As depressing as the general gaming landscape can be, at least SUDA51 is still out there doing this thing. It’d been twelve long years since the last fully-fledged title in the series, No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle (and three years on from spinoff minigame collection Travis Strikes Again, which I didn’t play). Enter No More Heroes III.
Let’s just say time hasn’t slowed down Travis Touchdown one bit. An insanely goofy animated intro soon delivers another leaderboard of eccentric assholes (invading aliens this time) to carve through with your Beam Katana in an effort to climb the leaderboards and become the galaxy’s most renowned badass.
Boiling down No More Heroes III to its essence would reveal an honestly pretty crappy game. Combat is ho-hum, the basic loop of earning money to compete in battles is powerfully repetitive, and the open world is as barren as it was in 2007 on the Wii.
But then there’s everything else. What other title is going to provide you with endless analysis of the work of Takashi Miike (they correctly identify Gozu as one of his best works)? Where else will a boss fight descend into a lethal game of musical chairs? What about the random arcade 2D side-scroller? The 8-bit PC monochrome adventure game bits. The extended and frankly insane animated riff on E.T.? The Final Fantasy VII tribute? THE GOD DAMN SMASH BROS FIGHT!?!
This all puts a giant smile on my face, which only falters when I feel that very, very few people seem to have even thought about playing this. It first landed on Switch in summer 2021, where the frame rate was all over the place and aggressive dynamic resolution left it as a soupy mess. The power of the PlayStation 5 unsurprisingly delivers a silky-smooth 60FPS and, while this is never going to be mistaken for a top-of-the-line graphical experience, it’s at least a clean presentation.
The game ends with a killer sequel hook that I hope gets resolved in No More Heroes IV, but at this rate we could be in the 2030s before that lands.
Whatever the case I’m just happy that this deeply weird and eccentric game exists. There’ll always be room in my heart for Suda51’s games – I just hope there’s always room in this cutthroat industry for him too.
Pixel Hunted 