No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle

[Sephex]

Picked this up on Tuesday (release date). As a big fan of the first game (despite its obvious flaws), I was looking forward to this game the second I heard that it was being developed ages ago. Here we go:

*Story tone more serious than the first, but the game has plenty of humorous moments in it. Some people don't like what I am about to point out, but I love when games like this acknowledge the fact that you are playing a video game. Without spoiling anything, the first game's ending was much better though. And yes, I understood both of them.

*No more overworld. This could be a good or bad thing depending on how you felt about the first game. Personally, I like the new "menu" system. I admit I had fun looking for secrets in the overworld in NMH1, but most of the time I felt it was placed there to artificially extend the game

*Much, much better music. Even though I love the NMH general theme, it was overused in the first game. There are a couple of new variations in this installment, and two of the old variations makes a return (fortunately one of them was my favorite one), but this game has a better variety of music, and I feel that NMH2 has the better soundtrack. I usually don't go for J-Poppy sounding things, but DAMN this song is catchy as hell: YouTube - No More Heroes 2 Soundtrack 13

*Better minigames. Right down to unfair exploits both on the player and CPU side of things, most of these mini games would have made kick-ass NES games or fun Windows freeware ages ago. You don't even really have to grind for money in NMH2 compared to the first one (another aspect which I felt dragged the first one down) in order to get weapons/training (if you want to buy all the outfits, prepare to grind), but I ended up wasting a lot of time playing the mini games. My favorites were Lay the Pipe and Tile in Style.

*Better Bosses (and more of them). Not so much when it comes to style, but as cool as the Boss fights in NMH1 were, most of them was just a straight up battle. Those were fun, but the best boss fights were always the ones with some sort of twist added to it. NMH2 has you do something fun and interesting for just about every boss fight (especially the Rank 25 battle).

*Better style and animation. Yes, this game is for Wii. Yes, there are better looking Wii games. Having said that, NMH2 blows away NMH1 out of the water in the graphics department. Animations are more fluid, characters are more detailed, and environments have more life in them. As far as style goes, NMH2 really makes you feel like a ruthless assassin. Yes, even more than the first game.

Any thoughts? Am I the only one here that likes this series still?

Example of a cool battle (Rank Fight 4 Spoilers): [Spoilers]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq2XMX1x8j8[/spoilers] <--Some pretty rough language in battle too if such things offend you.

[JKTrix]

I generally have issues with Suda 51's games, because people pass off the glaring flaws in his games as commentary or whatever. I'm all for poking fun at stuff, but when it actually hampers my enjoyment of a game, I can't take it.

I rented NMH2 to play in between Mass Effect sessions (until I get Tatsunoko vs Capcom), and I was pretty pleased that they took out the 'overworld'. That was the big thing that made me not want to finish the first game. I only played up to the boss you have pictured and quit when those lasers started messing me around. Didn't feel like figuring anything out at the time so I just turned it off :P I did notice the new music though, it sounded kind of like Persona's.

[ljkkjlcm9]

Amazon delivered it to me yesterday. I haven't opened it yet as I am forcing myself to finish Uncharted 2 first. I honestly yelled at the game yesterday and said, "BE OVER ALREADY."

Highly looking forward to playing this after though.

THE JACKEL

[Shoeberto]

I wish I had the money to pick this up, because I have a major hetero man-crush on Suda. I loved Killer7 and No More Heroes and I'm still not entirely sure why. Everything I read about NMH2 makes me want it really really bad. But, yeah, don't have the money for it at the moment. Sorry, Suda

[NeoCracker]

This game took everything good about the first one and made it better, while dropping most of the first ones problems.

That, my friend, is No more Heroes 2 in a nutshell.


Also, the greatest quote ever.

'I hate you with all my hate.'

[ljkkjlcm9]

Played this a good amount, currently ranked 24th I think. Pretty good game... though some of the mini-games, namely the ones in the gym, are getting pretty annoying.

THE JACKEL