With apologies to the folks who keep coughing out Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, some tastes actually don't taste so great together. Case in point: When No More Heroes debuted on the Nintendo Wii in 2007, it was a little like a team of strippers suddenly descending on the Iowa straw poll, handing out bottles of Jack Daniel's and Jell-O shooters with wild abandon.
Casual gamers who'd been drawn to Nintendo's family-friendly gaming platform didn't exactly flock to a game that featured a sex-obsessed, slacker hero decapitating enemies with a beam katana, creating eruptions of blood and gold coins. Mature gamers, meanwhile, admired the game's screwball, Kill Bill sense of humor and recognized it as one of the most creative (and most underappreciated) Wii games, while openly wondering how it would have done on a more grownup platform better suited to its, um, unusual charms.
Today, amazingly, we'll get the answer. The game's getting a new title -- No More Heroes: Heroes' Paradise -- and an updated port to the PlayStation 3, where it'll look a damn sight better than it did when rendered by the Wii's weak graphical engine. Better still, it's actually a solid remake, going beyond just slapping a coat of graphical makeup on Sylvia Christel, Travis Touchdown's objet d'affection.
Not only are there a bunch of new retro-arcade style minigames to mess around with as we try to earn enough scratch to qualify Travis for a duel to the death with the next bizarre assassin, but five of the assassins from No More Heroes 2 also make an appearance. Throw in some move support -- prepare to recharge your katanas, everyone -- and that's almost deluxe.
Of course, it might have been nice if the remake hadn't been released into gaming's most desolate wasteland -- the dog days of August, a place where only the Just Dance franchise dares to tread -- but maybe having the field to himself will give Travis a competitive advantage. Maybe not as powerful as hitting the slot-machine jackpot on Travis's darkside powers, but when you're talking about ports of four-year-old gaming gems, you'll take whatever you can get.
Travis isn't the only one who might enjoy a little PS3 salvation before 2011 comes to a close. Later this year, Child of Eden, Ubisoft's visionary but frustrating shooter, reappears on Sony's black box, with Move support to help manage the action. Those who played the Kinect version know that Child of Eden was a wonderful idea, poorly executed -- the Kinect camera controls were often as deadly an enemy as the fiery phoenix or the game's flittering viruses.
If the PlayStation Move controls actually, you know, let us aim and control the camera, Sony's much-ignored motion-controller will be able to claim victory over both its competitors. That's something that might even make Travis Touchdown sit up and take notice.