Games I'm Playing This Week 2

Well my gaming habits have been a little quite last few weeks, but since the weather hasn't been great here and I've not been working I've had chance to get stuck in to some games I bought a while ago.

This week I have mostly been playing No More Heroes.


I bought No More Heroes a few weeks before we left for Spain. I played a few hours of it and then put it away as it seemed like the kind of game I could spend a good couple of hours playing each day so I thought it would be best left until I had moved.

So this week I've gotten the chance to play with it for a few hours and I'm loving it.
For those that don't know, you control the protagonist Travis Touchdown, who receives a Beam Katana (think light sabre) and wants to become Santa Destroys top assassin (my current position is Rank 5). Queue lots of walking around streets and fighting till the death.

The graphics ooze style and look really good. There is a air of paying homage to retro games. Power ups and save points are highlighted with giant floating large pixeled signs. The leader board looks like something out of Space Invaders. The game also has a great sense of punkishness about it. You can definitely sense that alot of Japanese will be doing cosplay out of characters in the game (although what dont't they cosplay?). And their is a great deal of humour, for example to save the game you have to go the toilet. All very strange.
There isn't a great deal of skill, you hit the A button a few times, carry out a motion sensored final blow and move on to the next guy. The fun for me comes when rather then just one foot soldier attacking you, there can be dozens trying to kill you at once. It's a bit like an old school beat 'em up. Steets of Rage, Golden Axe, those kind of lost games. A whole lot of fun.
There is even one side mission were you have to kill 100 hundred enemies, and your arm takes a little beating with all the frantic swinging.

The thing I have most enjoyed about the game is all the sidemissions and objectives. Kind of like miniassasinations, take out various pizza owner's, 100 man war (mentioned above) or even fighting a pack of enemies and you can only take one hit, that's when a bit of skill and a lot of luck comes in. For example I've done Free Missions 1, 3 and 4, but keep losing on level 2. Damn you level 2, damn you.

I expected a lot from this game, I was looking for something meaty and enjoyable and it has delivered.
Now I'm off to see how high up the leader board I can get before my preordered Mario Kart Wii arrives and that is permanently stuck in my Wii.