About NMH2: You mention this in the discussion of NMH2, but one of the themes of NMH1 is that, regardless of how many assassins Travis kills, he's still a loser: he lives in a crappy apartment full of anime collectibles and weird (overdue) rented porn movies, the girl he's chasing is ripping him off and will never have sex with him, and he still has to work menial jobs to pay for his expenses. The UAA is a power fantasy for him, just as the game is a power fantasy for the player: it's the one place where he means something. In NMH2, he loses his best friend, but gains a bunch of things in real life as a result of being good at light sabering - I mean beam katanaing - people to death. He hooks up with Sylvia, he gains allies in Henry and Shinobu, and he's become somewhat of a mythical figure because he's the one person who actually managed to get out of the assassination business for awhile (cue title drop). It starts to remove some of the shine of the first game by association: maybe the power fantasy does pay dividends after all. What NMH2 does instead is sharpen its criticism. Its characters portray Travis as a psychopath: when everyone else in the UAA is trying to get out, he's the one running back in, and cutting a bloody swath along the way. And, by extension, it criticizes the player for playing it, and for piloting Travis as he does all these things. It's almost like it's a sequel that didn't want to be made, and yet they put a sequel teaser in NMH1. There are plenty of games that blame the player for playing, but I feel like there are also plenty of them that don't have this awkward "you shouldn't have bought this game that we planned even before you knew you wanted it" dilemma, and are thus more successful at it.
The sequel bait stuff at the end of 1 was a joke. NMH wasn’t supposed to be a series but the 1st game sold well enough to get a sequel. Hence why some stuff feels a bit out of place as it wasn’t designed to have a part 2.
This is my personal favorite game of all time, and I have to say this is definitely the best overview Ive seen for it on the internet.(It's my Viewtiful Joe) There are so many great points in here I haven't really seen discussed in most videos or articles. Like part of the point being to juxtapose the mundane grinds of life with the surreal spectacles of a mad anime game world or that Travis is like a wrecking ball ironically destroying the thing in the game that's the best thing about it, its cool interesting characters. I dont think it's perfect. I think way too much credence is payed to the idea that the game is a really negative critique of games, gamers, and violent media by most analysts. I think mostly what its saying is that violence should always be seen with thought and depth and not flippantly. Even Travis can't just brush it all off. While showing what an existential nightmare it would be to really be a game protagonist. People also dont pay enough attention to the games strong theme of working hard to perfect a skill and trying to be the best at something. Its just that what Travis wants to be the best at is crazy. Over all a great piece of work though. I'll definitely be around if and when you review the new one.
Super late reply to an old video is Super late, the thing about No More Heroes 2 is that it is supposed to feel like a cheap bargain bin version of No More Heroes 1. The entire theme of the game is Commercialism. The opening outright says that the world of assassination has come into the light and just another way to make money. Almost all of the bosses represent some sort of commercial aspect of culture. The football player who turns into a mecha battle, even the final boss, Jasper, continues with the critique of commercialism. He's a mascot: a simple, shallow, meaningless thing you don't care about, which is exactly what his boss fight is. Alice(best boss in the game) critiques how these meaningful things have becomes endlessly shallow due to the need to make money off of them. She acts like a boss from the first game, understanding the pointless nature of her existence and actively waiting to be put out of her misery. The reason he seems to go through growth in the second game is that, as an effigy of the player, he is sick and tired of these pointless fights. He wanted more fights like Alice, instead ended up getting fights like Jasper. This isn't meant to be a true critique of your vid, but just observations as to why Desperate Struggle is one of the best successors to the first game we could have gotten.
This is a super interesting take(that I agree with) because I think out of all the video analyses on the NMH series, I've only found 2 of them that actually interpret the subtext of the sequel being a parody of itself on purpose. And I'm not sure why. My working theory, is that everyone played the first one and enjoyed it as a quirky cult hack n slash, played the second one and it didn't have the same magic(like all sequels) THEN people went back to the first game out of nostalgia, realized it had actual subtext and then retained their memories of being dissapointed with the second one, rather than actually looking for the subtext. Idk, it's not really that important. But I'm happy when people actually "get" the subtext of the second game instead of just being like "it completely ignored everything in the first game." Cause that was the point.
This was a nice watch, thank you for this great video. While NMH2 loses the themes in (or doesn't get them as good as) the first game, I liked message of how revenge is meaningless, it will leave you empty and it will only keep the wheel of violence running on and on. In a way, Travis is tired of the UAA, and although he's back in with a promise of sex with Cynthia, his sole purpose is revenge. No wonder why the other assassins see him as a hero, just like how they portray Travis as Che Guevara. To some, Travis was special because he became Number 1, he earned the fame, the money and everything. But to others, he was special because he ran away from it. This goes with the theory that the UAA became real after NMH, because people watched Travis' fights and wanted more. All the violence, all the blood and all the revenge is what sells, there are people that are hooked on simply watching it and others who are craving the thrill so much that they would risk their lives only to feel the adrenaline of a deathly fight. What I want to say is that in the end, NMH is a saga about how we glorify violence, how we feel good and think we're way cooler than we are because a videogame character we played as was cool as fuck. It mocks gaming and pop culture, and it mocks us.
I've said it on another channel, and I'll say it until the day it happens or the day I die: Announcement trailer for Travis in Smash is him sitting on the toilet, reading through his mail. Obviously he's tossing most of it away, but there's one letter, the opened seal being obscured by a women's underwear catalog just behind it. His mouth drops, he's confused and exited, "are you serious?!" He shoots up, the classic smash text banner appears, covering his junk Travis: wipes the floor with the competition Que gameplay.
@@EasyCure0 I'm pretty sure it'd be Travis chilling playing the death drive and he'll find a smash death ball somehow and just put himself into smash, maybe he'd assume he's the main character, maybe he'd relish in the challenge of other player controlled characters. That's a rough idea i just had. Edit: i guess with the lore of travis strikes again, he's like a video game character inside a world with video games, and so he'd have smash just like he has hotline miami and he'll totally just put himself into smash and try to be the best smash character.
I'm hoping that has moveset feels unique. I would love if Travis comes to smash. But I will be disappointed if his moveset feels uninspired. You know, because he is a sword weilding character My hope is that he weilds three of his beam sabres. His classic sabre as a medium damage medium speed and medium range His dual rose sabres being fast, low damage and low range Either the sabre that has four sabres attatched to it or the red long one from the second being slow, high damage and long range Also having some death drive chip abilities. So hope he's a character with a moveset that feels unique. I mean Sakurai said that the next season for smash will be the last one. So if Travis isn't in this one, then he would never be in Smash. Would be weird to see Travis in a non comic shading aesthetic
Thank you so much for this I love the franchise ever since I bought 1 back then as a kid then immediately got 2 when I heard about it's release I'm hyped for strikes back but I hope the gameplay is as fluid and fun as desperate struggles was cus in my opinion that has the best gameplay so far
Man that Blood+ game it brings me back, if you see an out of context screenshot you might as well think it was a NMH prototype and it a way, it is, in gameplay and aesthetic but at the same it really feels more like a proof of concept as for little reviews I've seen, it's not as polished as NMH was, I liked the show it was based on but never got around the game since it's a Japanese exclusive.
Awesome. Thanks so much for making this video. It's about damn time someone made a proper analysis of the ideas behind this game. I hope a lot of people see this and come to respect what elevates it, and Suda (as a writer/director), beyond other violent schlock.
This video was fantastic. I recently start loving videos on grasshopper games but this is one of the best ones i've seen. I knew No More Heroes was satire on video games but never knew the whole story. I probably would've figured it out as an adult but as a kid I was completely oblivious to this satire. I use to take a lot at face value and that was only things that i'd paid attention to, like gameplay versus characters and world. I grew finally figuring out travis wasn't suppose to be a "hero' but never got that deeper meaning behind it. I did however recognize the bosses in both titles to be the most interesting of the game, character wise, though I loved seeing Travis evolve into an actual likable 'hero" in the second game. No More heroes 2 is in my 5 top games of all time but not because of gameplay and it's bosses, but now see why the first game could be the better of the two. i'm very happy to have seen this video despite being a month late and want to say thank you for shedding light for me on this game and Travis. Looking for to Travis Strikes Again with it being the only reason I final got a Nintendo Switch!
I haven't checked if you've made a video on it yet, but I'm assuming Travis Strikes Again was what you were hoping it would be. I know I loved it, and I'm much more optimistic about the franchise moving forward, even if NMH3 was the last one.
Killer7 and No More Heroes are so damn good games "sadly I only played 2nd game and not the first, only PS3 version that..wasn't as good as the Wii Version" Music and graphics on them were so good and story / characters utterly insane.
Despite being one of the grasshopper games that has been in the most hands, it only sold half a million in total. Which is a lot, but not as much as other cult classics like the oddworld series
26:47 The virgin "I'm gonna make them give back our past" VS The chad, "This isn't a battle anymore, it's a motherfucking war!". I once had a feverish dream where they remade or MGSV or a What If spin-off was made were Miller instead of sitting his ass off waiting for a comatose mad man to wake up, goes all cyborg and gets himself a HF Katana and went all Revengeance of motherfucking Zero, but it seems literally one can only dream. BTW who else you think goes its way putting posters of the japanese idol of peace, Paz huh, bet he goes all Moe~ too
What an amazing video of one of my favorite games. You really did a much better job breaking down this game compared to every review I see of this game (aside from TGBS). I love seeing your work and hope your life can help yah make more of them if this makes you happy. No rush though, your priorities, happiness, and quality is far more important then pumping these out.
I like it, I dig how the bevy of special moves and mob battles seem to add an interesting new meta to what used to be extremely rinse-and-repeat combat coasting mostly off of it's novelty. I was kinda taken aback at first but seeing more detailed footage has me optimistic and if there's one thing it convinced me of it's that it has no shortage of Suda's raw style to it.
I am sorry, the twist that the WHOLE UAA was faked raises so many plot holes that it hurts the subtext by making the inherent meaningless of the ranked fights into an heavy handed metaphor. We did not need this for the game's message
First of all, I'm sick and tired of hearing "crescendo" get vomited out in UA-cam reviews/videos/ whatever the individual wants to call it. Second of all, are you playing a foreign copy? Because there's no blood yet you have an American accent so I'm trying to figure out why your captured footage is the censored version?
About NMH2: You mention this in the discussion of NMH2, but one of the themes of NMH1 is that, regardless of how many assassins Travis kills, he's still a loser: he lives in a crappy apartment full of anime collectibles and weird (overdue) rented porn movies, the girl he's chasing is ripping him off and will never have sex with him, and he still has to work menial jobs to pay for his expenses. The UAA is a power fantasy for him, just as the game is a power fantasy for the player: it's the one place where he means something.
In NMH2, he loses his best friend, but gains a bunch of things in real life as a result of being good at light sabering - I mean beam katanaing - people to death. He hooks up with Sylvia, he gains allies in Henry and Shinobu, and he's become somewhat of a mythical figure because he's the one person who actually managed to get out of the assassination business for awhile (cue title drop). It starts to remove some of the shine of the first game by association: maybe the power fantasy does pay dividends after all.
What NMH2 does instead is sharpen its criticism. Its characters portray Travis as a psychopath: when everyone else in the UAA is trying to get out, he's the one running back in, and cutting a bloody swath along the way. And, by extension, it criticizes the player for playing it, and for piloting Travis as he does all these things. It's almost like it's a sequel that didn't want to be made, and yet they put a sequel teaser in NMH1. There are plenty of games that blame the player for playing, but I feel like there are also plenty of them that don't have this awkward "you shouldn't have bought this game that we planned even before you knew you wanted it" dilemma, and are thus more successful at it.
I thought him sylvia hooked up in the first game implied through that painted scene at the end.
The sequel bait stuff at the end of 1 was a joke. NMH wasn’t supposed to be a series but the 1st game sold well enough to get a sequel. Hence why some stuff feels a bit out of place as it wasn’t designed to have a part 2.
19:45 Ironically that became the plot of Travis Strikes Again
This is my personal favorite game of all time, and I have to say this is definitely the best overview Ive seen for it on the internet.(It's my Viewtiful Joe) There are so many great points in here I haven't really seen discussed in most videos or articles. Like part of the point being to juxtapose the mundane grinds of life with the surreal spectacles of a mad anime game world or that Travis is like a wrecking ball ironically destroying the thing in the game that's the best thing about it, its cool interesting characters. I dont think it's perfect. I think way too much credence is payed to the idea that the game is a really negative critique of games, gamers, and violent media by most analysts. I think mostly what its saying is that violence should always be seen with thought and depth and not flippantly. Even Travis can't just brush it all off. While showing what an existential nightmare it would be to really be a game protagonist. People also dont pay enough attention to the games strong theme of working hard to perfect a skill and trying to be the best at something. Its just that what Travis wants to be the best at is crazy. Over all a great piece of work though. I'll definitely be around if and when you review the new one.
Super late reply to an old video is Super late, the thing about No More Heroes 2 is that it is supposed to feel like a cheap bargain bin version of No More Heroes 1. The entire theme of the game is Commercialism. The opening outright says that the world of assassination has come into the light and just another way to make money. Almost all of the bosses represent some sort of commercial aspect of culture. The football player who turns into a mecha battle, even the final boss, Jasper, continues with the critique of commercialism. He's a mascot: a simple, shallow, meaningless thing you don't care about, which is exactly what his boss fight is. Alice(best boss in the game) critiques how these meaningful things have becomes endlessly shallow due to the need to make money off of them. She acts like a boss from the first game, understanding the pointless nature of her existence and actively waiting to be put out of her misery. The reason he seems to go through growth in the second game is that, as an effigy of the player, he is sick and tired of these pointless fights. He wanted more fights like Alice, instead ended up getting fights like Jasper. This isn't meant to be a true critique of your vid, but just observations as to why Desperate Struggle is one of the best successors to the first game we could have gotten.
This is a super interesting take(that I agree with) because I think out of all the video analyses on the NMH series, I've only found 2 of them that actually interpret the subtext of the sequel being a parody of itself on purpose. And I'm not sure why.
My working theory, is that everyone played the first one and enjoyed it as a quirky cult hack n slash, played the second one and it didn't have the same magic(like all sequels) THEN people went back to the first game out of nostalgia, realized it had actual subtext and then retained their memories of being dissapointed with the second one, rather than actually looking for the subtext.
Idk, it's not really that important. But I'm happy when people actually "get" the subtext of the second game instead of just being like "it completely ignored everything in the first game." Cause that was the point.
This was a nice watch, thank you for this great video.
While NMH2 loses the themes in (or doesn't get them as good as) the first game, I liked message of how revenge is meaningless, it will leave you empty and it will only keep the wheel of violence running on and on. In a way, Travis is tired of the UAA, and although he's back in with a promise of sex with Cynthia, his sole purpose is revenge. No wonder why the other assassins see him as a hero, just like how they portray Travis as Che Guevara. To some, Travis was special because he became Number 1, he earned the fame, the money and everything. But to others, he was special because he ran away from it.
This goes with the theory that the UAA became real after NMH, because people watched Travis' fights and wanted more. All the violence, all the blood and all the revenge is what sells, there are people that are hooked on simply watching it and others who are craving the thrill so much that they would risk their lives only to feel the adrenaline of a deathly fight. What I want to say is that in the end, NMH is a saga about how we glorify violence, how we feel good and think we're way cooler than we are because a videogame character we played as was cool as fuck. It mocks gaming and pop culture, and it mocks us.
I can't wait to see Travis in Super Smash Brothers
#TravisForSmash #TravisTouchdownForSmash
#Travis4Smash #TravisTouchdown4Smash
I've said it on another channel, and I'll say it until the day it happens or the day I die:
Announcement trailer for Travis in Smash is him sitting on the toilet, reading through his mail. Obviously he's tossing most of it away, but there's one letter, the opened seal being obscured by a women's underwear catalog just behind it.
His mouth drops, he's confused and exited, "are you serious?!"
He shoots up, the classic smash text banner appears, covering his junk
Travis: wipes the floor with the competition
Que gameplay.
@@EasyCure0 I'm pretty sure it'd be Travis chilling playing the death drive and he'll find a smash death ball somehow and just put himself into smash, maybe he'd assume he's the main character, maybe he'd relish in the challenge of other player controlled characters. That's a rough idea i just had.
Edit: i guess with the lore of travis strikes again, he's like a video game character inside a world with video games, and so he'd have smash just like he has hotline miami and he'll totally just put himself into smash and try to be the best smash character.
I'm hoping that has moveset feels unique. I would love if Travis comes to smash. But I will be disappointed if his moveset feels uninspired. You know, because he is a sword weilding character
My hope is that he weilds three of his beam sabres.
His classic sabre as a medium damage medium speed and medium range
His dual rose sabres being fast, low damage and low range
Either the sabre that has four sabres attatched to it or the red long one from the second being slow, high damage and long range
Also having some death drive chip abilities. So hope he's a character with a moveset that feels unique. I mean Sakurai said that the next season for smash will be the last one. So if Travis isn't in this one, then he would never be in Smash. Would be weird to see Travis in a non comic shading aesthetic
Well, you sort of got your wish with a Mii costume.
Monkeys paw curls
4 years. it's been 4 years.
hopefully you played No More Heroes 3 by now
knowing the context of a lot of things in no more heroes really does make you understand that Travis is the greatest villain in his own series
This is that good shit :100:
Thank you so much for this I love the franchise ever since I bought 1 back then as a kid then immediately got 2 when I heard about it's release I'm hyped for strikes back but I hope the gameplay is as fluid and fun as desperate struggles was cus in my opinion that has the best gameplay so far
Man that Blood+ game it brings me back, if you see an out of context screenshot you might as well think it was a NMH prototype and it a way, it is, in gameplay and aesthetic but at the same it really feels more like a proof of concept as for little reviews I've seen, it's not as polished as NMH was, I liked the show it was based on but never got around the game since it's a Japanese exclusive.
I mean 4 years is quite a long pause
Awesome. Thanks so much for making this video. It's about damn time someone made a proper analysis of the ideas behind this game. I hope a lot of people see this and come to respect what elevates it, and Suda (as a writer/director), beyond other violent schlock.
This video was fantastic. I recently start loving videos on grasshopper games but this is one of the best ones i've seen. I knew No More Heroes was satire on video games but never knew the whole story.
I probably would've figured it out as an adult but as a kid I was completely oblivious to this satire. I use to take a lot at face value and that was only things that i'd paid attention to, like gameplay versus characters and world. I grew finally figuring out travis wasn't suppose to be a "hero' but never got that deeper meaning behind it. I did however recognize the bosses in both titles to be the most interesting of the game, character wise, though I loved seeing Travis evolve into an actual likable 'hero" in the second game.
No More heroes 2 is in my 5 top games of all time but not because of gameplay and it's bosses, but now see why the first game could be the better of the two. i'm very happy to have seen this video despite being a month late and want to say thank you for shedding light for me on this game and Travis. Looking for to Travis Strikes Again with it being the only reason I final got a Nintendo Switch!
Easily one of the best games on Wii. I'm currently going through my 2nd play through of the game. I've never did finish Killer 7.
I am stuck at Holly Summers
I haven't checked if you've made a video on it yet, but I'm assuming Travis Strikes Again was what you were hoping it would be. I know I loved it, and I'm much more optimistic about the franchise moving forward, even if NMH3 was the last one.
29:49 I just realized Suda51 made the first Star Wars abrupt credit roll (bad end) meme before it was cool! xD
Killer7 and No More Heroes are so damn good games "sadly I only played 2nd game and not the first, only PS3 version that..wasn't as good as the Wii Version"
Music and graphics on them were so good and story / characters utterly insane.
Despite being one of the grasshopper games that has been in the most hands, it only sold half a million in total. Which is a lot, but not as much as other cult classics like the oddworld series
“Aka the best Resident Evil game that isn’t Resident Evil”
Dead Space & The Evil Within: “Someone talking about us?”
Happy to see you're back! And doing a review for a game near and dear to my own heart no less. Thanks alot!
im loving the influx of nmh vids. underrated gem
4:42 The best "O H" I've ever heard. Focking EA
I was felt the title was suppose to secretly feel the player the protagonist was being had even before playing the game.
26:47 The virgin "I'm gonna make them give back our past" VS The chad, "This isn't a battle anymore, it's a motherfucking war!".
I once had a feverish dream where they remade or MGSV or a What If spin-off was made were Miller instead of sitting his ass off waiting for a comatose mad man to wake up, goes all cyborg and gets himself a HF Katana and went all Revengeance of motherfucking Zero, but it seems literally one can only dream. BTW who else you think goes its way putting posters of the japanese idol of peace, Paz huh, bet he goes all Moe~ too
I prefer the blood, but the weird black ash when you kill enemies in the “censored” versions still look really, really cool
Who’s here after the Switch announcement?
Six fucking years 💀
Finally, someone who gets it. Excellent video sir.
15:39 FORESHADOWING
Been so long but I’m so happy love your other videos a lot
Never got the chance to play lollipop chainsaw. I always thought it looked cool but never got the chance to play it. Maybe I’ll buy it soon
If I coulda watched that at 75% speed without the awful way UA-cam audio sounds slowed down I mighta enjoyed it
...a lot more *_; P_*
What an amazing video of one of my favorite games. You really did a much better job breaking down this game compared to every review I see of this game (aside from TGBS). I love seeing your work and hope your life can help yah make more of them if this makes you happy. No rush though, your priorities, happiness, and quality is far more important then pumping these out.
By God, you're alive!
Now we need a killer 7 remaster
barbeque Pizza is especially delicious, I don't hate you.
21:18 Puns are not Dead!
THE RESURECTION!!
Yo how do you feel about the gameplay for TSA? A lot of people seem to be really upset at it :(
I like it, I dig how the bevy of special moves and mob battles seem to add an interesting new meta to what used to be extremely rinse-and-repeat combat coasting mostly off of it's novelty. I was kinda taken aback at first but seeing more detailed footage has me optimistic and if there's one thing it convinced me of it's that it has no shortage of Suda's raw style to it.
Ehi you are back! Finally😉👍
Great Video!
Grand theft auto? What?
man
I am sorry, the twist that the WHOLE UAA was faked raises so many plot holes that it hurts the subtext by making the inherent meaningless of the ranked fights into an heavy handed metaphor. We did not need this for the game's message
First of all, I'm sick and tired of hearing "crescendo" get vomited out in UA-cam reviews/videos/ whatever the individual wants to call it.
Second of all, are you playing a foreign copy? Because there's no blood yet you have an American accent so I'm trying to figure out why your captured footage is the censored version?
If only the channel was only about No More Heroes, but not much NMH news happens🥲