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Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes |OT| Directed by Suda51
- Thread starter NotLiquid
- Start date
The in-game stuff shouldn't be too bad, but the visual novel segments are probably going to be pretty mystifying as that's where most of the references are. That being said, all of these games always have a pretty high wtf-factor regardless. You shouldn't necessarily expect it to make sense in a traditional way.
Buying this after work, will play it with a childhood friend. :D
Co-op seems like the best way to play it.
Co-op seems like the best way to play it.
This seems to be a thing. Me and another user had the same thing happen yesterday.
Same here. This is the third or fourth delayed BB order I've read about, so I wonder if this is a store wide issue for some reason. Sucks for me because I didn't even order it to my house since I'll be away for the weekend.
Just played the first mission. Damn this game is great. Loving the game references. I hope this game will be a success so we get NMH 3.
If No More Heroes can be best likened to a parody of and commentary on gamers, Travis Strikes Again is absolutely a parody of and commentary on video games as a medium and industry, and Grasshopper as a studio and their own history.
That's something I suggested could happen (to be the core meta narrative of TSA) in the hype thread.
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I'm about halfway into Electro Thunder Tiger II so far and I have to say this combat system is actually really tight sometimes. I'm playing on mild and it's actually really damn challenging once swarms of enemies are on screen. That's when it's at it's best; dodging enemy projectiles, tactical usage of specials, god damn. I almost died, which hasn't happened to me often in early No More Heroes levels.
There's a part in the level where you get swarmed on a tiny bridge by Bug Gates who were ready to self destruct on the spot, and I was low on health. Then I remembered I had the Heavy Chip on me. I plopped that down to slow them all down in the middle of their self destruct sequence and then blasted them away with the Shining Chip.
SO FUCKING GOOD
There's a part in the level where you get swarmed on a tiny bridge by Bug Gates who were ready to self destruct on the spot, and I was low on health. Then I remembered I had the Heavy Chip on me. I plopped that down to slow them all down in the middle of their self destruct sequence and then blasted them away with the Shining Chip.
SO FUCKING GOOD
I probably should check out then until I can start playing over the weekend.
long day at work this will suck.....So I havent seen any scenes with voice acting is the only time we will hear from the cast is that spoiler stuff at the end??
Thanks for not shipping my preorder Best Buy! Apparently it's available in-store, so I just placed another order for pickup, and I'll return the one that hasn't shipped since they won't let me cancel it. Wish me luck haha!
Dunno about the end, but voice acting is just grunts and gameplay lines so far, yeah.
The Suda-ness is great. Combat mechanics are simple but feel good. Level and encounter design varies from neat to annoying.
I didn't get too into NMH1/2 and I'm enjoying TSA. The hack n slash mechanics are deeer than you'd think and fun in their own right, the presentation and story is weird, crazy and hilarious, and it's a discount-priced game. I am really enjoying it so far.
Biggest issue I have so far is encounter design. Other than that, it's really fucking good and for the price it is an absolute steal.
I told y'all the combat was a more than meets the eye type deal. My time with the game at EGX was great.
I had hoped it would be a fun game, but this was a slog to get through. Took me about 10 hours, but man this ranks very low on my Suda51 scale. It's justnot fun to play. Every "game" is just a variation of the same base hack and slash game that was pretty shitty to begin with. They really should have just donwe it like Game Center CX and have every game be a different genre. The individual games feel like an intern made them in a weekend.
I know Suda51's main attraction isn't usually the gameplay, but I loved Flower, Sun and Rain and Killer7 for instance and I loved what I played of the Silver Case (should pick that up again), but this is just shit. They really couldn't think of a few more genres to play? Everything is just the same boring shallow hack and slash game with terrible, terrible level-design and it's all incredibly long-winded. The last game especially was such an excruciating experience for me I was ready to just give up. It wasn't hard at all, just tedious, but I persevered hoping there would be something that could redeem it, but nothing came.
I will say I did enjoy parts of it, like the overall vibe and typical humor (though it's mostly just references to other games), but even at the lower price I can't in good conscience recommend it to anyone, even Suda51 fans.
/edit: To iterate a bit further on my last remark: I think this is a bad Suda51 game, it's very tepid in its supposed craziness. Play his older games if you want some truly out there stuff, this is just a bunch of internet jokes. If you like that then you should love this, but I found very little of interest. I liked it at first too, but then I realised every game is just the same game and suddenly I started to get nervous about the rest of the game. If the story and happenings were completely fucked up and crazy I could look past shitty gameplay like I have with his previous games, but like I said, I feel this is pretty basic stuff, it never gets crazy.
The best parts by far are the Visual Novel parts.
I know Suda51's main attraction isn't usually the gameplay, but I loved Flower, Sun and Rain and Killer7 for instance and I loved what I played of the Silver Case (should pick that up again), but this is just shit. They really couldn't think of a few more genres to play? Everything is just the same boring shallow hack and slash game with terrible, terrible level-design and it's all incredibly long-winded. The last game especially was such an excruciating experience for me I was ready to just give up. It wasn't hard at all, just tedious, but I persevered hoping there would be something that could redeem it, but nothing came.
I will say I did enjoy parts of it, like the overall vibe and typical humor (though it's mostly just references to other games), but even at the lower price I can't in good conscience recommend it to anyone, even Suda51 fans.
/edit: To iterate a bit further on my last remark: I think this is a bad Suda51 game, it's very tepid in its supposed craziness. Play his older games if you want some truly out there stuff, this is just a bunch of internet jokes. If you like that then you should love this, but I found very little of interest. I liked it at first too, but then I realised every game is just the same game and suddenly I started to get nervous about the rest of the game. If the story and happenings were completely fucked up and crazy I could look past shitty gameplay like I have with his previous games, but like I said, I feel this is pretty basic stuff, it never gets crazy.
The best parts by far are the Visual Novel parts.
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Not surprised at the reviews it's getting. But I've come to expect that from Suda games. Like they are more or less for fans.
Two Death Drive MkII games done. Gonna hit the sack and pick it up again tomorrow.
I really, really like it. It's an odd amalgamation of distinctly Suda direction, namely the fragmented pacing and long fixations on certain sequences and exhibition which does arguably come at a cost of pacing. But this particular style, in all its unorthodox glory, attracts me to his work; the visual novel sequences are long but because of how they're presented in the framework of the game, and how they break up the action pacing, I welcome them as a distraction.
Combat system is much better than I expected. Funnily enough, despite being "different" it has a similar rhythmic flow as NMH/NMH2. This time instead of breaking enemies down to use your wrestling and dismemberment moves, it's more about chipping away at opponents to use your huge powerful charge attack. Customisable power moves are supplementing abilities that allow for crowd control, stunning, and other abilities to chain together. Either way, the idea is to slash through targets breaking them down as quick as possible, while stalling their abilities and attacks, until you can power up your charge attack and unleash its three blasts. I'm surprised at how satisfying chewing through opponents often feels, particularly when I get a good set of combos going thanks to powers and charge attacks.
I can see how the game wont satisfying some, and the pacing outstaying its welcome. But I dunno. I'm hooked, I love the feel and vibe of the game. Don't get me wrong; this is ghetto as fuck, it's budget as fuck, and it's clearly not No More Heroes 3 because Grasshopper has been on a downward trajectory of staff and production budget since they ballooned two generations ago. Yet from my end it's still authentically Grasshopper and particularly Suda. It's very No More Heroes, stylistically at least, and the whole game's style and vibe made me remember how much I've missed Grasshopper's work.
So yeah. Worth every cent so far. Grimy, grungy, ghetto as fuck but in all the right ways. It's like Grasshopper and Suda have been dragged back off their blip of success pedestal back down to the bottom like when they were making the Kill the Past trilogy and leading into the original No More Heroes.
I really, really like it. It's an odd amalgamation of distinctly Suda direction, namely the fragmented pacing and long fixations on certain sequences and exhibition which does arguably come at a cost of pacing. But this particular style, in all its unorthodox glory, attracts me to his work; the visual novel sequences are long but because of how they're presented in the framework of the game, and how they break up the action pacing, I welcome them as a distraction.
Combat system is much better than I expected. Funnily enough, despite being "different" it has a similar rhythmic flow as NMH/NMH2. This time instead of breaking enemies down to use your wrestling and dismemberment moves, it's more about chipping away at opponents to use your huge powerful charge attack. Customisable power moves are supplementing abilities that allow for crowd control, stunning, and other abilities to chain together. Either way, the idea is to slash through targets breaking them down as quick as possible, while stalling their abilities and attacks, until you can power up your charge attack and unleash its three blasts. I'm surprised at how satisfying chewing through opponents often feels, particularly when I get a good set of combos going thanks to powers and charge attacks.
I can see how the game wont satisfying some, and the pacing outstaying its welcome. But I dunno. I'm hooked, I love the feel and vibe of the game. Don't get me wrong; this is ghetto as fuck, it's budget as fuck, and it's clearly not No More Heroes 3 because Grasshopper has been on a downward trajectory of staff and production budget since they ballooned two generations ago. Yet from my end it's still authentically Grasshopper and particularly Suda. It's very No More Heroes, stylistically at least, and the whole game's style and vibe made me remember how much I've missed Grasshopper's work.
So yeah. Worth every cent so far. Grimy, grungy, ghetto as fuck but in all the right ways. It's like Grasshopper and Suda have been dragged back off their blip of success pedestal back down to the bottom like when they were making the Kill the Past trilogy and leading into the original No More Heroes.
I'm very early on the game and enjoying it more than I thought I would but I really wished they went down this route.
I know it probably would've been a lot more divisive but the idea of playing an actual NMH visual novel, Shmup or even an RPG sounds so much more appealing to me.
I guess because fan outrage about RAD not returning happened with the announcement trailer, when people thought it was NMH3 and didn't actually know that the scope of the game would be much smaller. If the news had come later, it probably would have been buried among the "looks like a shitty mini-game collection" reactions.
Surprised to see such good impressions on here. Totally at odds with what I've heard elsewhere. I am interested again.
Man, a semi-animated NMH VN would be completely bonkers.
Feels like that would be the purest distillation of Suda wackiness (without the boring gameplay segments).
I'd buy that in a heartbeat.
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Travis Strikes Back kicks ass. Some of this shit has me rolling. I also didn't expect there'd actually be some tangible story following up on the previous games.
There's actually a surprising amount of gameplay lines from my experience, from stuff they shout as finisher moves, to some extremely gratuitous Japanese that Travis employs when visiting a ramen stand. It's not NMH level dialogue before/after a boss, but the VA's presence easily elevates the entire thing.
There's actually a surprising amount of gameplay lines from my experience, from stuff they shout as finisher moves, to some extremely gratuitous Japanese that Travis employs when visiting a ramen stand. It's not NMH level dialogue before/after a boss, but the VA's presence easily elevates the entire thing.
Homage to fans, I guess. Intro is voiced. There's one liners and stuff, during combat and whatnot.
Look, I think Travis Strikes Again is Grasshopper and Suda basically throwing themselves out there really clawing together whatever they can get give this whole game development thing a shot again. The studio has had a pretty rough patch over the last five years. Look at their trajectory;
1999 - 2006: Essentially lovable, quirky, Japanese nobodies with no real blip on the Western market, where Suda directed his Kill the Past trilogy culminating in Killer7 with Capcom, while also assisting development on a handful of other stuff. Killer7 highlighted Suda and Grasshopper with Nintendo fans due to being part of the Capcom 5, but there's no denying pretty much all of Grasshopper's output was not very accessible and distinctly low budget. Half their stuff wasn't even released outside of Japan.
2008 - 2013: No More Heroes blows up bigger than anybody ever fucking expected and makes an enormous amount of money while putting Grasshopper squarely in the limelight for Western audiences. Ubisoft and Marvellous made bank on a game still decidedly grungy. Attention is caught by everyone. EA commission them to do Shadows of the Damned, a game that goes through several revisions. A much higher budget No More Heroes 2 is green lit. Nintendo fund Fatal Frame in collaboration with Tecmo. Lollipop Chainsaw attracts Warner Bros. Suda is doing worldwide press events to market the company. Grasshopper collaborate with indies to produce stuff like Sine Mora and Black Knight Sword. And it all culminates with Killer is Dead. During this process Grasshopper has contributed to fourteen titles over five years, and by 2011 had 140 people on staff.
2014 - 2018: Crash and burn. The flame goes out, nobody is interested in their games any more, they probably struggle with ballooning budgets that are no longer manageable like b-tier games were in the Wii/PS3/X360 gen, and nobody seems to want to work with them. Maybe bad management. Maybe a mess of things, including the buyout by GungHo. Grasshopper has bled staff since and produced mostly just remakes and re-releases. The only original title in this period is Let It Die, after Lily Bergamo was canned, a game that clearly tries to play off the modern fixation with games-as-a-service delivery models.
2019: Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes. Grasshopper is a shell of its 2008 - 2013 period. Not even in the ballpark of the quantity of staff. Not even close to the publisher attention and global recognition. They had their period of fame and now it's gone. Travis Strikes Again is only the second original title they've released in now five years, made by an extremely small team, and likely and extremely small budget.
I really don't think Grasshopper is in the position to pick and choose. And I firmly believe that if making No More Heroes 3 or an equivalently large project was as easily pitched and done as some think it might be they would have already. Travis Strikes Back really seems like the best they could cook up in these circumstances, trying to revive the franchise and their mindshare in the Nintendo market, while also keeping budget scope limited and reasonable.
And while it would be nice to have a ton of fully directed, vocally performed, and cinematic cutscenes just like No More Heroes had, all of this shit costs a lot of money and development time. It's no coincidence that games made on a low budget often dont have hours of voice work and cutscenes. Shits expensive, yo.
So yeah. This is Grasshopper's plead for a revival, I think. I hope they get it.
So started game 3 and I'm loving it.
Also something I've noticed.
This has to be a parody of PS1 games right?
Also something I've noticed.
Not sure if it's deliberate but I'm noticing a pattern of fathers.
Bad Man comes to avenge his daughter.
Travis has apparently abandoned his wife and kid.
Dude from the first game lost his family.
Mr. doppelganger murdered his wife and tried to kill his daughter.
And dude from game 3 is a fat son who lost his father then found him again.
Wonder if this'll continue.
Bad Man comes to avenge his daughter.
Travis has apparently abandoned his wife and kid.
Dude from the first game lost his family.
Mr. doppelganger murdered his wife and tried to kill his daughter.
And dude from game 3 is a fat son who lost his father then found him again.
Wonder if this'll continue.
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This is a small touch but I like how "bugs" being the enemies is a good excuse for some good old trademark Grasshopper jank. Half of the time when they're defeated they go flying out of the entire stage. In any other game that'd be seen as pretty jarring but given the presentation it's pretty much perfect here.
I like that the "bugs" have white balls on them like they're people wearing motion capture suits.
I don't know if this is something that only happens with the spanish version of the game, but... There's a really long stretch before the game starts when you open it on the Switch menu, and the intro didn't play properly (the audio was out of sync and sometimes the video played too fast). Did someone experience this as well?
I was considering canceling this and getting Ace Combat 7 after hearing some review impressions, but reading this thread has swayed me to keep my preorder. If nothing else, it sounds like it is at least interesting as a Grasshopper fan.
They remind of the Heaven Smiles a little bit.
wow didint know this was happening to them, i actually thought they were doing good just havent made any games. Maybe nintendo told them to make this game and if it sells well, they will help fund nmh3
My physical copy should arrive tomorrow. I've watched a few reviews (that were not overly impressed by the game) and it looks solid enough and most importantly weird enough for me to give it a whirl. This is the kind of game I've been missing in this generation of consoles. There's way too few B-tier games that exist fueled on creativity and "weirdness".
I miss games like El Shaddai, Killer is Dead, Shadows of the Damned and other cool B-tier games like them.
I actually never played any of the No More Heroes titles, but I do have a physical copy of No More Heroes: Heroes' Paradise (PS3) that I never got around to playing. Should I play that before playing this new game?
I miss games like El Shaddai, Killer is Dead, Shadows of the Damned and other cool B-tier games like them.
I actually never played any of the No More Heroes titles, but I do have a physical copy of No More Heroes: Heroes' Paradise (PS3) that I never got around to playing. Should I play that before playing this new game?
Sums up my impressions perfectly. It's just one of those games I am damn happy to have on my Switch.
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... Is it just me or does the intermission music after beating a Case in Life Is Destroy sound like Horse Steppin?
That couldn't have been just a coincidence, especially given the type of game it is. There's even some lo-fi distorted wailing about a minute into the track.
That couldn't have been just a coincidence, especially given the type of game it is. There's even some lo-fi distorted wailing about a minute into the track.
Not only will you need to play through both NMH games and every single side-mission, but you will have to take a class on the Kill The Past saga to learn the finer details of Ocular Silverization if you want any hope of understanding the story.
Seriously though, Suda's games tend to be really self-referential so you'll probably be a little lost but even then getting lost in Suda's crazy narratives is part of the charm.
Edit: So my copy hasn't come in yet. Is the season pass with the physical release a code? To be honest, I don't even have a Switch yet and am using my roommate's for this game. I only realized after ordering that it could suck if the DLC was locked to his console.