As a follow up to the first game, No More Heroes 2 is pretty dissapointing as it's just less of an interesting game. Story feels totally unnecessary and doesn't do enough interesting things for me.

Travis joins the assassination gig again because he does and he vows to climb to the top to get revenge on the guy who killed BIIIIIIIIISSSSSHHHOOOPPPPPPP!!! and that's kinda what you get at the end. There's some intriguing cut-aways throughout the game with a mysterious figure but they turn out to be Sylvia and it's all revealed to be a sequel bait that doesn't really land for me. The most charitable thing I can do for the story is through a reading of the reason why Travis is in the assassination game again is because there's a No More Heroes 2 and having to go through another assassination gig is what leads to him having second throughts about the treatment of the video-game characters he has no kill and be done with UAA gives the story a kiiiiinda interesting meta angle that may or may not be intended but even then, I still find it hard for me to defend the second game's story as anything meaningful.

Also the cut open world and lack of a buy in for gigs totally kills the two sided nature of the first game where a lot of the time you were doing repetitve chores to be able to afford your fantasy basically. I can see why they did it but the game is totally missing something from the first game because of it. It's a trade of character for ease and enjoyment.

And ultimately that's what makes 2 so different from 1. It's doing the same game as 1 but it lacks a lot of the character or uncommon characteristics.

...That being said, I'd be lying if I said I still didn't enjoy myself. The music is great thanks to Akira Yamaoka. Graphically the game looks amazing upscaled to 1080. Sylvia has MULTIPLE OUTFITS! SHINOBU IS PLAYABLE!! They even spent money on a dang fake full OP to the in-game anime that Travis loves! Also, even though I just complained about the pacing, I can get the appeal of turning No More Heroes into a purely boss rush game with weird boss design and track after the next.

No More Heroes 2 is a bit of a conflicting game for me because overall the game is a downgrade from No More Heroes 1 on most fronts and it's nowhere near being a cult classic for me. On the other hand though, the game still does carry a lot of the original's spirit and you could probably still get a good time out of it.

the most insane, maddening game you'll play outside of omikron the nomad soul. whilst i can be out here being the biggest asshole and defending the annoying/bad stuff as actually being good because it serves a greater thematic purpose, it doesn't mater if it was done on purpose or not because it works. the laborious, bloody gameplay. the looping, cutting music. the way the game in the second half turns into a horrific nightmare and everything goes wrong. it's amazing!

also big credit to the game for having the best final boss ever. just the perfect, most extra step way to top off this already frenzied video-game.

never want to play it again

Game feels impossible to rate considering how much this game has changed since my last experience 10 years ago and just how much it's changed (and still is changing!) since 2004. Still wanted to leave a bit of writing on this game to note at how much of a lifestyle this game was for me from early 2007 to late 2009. WoW wasn't just a revelatory game for me in terms of exploring a gigantic, ever expanding world but the online nature of it made it feel like a genuine social space that was (un)intentionally pushed with its gameplay mechanics and game spaces.

Bartering with different professions in trade chat, organising a dungeon party of people from your own server and getting to know and socialise with them because of how long it could take sometimes to get five random people together. The game might not be the same anymore but the experience of travelling to a random small town in an off-the beaten-path area and just talking to a random dude walking around there dressed as a skeleton from drinking some noggenfogger at 7pm on a tuesday is something that is seared into my mind.

A real solid return to form for Resident Evil. Game does a really good job of balancing modern action resi evils and older survival horror resi evils together into a modern entry. Game is third person action but I dig how the FOV when aiming is limited and that the aim gets real shakey when you move. Also there are actual attempts at making the player consider their inventory which, whilst I still think there's an abundance of ammo for a survival game, the fact you have to think about it at all and and manage your pick ups is still appreciated in a modern triple A horror game.

The real highlight is the first half of the game, playing through the police station is a joy with BIG THUMBS UP going to the inclusion of Mr. X. I'm a big fan of Nemesis type characters and the way the game lets you learn the layout of the police station first by exploring it and getting it stuck in your brain before dumping this tyrant into its tight spaces, constantly trained on you suddenly turns a familiar environment upside down. It's great! Lots of fun! Also game looks fantastic.

The real downside for this game for me is everything after the police station; the sewers and the labs. I really feel like the quality takes a bit of a dive into a less interesting game during these parts, apart from some select sections being the dark sludge sewer alley and the final boss section of each campaign. The area design just feels less interesting overall and Mr. X doesn't really stay a thing after the police station parts (at least for leon's campaign, I'm a bit blurry on claire's later stuff). It's the only thing that always stops me from wanting to replay this otherwise real quality game.

I was so hyped for this game. It was exciting to see not only a new IP from Nintendo being headed by some of the younger staff but also the style for this game looked off the charts. Really colourful and snappy action based gameplay with top tier character designs and a really diverse and cool OST with metal and hip hop influences.

All that stuff still sticks in the final game, the style of this game impressed me back then and still does today. The unfortunate part is that...the gameplay doesn't really match up to it. The single player campaign kinda feels like a glued together create-your-own-splatoon mode that I never felt too strongly about and the multiplayer suite, whilst being the better of the two, still wore me out over time and never really clicked with me.

It's not that it wasn't fun to play, cus it could at times, i just personally felt like maybe something was missing. Maybe it was another design element to push it over the top, maybe it was more content, maybe it was having actual functional team talk and communication in a team based shooter where your success is based off other people: I actually don't know. Maybe all along this was always destined to be just an alright to good kid focused shooter but I got too suckered in too hard by it's production values. Woomy.