While No More Heroes is published and distributed by Ubisoft here in the states, newcomers to Suda's designs will quickly find that the abstract creator himself is pretty far from anything Ubisoft has done in the past. Previously Grasshopper Studios (Suda's team) worked with publisher Capcom to bring Killer 7 to the GameCube and PS2, and much like its uber-stylistic predecessor, No More Heroes challenges the bounds of what a conventional game is. With Killer 7, insane style was met with new, challenging control that was primarily linear and very shooter-focused. With No More Heroes, a drastic style remains, but the world opens up into a half GTA, half hack-n-slash experience. Return Suda fans will instantly fall in love with the style once again, while newcomers are in for one hell of a wake-up call. No More Heroes is in a league of its own stylistically.With that being said, the game also puts style before substance in a few key areas. The overall story, for starters, isn't too deep, as players take the role of Travis Touchdown (a new-to-the-scene killer) who is out to rank amongst the top assassins in the world. To do it, he'll need to work with a tight-knit organization that arranges official fights amongst ranked combatants, and that means raising money, taking on odd jobs, and earning the right to fight.

What ends up happening is that No More Heroes is split into two distinct gameplay types right off the bat. You've got the GTA free-roaming that is used for doing individual missions, exploring the city of Santa Destroy, and hitting up a few shops and training areas, which leads the way for the action-oriented story. If the game was based only on the open world style, it would have been a pretty sizable disappointment as far as we're concerned, as there are constant frame issues, pop-in everywhere, very little NPC activity, and a huge overall lack of polish. You'll hit tons of invisible walls, collide with collision boxes for cars and buildings that are bigger than the art itself, and deal with some sketchy vehicle control as well with Travis's motorcycle.