Grasshopper’s No More Heroes is a fun game. I got sucked into the game play right away in this gem for the Wii console. After hours of being glued to saber battling, I started to apply what I’ve been learning and reading to this game. What is it about No More Heroes that makes it fun? Here’s my analysis:

1.    The Wii-mote mechanics take front seat in the action in No More Heroes. Careful attention was paid to what mechanics would work what would not. For example, unlike Red Steel, the saber fighting does not primarily consist of waving around the mote. Requiring this would be too much work for the player, and even more importantly, the speed the player could swing the sword would be much slower than Goichi Suda would want. No More Heroes is a beat’em hack and slash, action packed sword-fighting game; it’s not a sword fighting game of refined technique like Kengo Legend of the 9. Speed is desirable in No More Heroes, and this is why the A button waves the sword.

2.    Throw moves add variety and add a quirky Suda tribute to his favourite, Lucha Libre. High and low sword attacks add a simple, but effective at adding an element of offense and defense. The opponents could be mindless and never block which would be too little. They could randomly block which would lead to momentum breaks that the player cannot control. Instead, having two options where the enemies block either high or low makes it enough to prevent the player from mowing down crowds of baddies too easily, while not hindering the ability of the player to continue indefinitely on streaks of sword swinging victory. The high/low block mechanism creates excellent balance between difficulty and high momentum.

3.    Suda makes use of Hirokazu’s goal creation by having short, medium and long-term goals. Short-term goals are working jobs, driving your bike from location to location, and clearing a room of baddies with your beam sword. The Medium term goals are the earning of money required to enter the next competition and defeating each of the 10 bosses in the game. The long-term goal is to be #1 ranked.

4.    The goal of the game is made very clear from the beginning in No More Heroes. This is a clever move, which relates to Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow requiring clear goals and feedback (Rules of Play p 337). Once the player has a clear understanding of the goals in the game, they will know what to expect and be able to focus on achieving that goal. When the goal(s) of a game is (are) unclear, the player’s interest can wane. Ever been in a game where you didn’t know what to do next? It’s no fun. Unless there is some mystery, which keeps their attention, they are likely to question why they are spending their time doing whatever it is they are doing in the game. No More Heroes makes it clear right in the opening sequence that your goal is to defeat the top ten killers and take the first ranked slot. Now all the player needs to do is hop to it.

5.    Fun through Customization: Players can customize Travis Touchdown by changing his clothing and accessories. GTA4 also makes use of this small customization as well. Many players want to look cool. They are the hero right? If they don’t like the generic look of most action hero’s default costumes, they will be less likely to bond with that character.

6.    No More Heroes makes use of the Action Hero player character model. Travis Touchdown brings the action. All he had to do was meet a woman in a bar. This man finds action wherever he goes.

7.    Many small elements have been added to the game to break the monotony that might be felt if the fighting game play got repetitive. Suda 51 learned this painful lesson well in his disastrous Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked for PS2. He had tried a few new ideas and it just didn’t hold up well (Sorry Suda, you’ve more than made up for it though). Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked, an ironically fitting name, suffered from lack of interesting fighting mechanics. The fighting and the music synched up, and there were some interesting combos. So why’d the fighting in that game fail miserably? There was no variety. After a few screens of fighting bad guys, you mostly likely already explored the totality of the combat options and it felt like it. No More Heroes breaks this monotony and limitation with quite a few elements: Throws, blocking, finishing moves, charge attacks, recharging your saber batteries, getting cell phone calls on your Wii-mote and to make sure there was enough to keep us interested, a slot machine was added so that every kill the player achieves spins the slot machine for a chance at a special bonus power attack. There are a variety of bonus attack types chosen at random which let the player feel there is always something different around the corner in the next confrontation (i.e. happy coincidences).

8.    Additionally, many types of enemies are thrown at you. This variety also helps. The baseball player enemies are a good example, adding the mini-game of swinging the beam saber to send baseballs back at them. Samurai Champloo suffered from lack of variety in enemies, but Killer 7 had many different enemy types, and if you remember, there was always a unique “Smile” before every boss encounter. Goichi Suda has kept this variety between his two successful titles.

9.    The Boss fights are key to the storyline. There is little value in just killing baddies with the saber, though fun. It’s the bosses that make No More Heroes special. Each of these bosses is a unique, comically absurd, larger than life character. Each of them also sets a milestone in the game demarcating the enjoyment in defeating a great boss and raising your rank and status. And personally, some of these bosses are the coolest seen in quite a while. Where did Suda get these freaks?

10.    Spectacular kills, lots and lots of blood, and tons of gold pieces flying about; No More Heroes gives the player a strong sense of victory and even the sense they are the invincible-hero (an archetype seldom seen since Steven Seagal stopped starring in films). The fighting would not be the same if the blood and all the coins were omitted. The blood is a reward in eye-candy. The challenge in the non-boss fight scenes of No More Heroes is not presented in the form of one bad guy. It would be difficult to play so poorly that one typical baddie would kill you. Rather, the player may make a mistake here and there, one on this guy, another on the third guy, and these mistakes add up. The difficulty therefore is presented in the limitations of flawless cumulative performance. This clever balance keeps the momentum very high in the fighting and reinforces the player’s feel of invincibility. By the end of the game, the player can believe they are truly role-playing the best fighter in Santa Destroy. The second form of difficulty is the boss-fights. These fights present the real substantial challenge in the game. This time the difficulty is presented in patterns, which must be understood, unwound and exploited by the player. Again, speed is maximized in the fighting. This leaves little time for the player to think, forcing more instinctive action, bringing a sense of thrill.

The sword fighting in No More Heroes is kept simple enough so that it is fast, easy to grasp and the player can hack and slash and violently and spectacularly kill bad guys without reading a manual or practicing for hours. The fast pace of the game is very important. As such, the fighting mechanic using the Wii-mote is the keystone in the bridge for No More Heroes. This game would be far less exciting on a console without the player’s motion based input. Obviously, the controller for the Wii makes the entire system - this is no surprise. Suda 51 definitely focused on the biggest strength of the system for his game. Very well done.