No More Heroes 2 (Wii) Review - PAGE 1

Travis Touchdown returns to the city of Santa Destroy in No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle to avenge the death of a friend and reclaim his title as the number one assassin. It’s been three years since his success but he hasn’t gone rusty one bit. His drive to kill is stronger than ever as he’ll be facing more intimidating foes to overcome and regain the title that was once his. Will his new struggle be as worthy as it formerly was?

Players control Travis using the Nunchuk to move and lock-on to enemies while the Wii Remote affords a variety of attacks and evasive maneuvers. Travis can slash and pummel his way to victory with beam katana slashes, use punches and kicks to break defenses, charge the beam katana for stronger attacks, and evade with the D-pad; depending on how you hold the Wii remote will also affect whether Travis delivers high or low attacks. Once you’re ready to deliver the finishing blow, the game prompts a slashing motion with the remote or execution of a satisfying wrestling move using both controllers.

Skillful players can take advantage of advanced moves such as Dark Step to deliver a multitude of blows quickly, and other nuances such as holding the Wii Remote low and attacking near a knocked-down enemy to deliver a killing blow. If you’ve played the first game, you’ll be right at home as NMH2 handles practically the same way.
 

Levels consist of fighting baddies in an area to reach the end for a boss fight; collectibles can be found and either show up in your motel room or help recover Travis. The only new change found in these levels are destructibles that may spawn a helpful item to help you out. But aside from that, fighting the baddies can get monotonous as the only challenge is longer levels and more enemies thrown at you. There’s also the rare occurrence where you’ll go straight to the boss.

The big highlights of the No More Heroes games are the boss fights. As with the predecessor, the bosses are ridiculous and interesting in their own ways; each have standout personalities. Unfortunately, not all of NMH2’s bosses are as memorable as their previous counterparts but the ones that do make up for it. Further sweetening the deal is an unlockable Deathmatch mode that will let you pick any boss from the game and attempt to kill them as fast as possible without the help of recovery items. Something of note: playing on Mild (medium) difficulty, this reviewer encountered a harsh difficulty spike at the third boss that didn’t appear again until the very final battle. Your mileage may vary but it’s a little disappointing to see some cheap tactics thrown in there when the original NMH and the other NMH2 bosses completely avoided this.