In one of the many, many, many fourth-wall breaking interludes in No More Heroes 3, series star Travis Touchdown guests on a TV show to discuss his deep love and appreciation for the work of Takashi Miike, Japanese cinema’s most prolific, varied and plain wildest of directors. It’s another self-indulgent pop culture reference in a series that’s awash with them, but there’s something different here – the sense that series creator Goichi Suda aligns himself somewhat with Miike.
No More Heroes 3 review
- Publisher: Grasshopper Manufacture/Marvelous
- Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture
- Platform: Played on Switch
- Availability: Out now on Switch
It’s something underlined when Travis goes into an extended rant about how a director like Miike – a man whose most notorious film has its opening title spelled out in a splash of semen – went on to create the idol series Girl x Heroines in order to strengthen his production crew. It’s something Suda himself did with Travis Strikes Again, the stripped back spin-off he used to educate his young team before they set to work on a No More Heroes game proper.
I detested that particular game for leaning into the excesses of the series while lacking so much of its style, and yet here I am absolutely adoring No More Heroes 3. So what’s changed? Well, it helps that this is a proper No More Heroes game, returning to the over-the-shoulder action that sees Travis scythe through small mobs and tackle screen-filling bosses. It’s even more of a No More Heroes game than 2010’s sequel, with the open world sections that were excised for No More Heroes 2 restored, and with some style too.
The set-up is familiar, but – somehow, and to Suda’s credit – even more outrageous than what’s gone before. In a cute animated pastiche of 80s Spielberg schmaltz, a kid befriends a fluffy alien called Fu and helps him return to his home planet with the promise that one day he’ll return. Return he does some 20 odd years later, only this time he’s grown into an obnoxious, extravagant (and, I have to say, exquisitely designed) alien who’s hellbent on anarchy, and has brought a gaggle of extraterrestrials from the prison he’s just enjoyed a spell at along for the ride.