Tuesday, January 26, 2010

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle Review



Synopsis: Travis Touchdown returns with his crude, over the top action and comments in this sequel, No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle. This is the latest review copy we received from the very generous folks at Ubisoft, Kudos to them. Travis returns to the United Assassins Association on his bloody quest to reach to top of the charts and exact revenge. No More Heroes 2 (NMH2) has received many much needed tweaks that prove that director Suda51 was listening to what the gamers really wanted and improved on the outrageously successful No More Heroes.

Praise: Much has changed in NMH2 and most of it for the better. Gone are the open world maps that provided most of the game play in the first and moves everything into a stylish looking map that lets you choose the location and the game opens up at that destination. This greatly helps out with your revenge missions and going to various locations to beef up your weapons and character as you are instantly there. Also a great change is there are no more Entry Fee's into the UAA to progress, making the side jobs in NMH2 a great change of pace and a way to just relax and play some mindless game. Also, the side games come in a stylish form that really uses imagination. They come in 8-bit adventures giving a sense of nostalgia to old time gamers. They even have a slightly vibrating sound with the one word dialogue that really reminds you of early Nintendo days.

Another great change are the graphics. They have a great cell shading feature that is becoming more common in Wii titles, and the cell shading cause the characters and action to jump off the screen and in your face. The intelligence of your enemies has been increased which is great as this will keep Travis on his toes as enemies will block and dodge more. Also the addition of two new characters, a school girl looking deadly assassin Shinobu and Travis' twin sibling, Henry get thrust into the mix.

Unchanged is the basic formula for success in the hack n slash of Travis' Beam Katana. Blood and gore fountain up in a crazy over the top style as you slash enemies in half, throw your katana into the air, body slam them and your beam falls into their back or stomach. All in all great moves and great animation. Since you start the rankings in 51st, there are plenty of wacky, not of this mold style bosses that will leave you laughing or shaking your head thinking WTF. Each boss battle brings something new and also is very fun to watch the characters interact. All in all a great experience.



Moans:There were a few in this game but not too many, and none of them really draw anything away from this title. One of them is that you may start the rankings in 51st place on the list, but Travis will take major jumps in the rankings which completely shorten the game. (One jump is from 50th to 25th place) The game is around 9-10 hours of play to the distress of most fans, but at least they are filled with blood, gore, sexy women, and Beam Kantanas. The extent of time you get to play as the new characters is short and would have been nice to have some more time with them. Once again, a minor thing. There were certain places that had lag when some of the more crowded fight scenes occurred. Nothing too bad and really doesn't draw away from the total game play aspect. Another is the sometimes shotty camera angles that can be a pain sometimes. However these things are minor in reality.



Overall: Blood, Babes, Gore, Babes, Beam Katana, and oh ya did I mention, Babes? This game is a hit and a very successful follow up to No More Heroes. I look forward to more games from Grasshopper Manufacture and directer Suda51 as they are becoming heavy hitters. This game is solid from start to finish with only a few minor tech issues that are minor in comparison in this huge action packed game.



Mashbuttons give No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle a 9 of 10.

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