No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise review [PS3]

Posted May 30, 2011 by Ewan Aiton.

No More Heroes has made it to the PS3. Grasshopper’s quirky hack-and-slash action game was one of the finer additions to the Wii’s catalogue, and with its over-the-top action, it always made an excellent candidate for the transition over to the HD machines.

The advent of the PS3′s Move controller made the arrival of No More Heroes almost a certainty, and Grasshopper has managed to do a decent job of the port. Mostly, anyway, but we’ll get to the game’s one crippling problem later.

No More Heroes remains absolutely ridiculous. You play as Travis Touchdown, a gamer who manages to break into the lucrative but highly dangerous hitman business. Travis finds himself challenged by other budding assassins who want to become the best in the world, and in order to protect himself from the challengers, Travis (armed with his trusty beam katana) must kill the nine other assassins in the top ten list to become the best in the world.

The way to the top is controlled by a mysterious woman called Sylvia. She gives you all the information you need to take on the rest of the top ten, but it all comes at a price: you need to pay her for the privilege of her sending you to your possible doom. So you’ll earn money and grow your reputation in order to pay Sylvia, which you do by completing odd jobs and small-time hits around Travis’ local town of Santa Destroy.

The jobs are usually stuff like knocking coconuts down from trees and collecting them for vendors, while small-time assassinations might involve – say – killing off the boss of a new company trying to muscle into Santa Destroy. In no time you’ll be screaming about the city, earning loads of money and climbing the rankings.

The game is crammed with Suda 51′s trademark sense of humour and plenty of pop culture references. Little details – like collectable trading cards with the masks of luchadors, and saving games by visiting the toilet – are pleasantly human touches.

Everything’s the same here as it was in the original Wii version, essentially. The Move controls work very much as those on Nintendo’s console, only with the added accuracy that PlayStation Move provides. But problems arise when you try to use a standard controller.

The game blends free-roaming aspects with plenty of hack-and-slash antics, and it does even make use of the motion-sensitivity the Sixaxis provides. During the combat sequences there’s the standard use of the face buttons for vertical and horizontal attacks with the beam katana, and stun attacks using Travis’s fists and feet. Kill attacks are engaged circumstantially and use the right thumbstick coupled with a quick-time set of instructions. In these instances the controls work well, and are thoughtfully designed to add a little more skill to your beam-katana choppery.

But while the combat controls are fairly responsive and the QTEs do make it a little more skillful, the controls in the free-roaming sections are less effective.

Travis has a motorbike which is intensely fast, but cornering swings between understeer and oversteer very quickly, and you can’t always judge when that’s going to happen. Also, lining yourself up to carry out specific tasks, like battering trees to knock down coconuts, can be a very precise affair that becomes hugely irritating very quickly indeed.

If you’re Move-less, it’s frustrating to see an otherwise delightful game so frequently spoiled by control issues. Still, those aside, No More Heroes has made the switch from Wii to PS3 very competently. The quirks of the game’s design and the sheer volume of cultural references often make it a joy to play. Ultimately, it can be forgiven its transgressions for being one of the most unique videogames around.