So No More Heroes 3 is a month away. This is probably my most anticipated game in a while coming off of Travis Strikes Again which felt like Grasshopper was being a bit more fresh than they had in a long time. It felt like a rare attempt to replicate the experience of playing and collecting underwhelming games, obsessing over them, and revelling in a hobby tied to problematic industry and tastes.
One of the biggest reasons I care is because of the attention paid to the weird tone and style shifting in the trailer which I think TSA got pretty spot on for the most part. It feels like a ‘last night of the tour’ for a studio that’s had mixed but interesting failures supporting a few resonant statements. Here’s the trailer:
Character rankings for the Galactic top 10 - Mild Spoilers
If nothing else I’m pretty sure the music and desolate open world will be the good shit.
Astral Chain ended up being mostly weird to me, not to compare the two so much. Just felt like Platinum spraying Platinum over a young adult animated series about dimension cops. Was cool.
NMH3 to me has more Deadly Premonition 2 energy looking janky af and continuing some niche cult stuff in potentially interesting ways. There’s been some genreplay teased in trailers which could be cool or gimmicky but is one of my many fetishes so idk.
To be somewhat grounded, the game does seem like it could just end up being kooky-wacky toon-logic adventures like NMH2. I do wonder if it’ll lose the more ‘personal’, smallscale, intimate feeling of TSA which technically takes place almost entirely in a trailer. I have a lot of genuinely positive memories of NMH empty open world (double fetish) so I’m gonna slurp it up.
that gameplay trailer with the low framerates and empty world didn’t really instill a lot of hope in me for this game. i mean the empty world less so, but it makes me wonder what purpose it serves. i liked the tone of the first teaser trailers and whatnot, but if the game doesn’t play well or isn’t fun, then idk if there’s a point. NMH felt like a direct lampooning of games/indie culture circa that era, whereas idk what this is really going for.
i wanna remain optimistic, but tbh i haven’t really dug anything from Suda since…NMH, i guess? gonna wait and see with this, i guess!
The empty world gives me an optimism and wariness; I think Santa Destroy is underappreciated as a satire of SoCal suburbia and empty open worlds and Travis’ stunted gamer reflection is supposed to be a inevitable product of that world. But I’m wary that they’re just…repeating a point they made a decade ago. There’s a lot more open-world material for them to work on if they choose and I hope to see it.
Genuinely excited for the inevitable clash in presentation styles and the meta-holler from 2007 in our 2021 game spaces despite not playing Travis Strikes Again (which from a distance was seemingly very much Doing That Thing)
A healthy time to revisit these games in order methinks
I’m buying this on day one. I do not care if it runs at 5 FPS or the textures look like what happens after someone throws salt in my eyes, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, because it is fucking No More Heroes, a game that, as cringe as it sounds, changed my goddamn life when I played it. No More Heroes 1 was good enough that I bought a Wii, a system I didn’t even want before then, as soon as the game was announced, back when it was still “Project Heroes.” Suda51 is a damn genius, as far as I’m concerned. The only game I loved enough to write 3,000 words about it.
Travis Strikes Again made me feel at ease, given the noticeable downward slope Grasshopper was going through at the time (mostly due to publisher bull shit (Lollipop Chainsaw is exempt from this, because it rules)), and I’m hoping that the spirit of that game carries over into NMH3. That sort of free wheeling, I-Don’t-Give-A-Fuck attitude that’s sorely missing in today’s gaming scene, both with big companies and smaller indies.
Unfortunately, I know that there’s no way to get Genki Rockets in this one, as they no longer exist and the rights to their music is a legal nightmare, but I’m still holding out hope that we’ll get That Song back. I’ll settle for the cover version.
Hey this reminds me of the time I dated this girl whose mom was a private investigator and she checked me out online and told her “IDK about this Dale guy. I don’t think he’s husband material because I found this game on his Amazon wishlist” and it was Lollipop Chainsaw.
i caved and grabbed the digital copy of this… a really strong opening.
it seems to very directly acknowledge TSA in a lot of ways, and particularly the way you talk about it @captainlove - which was the framing i approached it with. excited to dig deeper in!
They’ve only teased it so far but I feel like there’s going to be some kind of interesting pay off towards the end to do with the legacy of games. I could be completely off the mark but curious to see more. On the rank 7 fight now.
finished this last night. game rules, and definitely does a lot of really cool shit i don’t want to spoil. i still need to go back and finish a number of sidequests, as i am sure this game follows the tradition of having more than one ending.
Also finished it last night and despite being in love with everything about the style and the combat and the sheer dedication to novelty, it really is Suda’s Rocky III, a lavish and shameless victory lap for a character who was far more interesting when his creator was in a more ambiguous and vulnerable place. I kept waiting for that moment of disillusionment I love in all the Suda games but there was none, Travis has transformed into a legitimate hero who understands the importance of bonds and there’s nothing wrong with the fact the only support he can offer to a girl going mad mourning is recommending her the best episode of Space Warrior Baldios even though in NMH1 it would be a brutal joke punchline. I get the feeling Grasshopper Manufacture is in a good place right now and good for them but this is a definite step back from TSA (which I didn’t love but respected for how personal it was) and an underwritten geeky mess (much preferred Suda when his blatant references concerned Takeshi Kitano and David Lynch, not the few Gundam things everyone and their mother knows), plus I’m kind of shocked that they didn’t make a single actual stage when they had all the tools to do so
i just finished my first run of the game and my only thought is that suda is definitely setting himself up for fAAAmily wAAAr
beyond that, i think that a whole lot of nmh has turned into a moment of sincerity almost – acknowledgement of influences and paying homage to them, acknowledgement of having people beside you that will support you, and acknowledgement that there are greater forces out there that you don’t even know that are out to haunt you.
i think i need to sit a little further with this to really flesh out stuff but there are a lot of nodes that are mapped around my head. also there’s too many blocked out areas from the map. is this going to be paid dlc
Just finished it. Need to digest thoughts but here are some undigested conclusions.
Similar zaniness problem to 2 ultimately.
I love how the aliens and the top 10 are effectively a bait and switch for examining Travis’ positive familial ties and friendships. I just wanted him and Sylvia to have that talk dammit.
The map being blocked feels very weird. Like maybe the world isn’t a huge focus but I don’t know what they were going for.
So many deep cuts but they’re never really in service of anything except to reward obscure lore knowledge. Like Damon was a side char in a mid chapter of TSA and ends up being true villain man and it all feels comparatively unmotivated compared to TSA.
I still enjoyed my time with it but please make it easier to check if I’ve done these defense missions!
