A lot of excellent ideas swirling around the edges. Doesn't ever quite coalesce into something meaningful, sadly. I feel so sad for Suda because this is very clearly an amazing game that needed a lot more development time than they would've ever been alotted. I hope someday soon we get a good port with restored content because the pieces that were missing here probably do exist. However, the game that IS here is pretty cool! Visually distinctive and writing's sharp, the one stage that is here is a series highlight and a lot of the bosses were pretty great! So if you come to Suda stuff for the insanity and gameplay, you're probably going to like this way more than I did. However, if you're looking for something more grounded and thoughtful like No More Heroes 1 then you'll probably end up feeling a little sad for what may have been.

"All we can do is keep running."

"Then let's find that exit they call Paradise."

Finally jumping aboard the Suda51 train after having played Shadows Of The Damned in high school and being tangientially aware of his other work. Mostly had him pegged as being "weird, americana obsessed japanese developer of idiosyncratic action games" but that was really only half right. His work is way more cerebral than is ever given credit, probably even moreso with the visual novels but we'll see. Case in point is No More Heroes, which is usually just described as the funny lightsaber jacking off game, again another half-truth.

No More Heroes is possibly the most violent and sadistic games I've played, much like the PS2 God Of War games you're actively the villain and making things worse. Where Travis differs from Kratos is his keen awareness he is in a video game and has a role to play as an agent of chaos. This furthers the major theme of the game that player expression in games is almost solely enacting violence onto people and is then exaggerated with most of Travis's opponents being women, children, or elderly people. Not to say it's all that bleak about it, the game also surpasses most other "games as inherently violent and possibly nihilistic" works by also being fun.

Not a whole lot to say gameplay wise, it borrows a little from Drakengard where the combat is purposefully simple- for the showiness of it instead of the more sisyphean "means to an end" those games use. PC version had some glitchiness and I never really knew if I was playing the game right, but watching some gameplay videos I don't think I'm alone.

I think I'm probably the 1000th person to write these thoughts, or similar enough ones, about this game on here but if you haven't played these games I can't recommend more if you vibe with what I say.

I think I liked this better than any of the Mass Effect sequels, lmfao. The Guardian's kits are eally fun and they synergize well, even if it's a little shallow. Setpieces were all fantastic, Eidos Montreal clearly did their homework on how to do "cinematic" stuff after the far more ludic Deus Ex games. If you like these characters, especially the James Gunn versions, you'll enjoy the hell out of this.

Edit: Bumped to 4 stars over 3.5, felt a little too low for something I think I enjoyed better than any of the Mass Effect sequels.

In the brief:
-amazing loot system, i love how much it rewards taking risks and exploring the four levels
-coolest art direction in arkane's extremely impressive catalogue, in my opinion. art deco meets cerebral bourne-esque thriller is a winning combo
-guns look really good, shooting felt great
-performance was immaculate
-i got the bad ending by accident ):
-the hitman style kills that started in dishonored do not feel as elaborate or fun to pull off as they were there, in fact most of my kills of the targets were direct combat where i barrel stuffed them with a shotgun or smg
-the magic feels wonkier and less accurate than it did in dishonored, esp shift/blink which has never felt as responsive as it did in dishonored 1
-cherami leigh's character was so attractive i started smoking cigarettes again

I liked this so much when it dropped, recently replayed it and ended up extremely soured on it. Most of Bioshock's, and by extension System Shock's, DNA is gone and replaced with a narrative that's too tame and gameplay too simple. There are some great things here, the anachronistic music, the world design, Songbird's design, but a lot of it ends up mired in social commentary the game doesn't have the balls to really dig into. All that said I'd play another game in Columbia, maybe one far more decayed and mired in conflict like Rapture was, but I'm chalking this one down as one of the biggest disappoints of its generation.