Playing A Game No More Heroes III PC

Sixteen years ago, the Arab Spring was about to bloom; Super PACs had just been invented; Marvel's cinematic universe only had an Iron Man and a Hulk; Android and iOS were yet to depose BlackBerry; and I was absolutely loving the ultraviolence and over-the-top attitude of No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle. Today, well, the world has changed -- but it's strangely comforting, playing No More Heroes III, to see that Goichi Suda hasn't.

The game's opening minutes are completely bonkers: Travis narrates some faux-Youtube videos describing a fictional 8-bit beat-em-up called "Deathman," then a short anime film shows a kid named Damon rescuing a fuzzy alien from its crash site, then you gain control of Travis Touchdown for a gameplay tutorial - after that fuzzy alien has grown up, returned to Earth, and launched a campaign of destruction - which keeps tutorializing through the first boss battle, and then once you defeat him and reach number 10 on the Galactic Assassin Superhero Rankings chart, in-engine cutscenes show Lord Fu a.k.a Jess-Baptiste VI (the grown-up fuzzy alien!) murdering the president and finally describing what this game is about.

Which, in case it wasn't clear already, is an excuse to copy the rank-climbing structure of No More Heroes and NMH2. Do side-jobs to collect cash, fight in designated matches to qualify for the next ranking, challenge the next-highest assassin in a bombastic battle, then do it all over again until you reach the top.

Sometimes, when your Beam Katana lands a killing blow, a slot machine will trigger invincibility or infinite battery power or a missile-launching armor suit. Sometimes your opponent will be a giant space monster, and you'll fly the suit up into orbit to meet it. Sometimes a rogue assassin will appear out of nowhere, take out your target, and become your new target. Sometimes the encounter will turn into a rhythm game, or a turn-based RPG! Just like its predecessors, NMH3 makes prodigious use of richly-varied mechanics and absurd twists to keep feeling fresh.

It also brings back the first game's open world, as a repository of optional activities and collectibles. Ride Travis's super-bike from downtown to the suburbs, from the barren salt flats to the, uh, mortar-scarred Normandy-esque beach. Mow lawns, pick up litter, wrestle alligators, rescue lost kittens. Unclog public toilets to turn them into save points!

And the music! As much as I miss how the previous games would riff on Masafumi Takada's iconic title theme, Nobuaki Kaneko's new compositions here are as energizing and pulse-pounding as ever.

When No More Heroes III is firing on all cylinders, it's like nothing else out there. ... Well, other than the first and second games. It's just like those! Which, so many years later, is extremely refreshing.

But, it misfires, too. In some ways just like its predecessors: the open world is relatively empty, like NMH1's that I wrote about in 2008, "The actual overworld ... is fairly dull, especially in the early game. ... about as exciting as untoasted bread." Graphical quality is a let-down, disappointingly similar to my musings on NMH2 in 2010, "The visual style is amazing. At a higher resolution, I imagine it would be absolutely incredible."

(NMH3 is "high def," sure, but its textures are - for a game released in 2021 - shockingly low-detail.)

And then there are storytelling misfires, which feel a little like, if you'll pardon my language, Suda-san smelling his own farts. It's been so long since NMH2 that I really could've used some recapping -- instead, NMH3 jumps right in with Shinobu and Bad Girl (who's ... alive, now?), Dr. Naomi (who's ... a tree, now?), Henry, and other characters I have virtually no memory of.

I'll cop to having skipped the Travis Strikes Again spinoff, but it's jarring how a resurrected Bad Girl - and her dad, who's also Travis's friend now? - are just here, without context. There's even a non-sequitur appearance from a character named Kamui who, I guess, is from The Silver Case. Suda's text adventure series. Huh.

This series has always been fond of referencing Takashi Miike (whom I know as the director of the live action Ace Attorney film); this time Travis and Bishop's chats about their favorite Miike works are too frequent. And long. On and on for minutes. Repeatedly.

I should temper my gripes about NMH3's reference-heaviness by pointing out how I love its reverence to other pop-nerd culture. When Travis and Sylvia encountered some alien eggs that looked exactly like Alien's facehugger eggs, when battle events beamed Travis up to a spaceship while playing an X-Files-like jingle, and when he came back to Earth crouching in a teleportation sphere like Terminator, I just couldn't stop grinning.

That qualified enjoyment is emblematic of my overall experience with No More Heroes III. Its vibe is definitely not for everyone, and its overall craftsmanship doesn't measure up against modern masterpieces -- what might've been negligible quirks in the late 2000s are harder to ignore, now. But it's not afraid of making mistakes, it wears its heart (and influences) on its sleeve, and as a games nerd myself I appreciate the fuck out of it.

Almost 20 years after proclaiming "punk's not dead", Suda is still proving it.

And yes, you can pet the cat!

Better than: Killer Is Dead, No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle
Not as good as: more ...modern? open-world action games like God of War Ragnarök
I have mixed feelings about: the Damon character being, apparently, inspired by Suda's feud with John Riccitiello over Shadows of the Damned. 'Cause while I'm certainly no fan of the guy either, I'm actually looking forward to that remaster.

Rating: Good