Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes Review

Rating: 2.5/5

This should be one of the best games of all time. EASILY.

You’ve got a premise involving a demon video game console sucking main-man Travis Touchdown into a series of levels themed around the industry’s greatest hits. Touchdown himself KNOWS he’s in a video game, providing commentary on everything from end-of-level bosses to the existence of microtransactions, and director Suda51 is returning to the series after skipping No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle.

Even your main rollout of rewards involves hoovering up a collection of t-shirts including everything from SUPERHOT to The Legend of Zelda, Undertale to Papers, Please, Hollow Knight and Dead Cells.

It should be a fresh, characterful, hilariously on-point and whacky-as-hell celebration of video games. And Travis Strikes Again IS that… everywhere other than gameplay.

Sadly, and for reasons I can’t fathom whatsoever, this No More Heroes swaps its predecessors’ acrobatic, third-person hack n’ slash combat for a top-down affair with supremely limited options.

Outside a pithy light attack that repeats the same wagging animation over and over is a heavy smash, a dodge-roll and a jumping variant on the aforementioned blows.

You also have access to a large array of specials including things like telepathically throwing enemies across the level or slowing down time – and you can unlock SCORES more – but these specials are always over in seconds and rarely feel satisfying. You can swap to character/half-villain Badman – who’s your partner in the game’s co-op – but his animation/moveset is identical.

Now, occasionally things DO come together; the blend of Travis/Badman being a blur across the screen, slamming foes off walls alongside a pulse-pounding soundtrack encouraging you to keep experimenting and chaining moves together – but it always gets bogged down by sheer repetition.

See, despite a neat core set of mechanics and the promise of a variety of games to get booted into across the Death Drive Mk II console, they’re all 90% the same. A “driving” game boils down to battling to unlock parts for your auto-controlling ride, a suburban murder-mystery plays as a top-down brawler. Even a makeshift platformer keeps the same physics, jumping animations and attacks as everything else.

It’s… bizarre.

Suda51 has noted that Travis Strikes Again should be thought of as a side story, and going in thinking of that does help with what’s on offer, but there’s such a feeling of combat being phoned in whilst also being what you're doing for the majority (seriously, worlds have almost copy and paste levels in some cases), that it overrides the want to continue.

Thankfully, like everything Suda puts his mind to, the presentation and level of heart within can supplant the experience with a smile. I’ve covered the ever-expanding t-shirt collection that’ll make you grin through the sheer amount of references, but an 80s text adventure fills in what’s happening in Travis’ life outside the console, and a “Ramen Blog” is a detailed breakdown of the health-restoring dishes you can find in-game.

Travis Strikes Again has a tight, energetic script, a phenomenal premise and everything going in its favour – it’s just a deflating disappointment that what you're doing for the majority is so thoroughly threadbare.

Here's to No More Heroes 3.