No More Heroes’ is viciously annoying: Review

The following is a spoiler-free review of Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes.

Today in disappointing nosedives: the seven-level beat ’em up that refuses to end.

It has been almost nine years since fans of Suda51’s No More Heroes franchise shared quality time with badass assassin and hero, Travis Touchdown. Now, back for a standalone adventure on Nintendo Switch in Travis Strikes Again, the cult favorite character is attempting to win over new players with an updated take on the tried-and-true hack and slash. Unfortunately, what could have been the start of something weird and wonderful turned out (at least for this gamer) to be a painful slog through hours of repetitive gameplay that felt above all else really annoying.

As a newcomer to the franchise, I was eager to experience the humor and style that had made the previous installments of No More Heroes so beloved. For the first hour or so, I got just that. I experienced the thrill of using the toilet to save, laughed aloud at some of the story’s fourth wall breaking dialogue, was intrigued by the levels’ shifting referential design, and generally delighted in taking on new attackers. 

Then things started to feel a lot like work. Despite collecting a variety of new skills as the game progressed, I found myself confined to fighting each endless wave of enemies with the same basic controls. Jump or dodge. Attack, attack. Jump or dodge. Speciality attack. Death blow with beam katana. Charge up that same beam katana. Repeat. Endlessly. Until finished.

Of course, the stifled and limited gameplay could have been saved by the narrative—see releases like Oxenfree and Batman: The Telltale Series for more evidence. Unfortunately, following along with Travis’s story felt like a task rather than a journey. Although Travis Strikes Again is marketed as independent of its predecessors, it still demands you know a lot about the franchise’s past events and video game history to get the full effect. Otherwise, you end up feeling fairly left out as reference after reference and in-joke after in-joke go soaring over your head. (Ultimately, I ended up doing a lot of web scrolling in an effort to keep up.) Sure, if you’ve got all that info off the bat, it might be great. But if you’re the average newcomer, not so much.

That being said, all of this could easily be filed away as “a slight misfire, but fun enough” if it weren’t for the game’s daunting and ultimately exhausting structure, seemingly designed to remind you of how much more of this sucker you need to get through. 

Travis Strikes Again is broken into three arenas. First, you have your central hub: the trailer. Here you can switch out t-shirts, check the ramen blog, read faxes, get your bearings, and lament the sheer amount of steps you have to take to actually play the game aka access the other two arenas: the Death Drive Mk II and your motorcycle. 

The Death Drive, a seven-level gaming system with a mysterious and dangerous past powered by death balls, holds all of your combat and mini game opportunities. Here you do all that aforementioned beam katana-ing, fiddle with a racing simulator, trudge through a side scroller, and mindlessly toy with an intergalactic aim-and-shoot.

The motorcycle serves as your main narrative device, launching a visual novel titled Travis Strikes Back. Through a simple text-based structure, you progress through Travis Strikes Back, collecting the six death balls needed to access the actual gameplay in the Death Drive. Equal parts fun and skim-worthy, this aspect of the game is broadly speaking just a whole lot of reading.

Ultimately, going through the trailer to get to the motorcycle to go through the trailer to get to the Death Drive and back again feels more like a poorly designed apartment layout than an immersive gaming experience. Additionally, all of the steps associated with each level really reminds you just how many levels there are—think mile markers during a marathon. Sure, passing each one feels like an achievement, but it can also get you fixated on how quickly you want to get it all over with.

As my irritation with the game’s structure and contents grew, I started to become frustrated with things I had initially liked. Specifically, Suda51’s signature self-referential humor went from delightful to pointedly infuriating. More than once, Travis would mock with something along the lines of “I bet the players hate this” or “Wow, this seems like an unnecessary part of the game.” Each time, I would think, “Yes. Yes it is.” Then, I would dutifully trudge on, holding my controller just a little more angrily than before and wondering why Travis Strikes Again seemed to be so aggressively goading me into turning it off.

When I was seeing red, there were some zany moments of reprieve—shout out the baby/gate that you feed strawberries to in Level 6—but by the time I hit the final boss, I couldn’t appreciate the character design or crescendoing narrative because I was too busy focusing on hitting the credits. 

Overall, Travis Strikes Again is an okay experience made better for those with a deep appreciation for its creator and history. For anyone trying to join in on the fun, it’s a swing and a miss… and a swing and a miss… and a swing and a miss… etc.