No More Heroes Review

Usually, the Wii is known for being aimed at casual gamers (Examples being

Image from Wired.com

your parents, classmates, teacher, grandparents, and anyone else who had no interest in video games until Guitar Hero appeared). In other words, there is not that much hardcore games on it except with a few like Super Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Brothers Brawl, Sonic Unleashed and others. But most of those are either first or second party games. Most of the games on the Wii are either shovelware or games ported from another system like the PS2. Let us not forget games that are based on franchises like Bratz, High School Musical, and George of the Jungle [add groaning here].

Well look no further for the action-adventure hit No More Heroes is a breath of fresh air from the typical games on the Wii.

Story

Travis prepares to go outside doing the usual: Filling up gas tanks, mowing lawns, and slicing heads off

Travis Touchdown is an Otaku (a Japanese equivalent of a nerd/geek) who has a Light Saber-Esq beam katana, called Blood Berry, that he won after an online auction. After winning the auction, he runs out of money to buy video games and lucha libre (Mexican wrestling involving mask) videos. He meets a woman named Sylvia Christel (who has blond hair and an accent) who sets Travis up with a job to assassinate a character named Helter Skelter. After doing so, Sylvia tells Travis that he is 11th ranked of the United Assassins Association. Travis makes use for this by asking and promising Sylvia that “When I become #1, will you do it with me?”. She accepts and our main protagonist is out to kill a total of 10 assassins.
It sounds simple but that’s not what matters for there are other things that make this game awesome like slicing up henchmen, street gangs, and criminals.

Gameplay

You are able to walk or ride your motorcycle, the “Schpeltiger”, in a free roaming world. When you are not assassinating, you can be able to dig through trash to find money or T-shirts or find balls and take them to a Russian man who is located at a Japanese-style bar. You could say that it’s similar to that of the 3D Grand Theft Auto games but you do not kill pedestrians and you can not steal cars.

There are two ways to make money quickly. One is by either doing optional part time jobs like filling up gas, mowing the lawn, or cleaning graffiti. The other is going through a list of optional assassination jobs (not part of the UAA) that tell you to kill some henchmen of a fast food restaurant or using a special power up to kill more. By doing these jobs, you will be able to pay for assassin ranked missions, video tapes, clothes, beam katana upgrades, and training sessions. Clothes (T-shirts, pants, belts, coats, and sun glasses) are not a necessary thing to buy but it allows you to customize Travis to your fancy.

During gameplay (in a 3rd person view), when you are fighting against a group or a ranked assassin, you use your Wii remote for combat. You can also use the B button to use wrestling moves when an enemy is unconscious. In order to attack, you press the A button and when an arrow appears, you wave your remote in a direction and Travis will slice the enemy in half either

When he's not busy assassinating he's usually at home, petting his pet cat.

vertical or horizontal. It may sound tedious but it’s quite fun when playing for the first time. To control Travis, you use the Nun chuck. You are able to dodge attacks with the D-pad. This is especially helpful when enemies have attacks that launch energy balls at you or when an assassin is about to charge at you.

As you progress through the game, you will learn new moves and abilities like running quicker and being able to spot enemies on your map. Training in a gym will allow you to get stronger and be able to fight later assassins and henchmen.

Also when roaming in the world, there will be spots where you have the option to accept a mission but be warned that in these missions, if you get hurt once, you failed the mission and you restart from the point where you first accepted the mission.

Music

Let me just say that every assassin/boss battle has unique music playing in the Background, usually fitting the assassin. When fighting against henchmen, the main theme of the game will play unless you are in some power up mode.

This game has music that ranges from Techno, Hard rock, Ambient, to Alternative Rock. So this would mean that while you may not like one song, there are other songs to listen from.

Sound

Sound is very clear and there are a few that sound like it came from an old Atari/NES game (which is only heard when opening the main menu or when saving) while others are the sound of your beam katana swooshing, energetic effects (Again, inspired that of the Light Sabers)

I’m not going to be too detailed about this part but the voices are all in English and they’re not bad. EVEN the Japanese version has the English voices which is strange since you would think Suda 51 (the creator) would have chosen Japanese but he didn’t.

The enemies say lines but it can get somewhat annoying listening to a henchmen/enemy shouting “My spleen!” more than 7 or so times.

This game also makes use for the speakers on the Wii remote. When Travis reaches to an end point of a level, a ring comes out of the little speakers. When answering the call, Sylvia will talk to you through the Wii remote which, I think, is really cool.

Graphics

The graphics of the game are that of cell shading. Similar to Killer 7’s graphics except No More Heroes appears to have more of a comic-like style to it. This means that the character models, buildings, and such have detail to them. In other words, you are able to see detailed shirts, pant folds, and etc.

A few things…

Although I described this game as some form of video game deity, there are some things that I didn’t liked or I thought could have been added.

For one thing, there is little to do in Santa Destroy. It’s purpose is to just let you go from one part of the town to another (this doesn’t include finding goodies and treasure, BTW). When you run over pedestrians, they simply just flinch while still remain standing.

For cloths, I would have liked it if there were not so much T-shirts that had little to no changes except for the color of the shirt. It would of been also neat if you had the option to take your jacket off or even your sunglasses.

After killing a top ranked assassin, there are checkpoints where you can try to earn money. The problem with these missions is that if you get hit once, you’re done and you are back on the main map.

But seeing as how No More Heroes is already being made and developed, they may fix one of the problems I listed like the overworld.

Final

Overall, I would recommend this to anyone who has an interest in hardcore games and/or is an otaku if they don’t mind some small cons. It’s really nice to have a main character that people can relate to.

The End of Evangelion review

[Note that this is also on another account on Deviant Art called JLCL01.]

If you are a newcomer to the Evangelion series, then I recommend watching the TV series first before watching this. Trust me, the movie will have more of an impact on you. So anyways, Evangelion may appear to be your typical giant robot anime where you have some character shouting “FORM BLAZING SWORD!” but that’s not the case. For this movie has both apocalyptic and psychological elements.

So with that, let me begin describing the story. Note that I will try my best not to put any spoilers when describing the plot.

Plot

After his best friend passed away, Shinji Ikari (our main protagonist) appears to have low self-esteem like there’s no tomorrow…literally. JSSDF (Japanese Strategic Self Defense Forces) is ordered to invade NERV HQ (where Shinji is). Following this is a mecha battle between Asuka Langley Soryu’s Eva Unit 02 against 9 mass produced Evas.

Later in the movie, there are psychological sequences that focus on Shinji’s thoughts and what he is thinking. He is given the chance to either live in a womb-like world where he feels safe or return to reality.

Music

This anime movie contains original music that has never appeared in the TV series (or they are just altered versions of songs from the series) and even containing classical music like Bach’s Air on G string (and you would be surprised where this piece plays) and Jesu joy of Man’s Desiring. The final piano piece that plays at almost at the end of the movie is calming yet somewhat disturbing if you are watching this for the first time, not knowing that this is going to be different than that Naruto or Pokemon movie you watched years before.

There’s also a song that plays in the middle of the movie that sound somewhat similar to “Hey Jude” by the Beatles except the lyrics are about committing suicide and other discomforting topics.

This video contains one of the pieces from the movie:

Animation

The animation is really amazing when you compare it to the first episode of the series and even the later episodes. This is true when watching the battle sequence between Eva Unit 02 and the Mass Production Units. The mouth animations may not be as animated but that’s not a biggie since most learn to deal with it.

History

After the airings of episode 25 and 26 around the year of 1996, some fans of the series sent hate mail and even death threats to Hedeaki Anno. About one year later, around July of 1997, End of Evangelion was shown in theaters.

the director/creator of the Evangelion series.

Many speculate that the movie is either an alternative ending to the series or it just shows what is going on during the last psychedelic episodes of the TV series.

Final thoughts

I liked watching this movie, commenting on moments that I thought where funny or just plain “WTF?!” (Most of it being funnyif you have seen the series or movie more than once or twice. AKA a fan). The movie is more for those who like to pretend to be in a Gentleman’s club where they have crumpets and tea (“Tally ho!”).

But on the serious side if you are expecting only action, then don’t watch this unless you like parts that make you think.

I, personally, recommend watching this. Heck, watch it with someone who’s opened to foreign films (ESPECIALLY ones that are animated since most animation is quote “only for kids” unquote). This is also good to show to others if they think all anime is is just “Muscular guys being constipated with yellow hair.” or “Some magical girl with really high skirts”. I liked this because of some of the characters and scenes where the characters are arguing about each other’s divergent minds.

So that’s my review of the End of Evangelion, My next review will be on the late 80’s animated movie, the Elm-Chanted Forest.