Repetitive, ugly, and incredibly boring, No More Heroes 3 just might be the final nail in the coffin for me as far as any hopes that Grasshopper Manufacture will ever go on to recapture the magic that made them such an interesting studio during the era of Killer 7 and the original No More Heroes.
It hurts to say, especially as someone who was once a huge
fan of Suda 51 and his crazy, stylistically violent games, but I haven’t
enjoyed anything his studio’s put out since 2008.
There were glimpses here and there of fun and cooky artistry
in games like Shadows of the Damned and the James Gunn-penned Lollipop
Chainsaw, but to increasingly diminishing results and not nearly enough to have
overcome their rough gameplay and lack of depth and polish. After trying twice
but being unable to force myself through the unbearable Killer is Dead, I’d all
but written off the indie studio, though I couldn’t help but give them one more
shot with No More Heroes 3, which promised the return of Suda 51 to the Director’s
chair, (albeit as a co-director) something he hadn’t been for the majority of
Grasshopper’s output following the original No More Heroes.
On a very surface level, No More Heroes 3 feels more like a
sequel to the original game than to the far more limited No More Heroes 2;
returning from the 1st game is the ability to explore the world of
Santa Destroy, the GTA-like hub where you travel from place to place and embark
on missions and side missions. You are Travis Touchdown, the incredibly nerdy
and angry main character who, as is series tradition, must move up the ranks of
Assassins by challenging and killing various bosses, each complete with their
own backstories, the pre-boss conversations with Sylvia also returning after
their absence in the previous game. As with the original No More Heroes, you
spend time in between assassination missions taking on odd jobs around town to
earn the money necessary to qualify for the missions themselves. No More Heroes
3 replaces the traditional pre-boss hack and slash levels with individual
combat missions scattered throughout the open world that also have to be
completed to unlock the Ranked Assassin Missions, which now just takes you
directly to the boss fight. It’s a choice that makes sense in the context of
today’s open world games, but one that ultimately makes this third installment
feel more slow-paced than the others. Still, it’s something different, and the
studio bringing back many of the features that were removed from No More Heroes
2 was a reason for me to be somewhat interested in giving this a shot.
The results, unfortunately, are depressingly bad. Almost
from minute one, I found myself struggling to follow the lengthy, jumpy,
confusing cutscenes that open the game up. Once I finally did catch up and
manage to figure out exactly what was going on, I was able to somewhat
appreciate the interesting dynamics between the game’s villains, and there are
a couple somewhat humorous moments throughout, though the majority of No More
Heroes 3’s attempts at humor land with a thud. Sadly however, despite this
being the first return of Travis Touchdown (spinoff aside) to his own proper
game in over 11 years, I was hit with a wave of indifference from almost the
minute the game began. The open world’s ridiculously fragmented into tiny,
poorly-designed pieces that are unlocked like levels and just aren’t any fun to
explore. The “alien” theme’s both generic and under-developed at the same time,
while the graphics are bathed in a dark, dreary, blue tint that makes this
easily the worst-looking numbered No More Heroes game yet, despite it being the
first in HD. Santa Destroy in the original game had a bright, fun, cel shaded summer
vibe to it, but the open world in No More Heroes 3 (where you spend the
majority of your time) feels entirely devoid of life and atmosphere outside of
the Perfect World section of the map, and never managed to immerse me or
develop any sort of sense of place.
Everything, presentationally, about No More Heroes 3 feels
like the wrong choice, from the constant stream of in-game credits sequences
that begin and end each “chapter” to the bland, forgettable and often downbeat
music that plays throughout. The homages to the 8-bit era that this series has
always dabbled in are cranked up to 11 here, and serve as a complete
distraction. The deliberately pixelated radar in the corner of the screen is so
hard to use that I almost always had to pull up the full-size map just to have
an idea of where I was going. This map
strangely displays a huge chunk of the world that you’re never actually allowed
to visit, and the load times that take place through all of this feel abrupt, disruptive,
and excessive. The game (which lacks an auto-save feature) once froze on me at
the worst possible time, forcing me to repeat about a half hour of playtime
over again. Chapters are bookended with pointless cutscenes featuring Travis
and one of his friends sitting in his living room discussing Takashi Miike
movies. In addition to the scenes being presented with all the visual flair of having
been recorded off a security monitor, the dialogue between the two characters
isn’t funny at all and doesn’t even seem to be attempting to be, and as someone
unfamiliar with Miike’s movies, I of course had little idea what they were
discussing. Even if I had, though, their analysis is incredibly shallow and not
particularly interesting; I get the sense that I could find more in-depth
analysis from high schoolers on a Miike-devoted message board. The payoff from
having to sit through these puzzling cutscenes comes far too late to have been
worth the effort.
That isn’t to say that everything about No More Heroes 3 is
horrible; the combat system remains fun and fast, albeit veering into
frustration a little too often and easily, just like it did in No More Heroes 2
and all of Grasshopper Manufacture’s games since. Still, battles are chaotic
and visually striking, and the leveling up system for Travis offers a solid
amount of customization. Boss encounters still don’t have the depth,
personality, or the extravagance of the fights from the original game, but
they’re more or less on par with its sequel in providing interesting personalities
and solid gameplay variety. As with its predecessors, motion controls are
integrated perfectly, in a way that isn’t even close to being excessive but one
that feels so satisfying.
The quirky odd jobs, however, are tedious and lack any of
the charm of either previous No More Heroes game. After trying a couple of them,
I decided to focus entirely on combat challenges as a means to earn money
instead. The characters you encounter around the world are strange in the usual
Suda 51 way but lack a lot of the charm that existed in the original, with No
More Heroes 3 often feeling like it’s trying desperately to grasp something
that the studio just doesn’t seem to have in them anymore.
This is most clear in the storyline that propels the adventure
forward. Every tone that it strikes just hits the wrong note; Travis seems
angry and unpleasant, almost all of the likability he had in the first two
games somehow nonexistent. The villains are both too menacing to be truly funny
and yet too funny to be taken seriously, and the side characters (especially
Shinobu) are given so little to do that I wondered why they were even included.
The writing itself is oftentimes incomprehensible and never as funny as it
seems to think it is. Travis yelling out the names of various fruits every 10
seconds in battle is supposed to be funny because of its randomness, but
weirdness just for the sake of weirdness isn’t automatically deep or funny; it
actually has to go somewhere, and No More Heroes 3’s just doesn’t. As with many
modern GHM games, cutscene after cutscene ends with thoughts of “huh. That was
weird,” with the studio seeming to think that weirdness alone makes them
profound, or hilarious, or innovative. But as with all of their modern games,
they simply come across as weird, but little else.
It’s sad how far Grasshopper Manufacture seems to have
fallen. As someone who loved the original No More Heroes and the divisive
Killer 7 before it, nobody was hoping more than me that No More Heroes 3 would
see a return to at least some of that former glory. Unfortunately, the
aggressively confusing storyline, tonal inconsistencies, terrible visuals and
presentation, a boring, soulless world along with repetitive, unexciting
gameplay ends up leaving almost nothing for me to recommend about No More
Heroes 3, even with a solid and usually fun combat system. I do hope that the
studio can somehow manage to find its sweet spot in the HD era at some point,
but I worry that they just don’t have the amount of people, the budget, or the
focus to pull it off. As a former fan of Suda 51’s strange and inventive games,
it’s a difficult pill to swallow, but something that just seems to be, for now,
the way it is.
2/5
