Grasshopper Creation and its founder Goichi Suda are infamous for their strange ideas, and the No More Heroes games are prime examples of their unconventional tendencies. The first two games are schizophrenia-fueled frenzy operating under the guise of hack-and-slash, while Travis Strikes Again uses his small team and budget to create a far more meditative venture into Suda51’s work past, present, and future. To have done. The hero of the franchise, Travis Touchdown.
Released more than a decade after the last numbered entry, No More Heroes III brings us to a place where franchise revivals are common and often fought for, but ahead of industry trends and outside pressure. Leaning isn’t something Suda concerns herself with, especially with whom she’s said to work on Shadows of the Damned. Still, this latest No More Heroes surprisingly keeps it safe with solid core combat while leaving the rest open for Suda to toy with.
Nine years after the last numbered entry, the boisterous Travis touchdown is back in his old stomping grounds of Santa Destroy to please his lustful wife, Sylvia, by climbing up another set of killer rankings. Not much has changed on that front, but the circumstances around have certainly changed. An alien invasion led by the warring Four-Eyed Fu has returned to Earth to repay Damon – the guy who helped him escape the planet when it crashed two decades ago.
It’s a crazy setup that blows the entire setting of the franchise to galactic proportions in an instant, but it doesn’t quite fulfill its astronomical potential. Travis is given solid motivation, courtesy of FU, to kill Travis’s comrade Badman and leave his most ardent follower, Shinobu, in dire straits. Setting aside No More Heroes’ past with reviving “dead” characters, it’s a great setup that makes FU feel dangerous and personally tied to Travis’s motivations.
Unfortunately, that motivation and FU’s destructive abilities tend to fade into the background as the game goes on. After the opening scenes, FU doesn’t do much other than have random character-building conversations with the next big bad on the ranking list, before they inevitably end and never talk again. This is a character capable of leveling an entire city in mere seconds, but his extra-terrestrial abilities never flex outside of the game’s bombastic start.
Things are similarly tenuous for Travis, who has escalated considerably over the course of the last three games — Travis Strikes Again in particular — but his character has withdrawn from the first two games to reprise his role. . He’s got a girl, became a father, and is just shy of forty years old, but it’s all barely touched upon – bringing Travis back to commit humiliating insults while killing things.
Thankfully, it’s consistently enjoyable to mow through squads of aliens in No More Heroes III. Developers have nailed the groundwork laid out by Travis Strikes Again, and the result is the best fight in the series. You’ve got normal melee combat staples with new Death Glove abilities that give you tons of equipment to work with and options to explore. It doesn’t take long to reach a tempting rhythm of dodging attacks, dealing damage, and eliminating each enemy with a satisfying execution slash with Travis’ beam katana.
Standard enemy encounters tend to get stale by the end of the game, but the boss fights are the true star of the show and each one is a real treat. Be it a satisfying test of your fighting skills or unexpected surprises, ten galactic superhero ranking encounters universally have something tempting in store, but before you can eat any delicious Boss Fight sweets, you’re made to eat your veritable vegetables.
As in the first two games of the series, you are not allowed to advance to the next boss until you have completed the required number of normal enemy encounters and have paid the tournament entry fee. Getting the money you need doesn’t have to be terrible – this entertaining job serves as an added excuse to participate in a variety of minigames, including having you mow a rocky lawn or pick up trash in crocodile-infested waters. There are also some space battles that use the new mecha suit, but everything else just involves driving the motorbike to its destination and completing regular battles in plain rectangular arenas.
It helps that the combat mechanics are so undeniable, but it’s hard to suppress the inevitable feelings of monotony that No More Heroes III eventually generates. The excitement and excitement that results in taking down the next big enemy and ascending a spot in the galactic superhero rankings is immediately diminished when faced with the next checklist of standard enemy encounters that you’re made to finish before you’re allowed to. goes. Enjoy the next gorgeous set-piece or subversive surprise that pushed the capabilities of the hardware on which the game was launched.
Now that No More Heroes III has finally been freed from the shackles of its launch platform, its performance problems are completely gone. They went to slideshows that were often inspired by zooming through Santa Destroy on a motorbike. The resolution is no longer dynamically reduced to a chunky mess in a feeble attempt to keep things responsive during combat encounters. No More Heroes III can finally be enjoyed without the stomach-ache technical drawbacks, and it’s easy to sacrifice basic motion controls instead.
While maintaining a solid framerate and consistent image quality are now non-issues, there are fewer distractions than some of No More Heroes III’s other shortcomings. Its limited open world areas — monotonous and lifeless expanses often populated with only a few similar NPCs and vehicles — are even less impressive now that the limited hardware can no longer be taken as an excuse.
The game scenes likewise come across as a jarring distraction, with the resolution greatly increased. The character model has clearly garnered the most attention, with a port job – the main cast looks phenomenal. The increase in character fidelity is well complemented by enemy designs that come across as even more supernatural and alien in comparison, but the atmosphere and most texture assets haven’t seen a similar facelift.
The quality of the characters and the lack of consistency between almost everything else can be stark, especially in the cutscene. When you’re not distracted by engaging and visually engaging combat, it’s hard for the eye to miss just how plain, rectangular, and plastic these characters live in environments. This isn’t surprising given the game’s early target platform, but it’s still often distracting and won’t fool you into thinking that No More Heroes III was initially conceptualized on current gen.
Quibbles with inconsistent asset quality aside, No More Heroes III still shines brightly when leaning into its more stylistic leanings. Battle bosses in spaceship chambers that simulate the starry void of outer-space or cut through enemies that drape the screen in a spray of rainbow-colored liquids is still visually striking, especially now. When the more capable hardware one is able to pull it off completely without breaking. Sweat
No matter what hardware you’re running it on, though, No More Heroes III is injected with Suda51’s patented brand of humor, eccentricity, and absurdity. The Fourth Wall Breaks down, references are everywhere, and its irreverence remains intact in what could be the last installment of the franchise for a long time.
The brazen madness of No More Heroes III goes beyond that of Kojima. It’s a game that’s full of specifics that can only be rationalized by Suda putting things in there because she felt like it — whether it was an ’80s beat-em-up intro or each and every section. Have episodic television bookends. Almost every chapter begins with Travis talking about the films to give Suda a platform to broadcast his candid appreciation for Takashi Miike’s filmography. Outside of the core gameplay, No More Heroes III isn’t so much a game for the player as it is for Suda himself.
Despite being a crazy hodgepodge of things Suda has a soft spot, it’s hard to blame the game or the guy for it. Watching Suda do whatever she wants to do is exactly what her already established fanbase wants to see, and he’s an easygoing guy. His love for video games is so deep that he has tried to celebrate his favorite works from other entertainment mediums within this one.
Even if you don’t share your cultural touchstones of things like Kamen Rider or wrestling, it’s hard not to respect Suda and his team for putting so much effort and resources into a video game to equal a non sequitur. To make No More for Heroes III something they are personally happy with. It’s fitting that the resulting product is a bizarre amalgamation of tried-and-true gameplay mechanics, out of left field plot, and a bunch of crap that’s so eclectic that it’s unintentionally borderline at times. That’s exactly what Suda wanted.
Source
