Introduction

In 2008, a Japanese man known to most of the world as Suda 51 released a game for the Wii called No More Heroes. It follows the story of a loser otaku named Travis Touchdown who buys a beam sword on eBay an online auction and becomes an assassin with it to pay the bills and buy more anime and video games. It was a fairly popular game outside of Japan, as it was one of very few gory and vulgar games on the Wii and Westerners loved it. I personally love it as a work of social satire, mostly on violent otaku culture. Despite this, No More Heroes wasn’t such a hit in its home country of Japan though, for various reasons.

One reason, some theorized, was that the Wii was simply not the right platform for a game like this. To rectify this, a company called feelPlus (now a part of Marvelous AQL) was tasked with porting the game to the HD PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 systems, whose userbases were considered to be the target audience for games like this. The HD release was titled No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise, and it was originally ported without the motion controls of the Wii version, even though the PlayStation Move seemed like a good peripheral that could emulate them fairly well. Konami opted to include Move controls when they brought the PS3 version of Heroes’ Paradise overseas, which were then re-imported back into Japan as No More Heroes: Red Zone.

This port is not very good, to say the least; it suffers from some screen tearing, there is a bit of lag and slowdown in some places and the Move controls aren’t particularly good. The gamepad controls fare somewhat better, but I still have some issues with them. Mostly, it's because they're unresponsive and that really gets in the way of doing anything that requires repetitive motion. There is some added content, but again, most of it is not very good.

So why play this then?

In the end, I think the PS3 version is a lot prettier to look at than the Wii version. The Wii version is rendered in a Chiaroscuro-esque style where everyone has a personal spotlight and shadows are all pitch black, which can make it hard to see sometimes. The PS3 version did away with that and is now cel-shaded, which makes the game a lot easier on the eyes, even if it does make a few things look weird. In short, my gameplay gripes are minor compared to letting you guys have a better view of the action.

So how will this work?

This will be a co-commentary episode save for at least the first episode, which I will take solo to explain the mechanics. My friend LaGangj will be joining me for the rest and he will be going in blind, so please, no spoilers. Don’t even do that coy hint-at-the-next-part thing. For the most part, you’ll be watching the PS3 version, although I might stick in clips of the Wii version here and there if there’s something in the Wii version that’s not in the PS3 version. I’ll try to get as many collectables as I can, but I can’t guarantee 100% because some of them are seriously hard to find, and I will be playing on Mild (read: Normal) mode.

With that said: let the bloodshed begin!