by
Aaron Duty
Sunday, February 28 2010
I absolutely loved No More Heroes on the Wii. It was quirky, funny, and sometimes just plain cheesy. Its sequel has kept that part of the equation with more toilet humor, but the shortcomings are too great to ignore.
First, gone is free-roaming of Santa Destroy. If you liked this very limited but still fun aspect of the original, then kiss it goodbye. It's replaced with a menu of locations when you leave the motel. Okay, I can forgive that, so long as I can kick ass whenever I like.
Second, the side-jobs are now all stylized 8-bit minigames. Some of them are good. Others are a pain. Depending on how much you liked punishment or not you will hate most of the games with some venom. To top it all off, they make the game feel almost like a bundle of cheap flash games.
Third, the gym is a joke, and the minigames to build stats are incredibly hard, at least for me. There has been more than one occasion that I've spent an hour on strength only to end up screaming at the television.
If the prospect of beam katanas with 8-bit minigames and silly toilet humor sounds awesome to you, then this game is for you. Suda-51 really is become a Hitchcock with these games, showing us that humor and gore really can go together if viewed in the proper light. I mean, when it comes down to it, anybody flinging around a concentrated form of energy, slicing open skulls, and saving progress by sitting on the can has a few screws loose. Simply playing this game is an exercise in self-harm, making it no different from any other human endevour. It's a game that the Joker would love.
I'd give it a buy to kill time rating. It's not the best game in the world, but it is pretty good (if you don't mind the screaming).