No More Heroes 2: Twice the Action and Half the Fun

I might be giving up on No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle. Which makes me very sad, because I really liked the first game. I really enjoy the character Travis Touchdown, just because he's so against the grain of your typical videogame heroes. He's not a selfless super man, and he's not a brooding anti-hero with a dark secret. He's just a guy... with a lightsaber... who happens to be a badass. His mission to become the number one ranked assassin in the world is motivated by two things, he wants to prove that he's a badass, and he wants to get into his agents pants. That's it.

Thankfully that aspect carries over into the sequel, there's still plenty of fourth wall breaking again, and they've opted to change most of the mini-games into 8Bit style arcade games, which I think is brilliant. Sadly the bosses are kind of a weak point in this one, in the first game every boss had a long conversation with Travis, which was really the high point of the game, the sequel has more bosses, and thus less care is given to each one, a lot of them just die without being given any characterization. It's funny, because the actual gameplay has all been overhauled with a lot of much needed improvements, but the game is just less fun.

Finally, I reached a boss that I just had to turn the Wii off because I was getting too frustrated. It starts off with a pointless motorcycle duel, with the two of you trying to push the other off a small plateau that's pretty much smaller than the turning radius of your bike, also, he gets special powers, like a charge up move that makes it impossible for him to be pushed. After 4 tries, I finally got him over the edge, only to have him climb back over the ledge and duel with melee weapons. This boss pretty much epitomizes everything I hate about the boss designs in this game: He's impossible to hit 90% of the time, his attacks are freakishly powerful, and difficult to dodge, and he's only vulnerable after you've dodge one of his attacks.

I might go back and play it again some day on the easy setting instead of the "normal" difficulty, but for now I'm just too burned to enjoy it. Good thing I've still got a stack of awesome games waiting for me.

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