Welcome to our review of the highly anticipated game Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes, releasing on the Nintendo Switch.
R-Rated Nintendo:
No More Heroes is not your average Nintendo Game, and definitely not suited for the general audience Nintendo is usually targeting. Which is not a bad thing, on the contrary! Why should the PlayStation and Xbox have all the M/R-rated games, like God of War or Red Dead Redemption? Well, said Grasshopper Manufacture & Suda51 (the developer of this game), here is Travis Touchdown – starring in No More Heroes! Travis Strikes Again is the third installment in the franchise and should be considered a ‘2.5’-entry in my opinion. It fills in some of the blanks left after the ending of No More Heroes 2, and will hopefully transgress into No More Heroes 3.
Travis Touchdown:
The main character is Travis Touchdown, a retired assassin-otaku who’s parents have been killed by Jeane. Jeane was the secret love child of his father and another woman, but let’s not get into details. Travis is not your regular assassin, wielding a beam katana (which looks like a deadly fluorescent tube) and using pro-wrestling moves to finish off his opponents. This game was meant as the big comeback for Travis since the main team behind the series previously stated that Travis would be retired after part two of No More Heroes. Luckily they didn’t retire him and they pulled all the plugs on this title.
Travis is back and is almost killed point blanc by Bad Man, the father of Bad Girl (a nemesis from a past No More Heroes game). His only wish is revenge on the one who killed his daughter, and to bring his daughter back to life (that’s two wishes, pal). Luckily Travis has the perfect opportunity. Since he’s a big Otaku and gaming fanatic, he acquired a very rare and obscure gaming console. This Death Drive II is an almost legendary console which never should have seen the light of day and can grant the wish of Bad Man.. but at what price!
Unreal Travis:
The game itself is powered by Unreal Engine 4, which you can’t really miss. The game screams UE, and you can even collect UE-tokens in-game. It also features collaborations with other indie developers, which is referenced with some Hotline Miami gameplay and a wide range of in-game T-Shirts of almost every notable Nindie out there. I played the game in a Salt & Sanctuary shirt since it was my favorite Nindie of last year, but you can choose between a wide range, so check it out.
“The developers really did a solid job on recreating the old ’80s and ’90s feel of the Mega Drive and NES/SNES era.”
These Nindie-references aren’t the only ones. The game is filled with pop cultural references, from comics to movies to other franchises. A really nice touch was the jab they made at Deadpool, or Dedpol as its called by Travis. Deadpool is widely known for its ‘Fourth-wall-breaking’. Travis addresses the gamers (yes you) a couple of times and makes jokes about how they did it first. You must really give the writers credit for putting all these jokes into the game.
No More Gameplay:
Let’s talk gameplay. The game features a total of seven differently designed game worlds. This means you won’t be running around in a big sandbox style game. So, if you are looking for this kind of game, don’t try it. The game shifts between text-based visual novels, puzzle games, straight up platforming and some other genres I won’t spoil. Travis loads up the Death Drive II (a clear reference to the Mega Drive) and gets’s ‘sucked’ into the game world. The only catch, if you die in the game, you will die in the real world as well. This Death Drive II runs on Death Balls. If you collect all six, you can make a wish. Or at least, that’s the Urban Legends surrounding this machine (sounds familiar?).
“In its core, Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes is a hack-slash action-adventure crossover.”
Each game world plays differently, has different graphical styles and changes the way you will ‘use’ Travis. Luckily the skillset stays the same, and most of the levels use the same moveset. Control based, the game is solid and works like a charm. Leveling up is not necessary to complete the game, but advised. The same goes for equipping skills, which look like old memory cards for some reason. Travis is easily playable in Handheld, Docked or Table Top mode (and highly recommended, since shaking the Joy Cons gives a little extra juice to Travis). Graphically the game looks like the classics. The developers really did a solid job on recreating the old ’80s and ’90s feel of the Mega Drive and NES/SNES era. The games they created are a homage to these eras, and Travis feels like a fish in the water cruising through them.
Story advancement
After completing a Death Ball game, you will advance in the story by using the motorcycle of Travis. This triggers the Visual Novel part of the game, which is, of course, a joke to Travis. He complains about using too much text (which would suffer localization). Or that people who thought they bought an action game can shove it (to put it lightly). I was surprised by the amount of thought that was put into these scenes to progress the story. Yes, they are a mockery of the visual novels of the world, but Travis does such a good job at mocking them, that it feels like an actual visual novel. Reverse psychology?
Hack Slash Travis:
In its core, Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes is a hack-slash action-adventure crossover. It has solid gameplay, good music, fleshed out characters and enough to entertain for hours. There were no noticeable frame drops, the game has a great learning curve and does not feel rushed at all. The core of Travis is good, but, the main problem with the game is, that it felt like a ‘2.5’ – game like I mentioned before. It does not feel like the ‘next entry’, but more like a placeholder for something bigger. It made me long for a port of the old No More Heroes games AND a sequel! I know Suda51 did a very creative job on creating the different game worlds most Indie developers only dream off, but we want something bigger than this.
Conclusion:
I finished Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes in 7.5 hours, collected most of the hidden stuff (and missed a lot). I would probably need another 7.5-8 hours to finish the game to a 100% rate. And even then, the developers already announced a Season Pass, which will include one or two playable characters and a level expansion, so it will keep me entertained for a while. Still, it never felt like the game we wanted. Maybe my expectations were a little too high, and it won’t affect the score that much, but still. I think there could have been more, so we can only hope for No More Heroes 3 (or a No More Heroes Trilogy?).
