Aloha,
does anyone know which version of No More Heroes they have in Australia ?
The version here in Europe (and Japan, I think) is without the whole blood and splatter thing. I´m not really a fan of this stuff, but I like my games, movies etc. the way they were meant to be.
I´m just wondering which one Yahtzee reviewed.

Great review as allways btw. ^^

Once again awesome!

The Yahtzee avatar flying through the end of the universe on a Branston jar while wearing sunglasses is one of the best things you've ever done.

"No... that's too obvious."

I approve of Yahtzee's choice of music quite often, actually. Especially when he began with 'Crash Into Me' on Burnout: Paradise. Well done kidda!

And a transcript in a Technicolor Dreamcoat:

<"No More Heroes" by the Stranglers begins, then ends abruptly.> No, no, that's a bit too obvious.

No More Heroes is a Japanese game based around Jedi lightsaber fighting, and starring as the main character a hopeless pop-culture-obsessed social reject who spends most of his time whining, getting strung along by women, and being a generally unlikeable fuckbend. So at least you can't fault it for understanding its audience (predictable joke). The game is brought to us by Suda 51, the 51st result of an illegal Japanese cloning experiment to create the world's most auteur game designer, Sudas 1 through 50 having perished after their minds failed to absorb the necessary level of pretentiousness.

His last game was Killer 7, and let's get one thing straight: I fucking loved Killer 7. There we were, living our grey, predictable lives, playing our grey, predictable games, when along came Killer 7 in a Technicolor Dreamcoat, leaving slightly perplexed joy in the wake of its huge motorbike, showing exactly what could be done when you flout all established convention, and just start exploring what can really be done with gaming as an art form. I still don't know how to classify it; puzzle, action-adventure, rail shooter? Well, whatever it was, it was a preciously unique amusing cartoon whale in an ocean of secondhand bong water.

Now we have No More Heroes, a Grand Theft Auto clone. "Shine on, you crazy diamond," said Yahtzee, his voice thick like sarcastic Marmite. Well, that's a bit uncalled for; the experience is still as off-the-beaten-track as I've come to expect. You play Travis Touchdown, the aforementioned specky narcissistic weirdo (characterized just a little bit uncomfortably close to home), who buys a lightsaber and vows to become the greatest assassin in the world. You know how it is when you buy a barbecue; you throw a lot of parties for a while to fool yourself into thinking it wasn't a waste of money. To achieve his aim, he has to slice his way through 10 colourful boss characters in a trippy, ultraviolent, Yellow-Submarinesque odyssey through social satire, in between riding his bike, playing with his kitten, and buying trendy clothes in an optional side quest to look as much like an absolute bell-end as possible.

The open world aspect is illusion; the game is essentially linear, not that there's anything wrong with that. There is, however, something wrong with repetition. After you kill a ranked assassin, you go into the city to grind yourself retarded. To proceed, you have to cough up a sum roughly equivalent to the street value of three human lungs, so first you take a low-paying part-time job, which unlocks some higher-paying assassination sub-missions, there being lots of overlap in the industries of litter-picking and professional murder. Next, you're dropped into a room with 50 of the same mouthy big girl's blouses you fight absolutely bloody everywhere, and get handed a big bag of money once they're all raining down upon the landscape in a million overconfident bits.

Funnily enough, my favourite part of the between-mission rigmarole is the menial part-time job at the start. Each time, there's a different clever little mini-game that tries to make the most of the weak controls. If they were higher-paying, I'd probably have chucked in the assassination gigs altogether, which can be summed up as: mash A until bored, then mash B for a bit instead. Actually, the sword fighting is pretty fun (as it had fucking better be, considering the amount of it we have to do), but there's one aspect of it that makes me want to slap Suda 51 until his eyeballs switch places, and that's the fact that after killing an enemy, Travis has a random chance of screaming out the name of one of his favourite puddings, and gaining superpowers for a bit. And when you put random chance into combat mechanics, all strategy has been thrown out of the window, then scraped off the ground and used to pick up the broken glass. And then Sod's Law ensures that the enemy who finally gives you a superpower will inevitably be the last one in the room, leaving Travis running around with glowing Dragonball Z hair for 10 seconds, seriously menacing the walls.

The actual gameplay of the ranking boss fights usually boils down to: wait for them to attack, block or dodge it, then bitch slap them a few times while they scratch their heads like silly chimps. But the awkward thing about No More Heroes, or at least about reviewing it, is that like Killer 7, it's intended to be satirical, and when there are problems with the gameplay, I'm worried that it was intended to be that way (as a satire of, I don't know, pretentious video games), and if I were to call it out on that, then I'd lose my credibility with the cool alternative crowd. But then I remember that any game designer who sacrifices fun to make an artistic statement is obviously stuck so far up his own arse that he's in danger of choking on his own head.

Enough ragging, because in spite of the last 8 paragraphs of petulant, bird-like warbling, I enjoyed No More Heroes a lot. The unpredictable story and quirky aesthetic kept me fascinated enough to keep plowing through it just to see what happened next. So I'll say the same thing about No More Heroes that I say about Killer 7, and EarthBound, and Branston Pickle. As flawed as it is, get it anyway, because you will never experience anything else like it. God knows what would happen if you spread Branston Pickle onto No More Heroes; possibly the universe would end. And it would be AWESOME.

Good luck with the Webbys. Placed my vote.

where?

Could anybody do a trascription of this one, please? It's harder than usual to understand for us a little impaired with english. Thank you.

myopiczeal: danke!

Waah! This web site is slo-o-o-w today in California! All I can see is the forums - after a five minute delay.

here I was already to do another transcript when myoipic zeal beats me to it D:
just wait until next week *squints evily*

Whoa...when did Zero Punctuation start being played on TV. A brief preview tuesday night was great!
(well not regular TV, it was digital cable's G4 network, but TV nonetheless)

Hmm might throw no more heroes on the pile of games i need to play (10 high so far). Good review, very amusing. Bit random with the seal hate?

Great review, but I'm still very happy to NOT get a Wii thankyouverymuch ;)

Uszi:
Anyone find the escapist plugging for votes here a tad irritating? I mean, I did it anyway, but still.

well, they pay the bills. one of those bills keeps yahtzee going, so i hope they do win. and i'm not irritated they told me.

voted.

also, the flying pickle jar made me happy. i'd like one plzthxu.

Wow this is the first one that has went so fast and/or so far over my head that it requires replaying for anything other than enjoyment.

Awesome nontheless.

You can vote for The Escapist in the "Entertainment, Games Related" section.

Thank you Yahtzee for a well written and entertaining review.

Hmm.

Good to see another Killer 7 lover! Therefore No More Heroes suddenly interests me much. Won't get a Wii for it, though. At least not right now - let's see if there won't be a PS2 or PS3/Xbox 360 version in the near future =)

It was, as usual excellent, although I had to watch it twice as usual to have time to read all the text. The only thing I could remark on is that the pause at the start is just a liiittle too long. ^^

People here might be interested in this too... http://www.australiangamer.com/podcast/Australian_Gamer_Podcast_117.mp3

Features the Hatted One : P

I...was actually kinda bored through that review....>.<' Not sure why...perhaps because it felt like he wasn't really into it this time around. Or perhaps it's just me.

^_^

David Cat:
I never said anything..

Why was this guy banned for this quote, i don't get it?

David Cat:

do i care?

You made my day sir. Thank you. I always look forward to the banning of the people who (for some reason unbeknownst to me) think it is cool to be the first/second/twenty-seventh person to post in a thread. For that, I love this site, and for that, I will vote for it in the Webby's. Hurrah.

I was going to call the review average, then I watched it again and came to the conclusion that it is pretty awesome after all.

Yet again, another great review. I'm glad that there is a reviewer out there on the web that can set aside the flaws games, that they can still be great games. To know that you loved Killer 7 makes me glad that I tune in every Wednesday for your reviews. Not many reviewers out there on the web liked Killer 7 as much as you said. Bravo Mr. Croshaw

Hail Killer 7! Hail No More Hero! Hail Yahtzee!!

I always like Suda51's games since "Sun, Flower, and Rain", and I'm surprise that yahtzee didn't do what other reviewers in the world would do to NMH: flinging their poo like angry chimpanzee.

Great review this week, Yahtzee. and a brilliant moment when The Stranglers's NMH came along at the start.

I found the game to be quite entertaining in small doses.

sirdanrhodes:

David Cat:
I never said anything..

Why was this guy banned for this quote, i don't get it?

The guy posted SECOND! since he had the second post, and I quoted him on it. He went back in and edited it, paradoxically stating that he hadn't said anything in the same post where he made his declaration of victory. Someone must have thrown a warn on him, or the mods just check the ZP reviews for people doing stuff like that.

Glad to know you like the coulorful mindfuckery that is Killer7, Yahtzee!

devilzs30:
I always like Suda51's games since "Sun, Flower, and Rain", and I'm surprise that yahtzee didn't do what other reviewers in the world would do to NMH: flinging their poo like angry chimpanzee.

Pssst
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8767&Itemid=2

Hey Yahtzee, I have a question for ya

It seems to me that game genres seem to have time peroids when one is more dominant than the rest, like when they were first starting out, 20th century Arcade games like Pac-man and Space Invaders were rampant to around today when high definition FPS's seem to be as abundant as oxygen. If you seem to see this as well, what do you think will come after this game genre's era?

what i'd like to see is with each ZP to be released, just an mp3 or somethign to be downloaded with soundbites of Yahtzee playing the game he's going to review. How awesome would it be to hear him swear when the going gets tough and the controllers get hurled through the windows and kill innocent passerbies? some of the awesomest material ever spoken is spoken when you're not thinking about what you're saying, and during gaming sessions people have been known to say some pretty awesome things that would normally be lost to foreverness.

so please, Yahtzee, record yourself playing a game and just guide us through it and don't feel afraid to swear every now and again ^^ :p you can bleep that out like you did with the GDC clips.

...

I wonder if he'd read this.

Oh come on Yahtzee, what the hell? Why did you put in Assassin by Muse, why did you not just put in The Assassin by Iron Maiden?

I fucking loved Killer 7, it was one of the best things I've ever played, it even kept me guessing about my own assumptions of reality. You just can't argue with something that calls into question everything you think you know. That, and headbutting bullets.

My only problem was the House level, I could never get the infected statue to drop its trophy for Dans Collateral Shot, and, shamefully, I gave up and returned my copy. Now I must get it back, along with a copy of No more Heroes, now that I have Yahtzees blessing.

Rankaratar:
Hey Yahtzee, I have a question for ya

It seems to me that game genres seem to have time peroids when one is more dominant than the rest, like when they were first starting out, 20th century Arcade games like Pac-man and Space Invaders were rampant to around today when high definition FPS's seem to be as abundant as oxygen. If you seem to see this as well, what do you think will come after this game genre's era?

Intelligent and artsy games after all the xbox owners have shot each other In Real Life. What?

I wholeheartedly Agree!

Earthbound, No More Heroes and Killer7 were wicked fun, mostly on account of their quirky orginality.

Though I'm not saying that should come before gameplay I am saying we need more of that shit in games.

great one this week!

oh god wish i could watch on my ps3 dam flash player!!!! o well now i have to turn on my pc goddamit...