda thrown in there. I found it enjoyable enough, but not enough to buy it.
My two main problems were the horrible overworld and the combat.
The overworld was just AWFUL. I hate sandbox things to begin with, and NMH's was so pointless that it only served to amplify everything I dislike about the genre.
I also REALLY hated the money-earning parts. Ugh. WHY did we HAVE to do that?! I'd much rather have it been a traditional level-based structure with a hub world where you could earn money to buy items and stuff.
The combat was boring and repetitive. Admittedly, I'm spoiled rotten by God Hand's combat. In that sense, no game, save hopefully Madworld, will live up to it. In part because it seems to be that the game took a page from God Hand, what with it's crazy wrestling/QTE-esque finishers, roulette wheel and super-powered mode.
But in general, it was really poorly handled. The enemies were fodder 90% of the time, except for when they would occasionally push back and you'd get into that duel thingy. For the most part, it just felt like you were bashing them with your sword. You couldn't really tell what was going on, either. I left who knows how many individual fights and would say to myself, "Wait a minute! When the hell did I get hit by that guy?!"
It's a weird complaint, but I feel if the game had better sound direction, some of that feeling would have been eliminated. There were no obvious audio cues that alerted you to when you were hitting, being blocked or getting hit. It was a huge mish-mash of BASH BASH BANG BASH BASH sounds.
Bringing everything full circle with this complaint, I wish it HAD taken a page from God Hand in how every single enemy fight was a fight for your life.
The best part of NMH was the boss battles. The grunts and thugs should have been basically like little micro boss battles, where any one of them could have killed you if you slipped up.
So yeah...wasn't a huge fan of No More Heroes for those reasons.
Mr Khan @ Oct 9th 2008 12:45PM
I don't disagree with you often, but damn.
So in love with proper action games, though, i could see where you're coming from. It didn't have combat mechanics anywhere near the staples of the genre, but in my case it didn't detract from that.
gavin sumner @ Oct 9th 2008 9:37AM
I think this is gonna be a DS game and right now that is all this game needs to do to make me happy.
Alzheimers @ Oct 9th 2008 10:17AM
Well, I was one of those who was very dissapointed with No More Heroes. Despite the retro touches and cool style, the game had no substance.
The combat modes didn't have nearly enough panache to pull off a decent fighter vibe -- no jumping or other off-the-wall moves. The blocking/high-low mechanics were ok, but left you bored halfway through a mission map. And the retro-fx, for all their 8-bit pixellated glory, took up way too much of the screen and blocked whatever action was going on. The addition of the wrestling moves was nice at first, but they felt more like an afterthought to combat and were pretty useless considering it didn't take much more flailing about to get a nice bloody kill.
The "City" mode was like a tour through a virtual low-rez themepark with nothing to interact with but garbage cans and blips on your minimap. You couldn't even swing you sword outside, for chrissakes. Pop-in and draw distance were terrible, pedestrians were few and ugly, and the driving sequences reminded me of Pole Position than GTA.
The minigame/jobs were ok, but again felt more gimicky then part of the action. I would have much preferred a mission structure closer to what GTA used that made sense in the theme of the game (Why am I, a light-sabre swinging badass, MOWING GRASS? And why did I need to PAY to take on an assassination mission?)
I doubt there's room in a sequel to fix ALL these problems. At best, you'll get some new moves and locations to flail around in.
cheswick @ Oct 9th 2008 11:07AM
Definetely style over substance. And the style was definetely worth the mudane aspects of the game. The oveworld needs tweaking that's for sure. Cosntantly repeating the same tasks to earn money isn't really fun. But those boss battles are something else
Gonzo @ Oct 9th 2008 11:11AM
I hated the original only because it really could've been a great game if they had finished developing it. The state in which it was released, it should've been a $20 budget title.
First they need to ditch completely or inject even a little bit of life into that dead world and make the cars and peds look and react a little better than poorly constructed papercraft models. Driving around that city for a good portion of the game became a chore instantly.
If they want to have minigames, they have to make them fun and multiplayer. We have enough crappy minigames on the Wii. Single player ones based on crappy part time jobs are less appealing than going out to get those jobs in real life.
The boss battles were only interesting because the rest of the game was such an awful travesty. No game with motion controls should have quick time events in the game at all let alone in boss battles. That was just sad. I could already tell the programmers were lazy, they didn't need to prove it by making half the game quick time events then throwing them into the climax of the only (comparatively) interesting part of the game. Ditch the spinning arrows too. Watching limbs fly was the only reward for repeatedly tapping the A button ad-nauseam, don't obscure it.
But the critics (all of them) have a little blame to take too. I know his stuff is real "artistic" (in a minimalist sense) but you can't just go praising and perfect scoring anything Suda51 pulls out of his a$$. Nobody I know liked this game. The only ones who apparently liked it were the critics (thanks for failing epicly at your job back there), the fanboys, and 12 year old boys who think NMH is the kind of games mature people want to play. I've seen piles of dirt being hailed as art in MOMA too, I don't want it in my house though.
Thanatos @ Oct 9th 2008 1:03PM
Minigames in No More Heroes? And multiplayer minigames? Are you insane! NMH is single player and should stay that way and the jobs were not minigames they were made to be crappy, just like real work is crappy. And if they would've payed more $$ in the game i would've simply forgot about the assignation jobs and just did them to get my cash. Now im not a critic, im 24 so where do i fit in your description of its fans? (Guess i probably am a fanboy) Most player comments ive read online seem to be that lots of different people (that includes women!) loved this great game so i guess your in the minority. The critics did thier job and have done it pretty well, in fact i bought the game after Yahtzee's review and havent been disappointed yet.
As for my complaints about the game - random lockups PISSED ME OFF SO MUCH, thankfully after 3 play through ive only had it happen twice, Overworld - It was bland and boring, DO something with it! Have more interaction, more stores more to do around town. And last the games length it was far too short but just dont stretch the game out add more content to make it an even greater game.
Gonzo @ Oct 10th 2008 10:28AM
I'm sorry but if those minigames were intentionally made bad, Suda51 should be buried alive in a manure pit. Anything THAT pretentious doesn't belong in a video game. I can dig artistically toned down graphics but when the gameplay itself is made tedious intentionally (especially when it's half the game), that is the point where it has traveled too far up it's own ash to be a game worth playing. Not only that but cheap crap like that should be sold at a cheap crap price like $20.
So of course Suda51 is going to make another one. Why wouldn't he release a $50 game he can throw together in a weekend.
And the critics did do a crap job reviewing this game. Yhatzee and a bunch of other critics said the part time job minigames were fun not intentionally crappy or even mildly tedious. So which is it, intentionally crappy or just crappy. Personally I don't exactly prefer one over the other.
I know I'm in the minority. I'm actually a little discerning about a game I may spend hours playing. I can understand that at the time this was one of the only games on the Wii with blood an cursing but in hindsight you should be able to see that Suda51 ripped everyone off. It's okay if you don't want to admit it, I know people have a hard time admitting that they got ripped off. And if you really believe NMH was all that great, you probably don't need video games for entertainment. You probably only need one of those cups with the ball tied to it: $1 at the pharmacy.
PARTYVAN @ Oct 9th 2008 11:49AM
You know how NMH2 can win my heart? By not being CENSURED IN EUROPE. I pirated the game to be able to play with blood... I would have loved to buy it, but I won't put money into the pockets of censorship
leonus11 @ Oct 9th 2008 12:21PM
whoa!! somebody has some big COJONES to admit to piracy! lol (by the way COJONES means balls. you put 2 and 2 together) well i for one hope that it'll be on and Wii and with motionplus capabilities. also i hated how the first NMH didn't have AT LEAST waggle controls. if it did then i would've played and finished it. still i am considering to put up with the A BUTTON MASHING and finsih the game.
scissors125 @ Oct 9th 2008 12:33PM
I just think that they need to improve upon the length.
I actually liked the open world aspect
I actually liked the minigames.
To tell you the truth, I thought that No More Heroes was actually a very tight game, quality-wise. I just wish it was longer.
CJLopez @ Oct 9th 2008 1:07PM
Please, if there gonna be miniquest to get money, let em be killing only, although I had fun with many of those mini games (specially the one where I had to get coconuts) please, i like the killing a lot.
also, more enemies on screen would be more awesome, and some co-op or online gameplay would rock
dan @ Oct 9th 2008 3:29PM
I think the open world and minigames needed some work. It was a good idea in principle, but fell short in execution. Maybe they could improve and polish it, but that would require them to get on the level of GTA -- not easy without a GTA budget.
The game would be a fun brawler type game where you just go from level to level killing people, with nothing in between. They'd save development costs, and be able to put more into the level design of the actual fights.
Oh, and 1:1 motion controls will be a huge plus.
Gonzo @ Oct 10th 2008 10:41AM
See, they have to have tedious slop in between or else people catch on to how repetitive and tedious the boss levels become. Some of the bosses were interesting but most of them required the exact same tactics.
Ujn Hunter @ Oct 9th 2008 3:02PM
sweet lord! Suda51 just mad me happy in my pants!
ZombiePikmin @ Oct 9th 2008 3:09PM
(Hi fives Ujn Hunter)
Mr.Taco @ Oct 9th 2008 4:04PM
How about less crappy wii-mote shaking?
How about less crappy gameplay?
How about a storyline that isn't idiotic?
I bought it at 10AM, returned it at 11AM. Couldn't stand the game. It's like the developers made it in one night. I don't think it's worth the 9 out of 10. I'll give it a 6.....maybe.
Gonzo @ Oct 10th 2008 10:41AM
Wow Mr. Taco, I think you may have hated this game more than I did and I didn't think that was possible.
I played for a couple of days before selling it. Trust me you're better off. I should've sold it as soon as I finished that Tutorial boss. Everything that followed was either excruciatingly boring or exactly the same.
One thing's for sure, they're not going to have to try too hard to top the most overrated game of all time.
Jace @ Oct 9th 2008 6:25PM
I just don't think I'm in the target demographic for this game or something. In games like this, I need to be able to identify at least a tiny little bit with the character, and I couldn't really identify with Travis at all. He reminded me too much of many real-world (though non-murderous) annoying geek morons I've met in my life who try too hard to be cool.
XJordanX @ Oct 9th 2008 11:22PM
This made my day.. I was going to be happy with Halo 3 Recon. (fall 09' wtf) But NMH2 put a bigger smile on my face I hope this is still a Wii title or maybe multi platform.
I just hope they work on the city or ditch it all together was the only fail* in the 1st game in my eyes. When do guess we will see gameplay or what system its hitting on?
Nabe @ Oct 10th 2008 1:36AM
More minigames, more sword options, more Glastonbury. Basically, the tiniest bit more variety would make it perfect.
It's not often a game as good as NMH comes along, so here's hoping NMH2 delivers.
brbarnhart @ Oct 11th 2008 2:45AM
I realize I am probably already too late to this party to get a response, but if anyone can help me out, it would be appreciated.
After reading over all of the positive (and negative) reviews here, I decided to pick up No More Heroes. I played it for a bit, and so far I am impressed. My question is about the difficulty. I picked the harder of the two choices (normal, I think) and found the 1st assassin really difficult. It took me 3 tries to beat him, and even at the end of 3 tries, I didn't really feel like I had a good handle on what it takes to be good at this game. My question is if some of you vets recommend the easier setting if I am having so much trouble with the first fight. I don't want to get a ways in, and realize I am over my head and have to start over. On the other hand, I don't want the game to be a walk in the park either. Do you all have a similar steep learning curve? Do the bosses get a lot harder? Any advice would be appreciated.
Areck @ Oct 11th 2008 11:01PM
Sadly, your choice is either walk in the park or moderatly difficult. If your staying on sweet mode don't worry to much about getting in over your head. The first weapon sucks really badly, once you get to the second your attacks should get smoother and playing should feel much better. It takes alittle practice too, combat isn't deep but you have to pay atenttion to the patterns and types of attacks each enemys use. Oh ya, don't let yourself get surrounded either. Try to keep he enemy in front of you.
Another tip is throw in kicks and punchs when you think your about to be hit by someone, it throws them off balance and also goes through most enemys blocks.
Areck @ Oct 11th 2008 11:20PM
I see alot of haters, i am surpraised by it too. I never had any problems with the game. Open world made sense, part time jobs were part time jobs :P, camera never gave me trouble, combat felt visceral, difficulty was just right (I wanted another difficulty after bitter =x)
NMH2... My head exploded when I heard this. The way the trailer strikes me the open-world is probably gonna turn into open-hell, people constantly trying to kill you. Rumors of Suda using the unreal engine (I think thats the one) Might lead to a very different experience then what we had first time around, possibly a deeper combat mechanic (although I enjoyed NMH's combat, 1:1 would be godly awesome and thats the only way I could think of upgrading it.)
At any rate though... W00t! SOME MORE HEROS!
-runs off happily ever after-
charlie @ Oct 14th 2008 8:06PM
i agree completely with Areck, people are expecting a gta game when they buy NMH, and if thats wha ur expecting, ur not gonna get it. If ur expecting a good game, thats a little different and really awsome? THEN U FOUND IT! i loved NMH, im playing it again on bitter, with the best weapon, and all the powers-ups, and trying as hell to get everything i can possibly get! I LOVE NMH! Read this article, it will change the way u think of NMH!
http://schlaghund.wordpress.com/2008/03/11/no-more-heroes-is-not-punk/