Trash and Treasure: Gaming On A Budget, featuring No More Heroes!

Hello everyone, I am FishHookCrossface, sitting here in this dark dungeon in which I have been placed captive under, as very recently I was Kidnapped By Ninjas...OK, that was a horrendous pun, but that's quite beside the point. I'm here as KBN's newest contributor and I certainly hope to contribute well here.

Here at Kidnapped By Ninjas, we'd like to hope that most of us are pretty well off financially. However, we do realize that's not always the case. Unfortunately, the economic hardship of our time has left many all around the world unable to buy top-caliber games and AAA releases all of the time. This has left most of us skimming through bargain bins and used titles for our gaming fix. Not all hope is lost! There are some great titles available in the used gaming and budget gaming market. There is also horrendous shovelware out there that should have never been bought new, let alone used. So how do you weed out the cream from the crap? That's what I'm here to do. As an unemployed high school student, I certainly know a thing or two about bargain hunting, so I'm going to take you skimming down the aisles of budget gaming and finding the absolute best at the absolute best values with my column Trash and Treasure: Gaming On A Budget.

To do this, I will be using a simple scale that will take into account not only the quality of the game with the standard measures of Gameplay, Graphics, Sound, and Replay Value, but also the fifth value of Affordability, how well the game stacks up at its current price point. The final rating of a game is not an average of these individual ratings, but a subjective rating that falls within one of three easily identifiable categories. The categories are as follows...

Pawn Shop Paraphenelia (The Low End)
- These are games that are either simply horrendous games that aren't worth any amount of currency no matter what or games that are hideously overpriced for their value. As the budget gamer, these are titles to avoid.

Decent Value Deal (Middle Of The Road)
- These are either merely OK games at a great value or great games at a value that may not be affordable to the budget gamer. These are games that the budget gamer should consider, but they aren't completely must-buy titles.

Tremendous Gaming Treasure (The High End)
- These are great games at great values. Tons of fun to be had at a low price point, these are the budget gamer's Nirvana and should be picked up at any cost. Even the gamer with a ton of expendable income should look into these high-class titles.

With this said, let's move into our first game: one of the Wii's finest treasures with a price you can't pass up: Grasshopper Manufacture's No More Heroes.

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In No More Heroes, you play as Travis Touchdown, a gullible otaku obsessed with pro wrestling, anime, fast motorcycles and faster women. This is how he meets the mysterious Sylvia, a representative of the vicious league of killers known as the United Assassin's Association. Travis is lured to the group by a promise from Sylvia that if he becomes the #1 assassin in the world, she'll engage in heavily implied explicit activities. This premise leads to great hilarity in the game's very well done cutscenes with some very funny exchanges between the two characters. Travis is lead into the dark world of the UAA, where he finds truer purpose as an assassin and warrior. What begins as a mad dash for Travis to get into the pants of the vixen leads to Travis finding his true meaning, and you really feel the changes in Travis throughout the game from a man just wanting the lavish homes, fast women, and luxury into a more focused warrior. This is not to say that the humor goes down as the story goes on, as the humor is extremely prevalent throughout the game's length, one of the game's most charming features.

The gameplay seems on the surface a basic hack-and-slash action game, but reveals some deeper elements as the game goes on. Controls with the Wiimote are simple and very intuitive, simply lock onto your foe with the Z button a la 3D Legend of Zelda's combat, then press A for slashes with your beam katana or B for "beat attacks", more commonly called melee attacks. Also, you can aim where your blows strike, either high or low, by leaning the Wiimote and Nunchuck down for low strikes and up high for high strikes, which becomes very useful for not only comboing but also for opponents with adept blocking skills later on in the game. Also, a very satisfying attack comes from the various wrestling moves Travis can perform. Simply perform beat attacks until the opponent is stunned, then press B to begin the wrestling move. Follow the motion control prompt on the screen to complete the move. All of these attacks lead to various, very satisfying kills, where your opponent explodes into floods of blood and coins, which are very spectatular to watch. Watching your hapless foes being sliced in half as they scream "My spleen!" and explode into rivers of clarnet and gold rarely gets old.

Sadly, what does get old in this game are the sidequests between the missions. To earn the next ranking match for the UAA, Travis needs money. Unemployed, Travis turns to assassination missions and quirky side jobs to supplement his income for the next challenge as well as various stat and weapon upgrades. The problem is that a lot of these assassination gigs are the same. Kill as many people as possible, kill a leader of a large group, or kill using only beat attacks and wrestling moves. That's basically the extent of the assassination gigs. The side jobs, which range from garbage collecting to pumping gas at a service station to simple coconut picking, can provide some fun on the first playthrough, but they simply become a means to an end to get to the next ranking match.

Speaking of which, the real gameplay fun here comes from a series of very well put together boss battles. All of the bosses are very unique and entertaining characters in their own right, with very well put together introductions. All of the bosses (well, most of them, but we won't go into spoilers here) are the next ranked assassin in the UAA rankings, a position Travis wants to overtake. Therefore, Travis has to defeat them in fights to the death. These boss battles are fun and challenging, with some bosses easily defeated by clearly defined patterns, but others providing significant challenge. You'll want to get through the somewhat repetitive side jobs just to get to these very satisfying confrontations.

The graphics in this game are highly stylized and very well thought out. Within the levels themselves, the characters are well-designed and look decent. The backgrounds leave somewhat to be desired, but they certainly don't detract from the experience. In the town of Santa Destroy where the side quests take place, however, the graphics leave quite a bit to be desired. The bright contrast colors seem to muddle together into large patches of "blah" at point within the town. There certainly are redeeming parts of Santa Destroy, but they are few and far between.

While the graphics are merely decent, the game shines again in the sound department. The songs in the game are memorable and catchy, with the basic beat being repeated and remixed throughout most of the main levels and the boss battles having very unique and simply great sounding music. The sound effects can sometimes get repetitive (the enemies typically cycle through about 3 or 4 dying phrases, for example), but there are some other great elements in the effects department as well. For example, the speaker of the Wiimote is used very well here, used to make the lightsaber-esque "whirrrrr" sound and also used as Travis' cell phone when Sylvia calls him during his missions. You'll actually want to put the Wiimote to your ear to listen to the conversations. It's one of those little things that I love, it really draws you into the experience.

As far as replay value goes, there is a New Game +, which allows you to go through again on a higher difficulty with your existing save data, but aside from that and a few collectibles like luchador mask trading cards, there's not a ton else to do after you beat the main quest. I personally think that this game could have benefitted from a Boss Battles mode, where you can go through all the bosses in succession with limited health benefits. That could have added quite a few extra hours of replayibility. However, this is a somewhat minor complaint, as the main quest takes some significant time to beat and is satisfying.

All of these things sound great, but how is this good for the budget gamer? With No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle about to come out and the game not selling tremendously upon launch, this game can be found at tremendous value at various game stores. Over the summer, I purchased NMH used for $17.99 and I thought it was a great deal then. Now, at our fine friends and pay-per-click sponsors Amazon.com, you can get new copies of NMH for the measly $17.99 price point, with used copies going as low as $11! With this kind of value, this is a title you can't pass up.

No More Heroes falls firmly into the category of Tremendous Gaming Treasure. With an immersive and simply fun gameplay experience with an excellent soundtrack and very colorful and fun stylized graphics. The replay value leaves somewhat to be desired and sometimes the graphics aren't super tight on a technical standpoint, but with such a low price, there's no way the budget gamer should pass this up, and even the wealthy gamers should look at this AAA-title on a budget pricepoint, especially with No More Heroes 2 coming out soon and looking just as good, if not better, than the original.

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That's all for me this time. I'll see you next time around with more trash and treasure from the deep depths of the bargain bins!

FishHookCrossface
- Kidnapped By Ninjas