The Tokyo Game Show demo starts with Travis Touchdown with his pants down sitting in a port-a-potty. When you want to save the game in No More Heroes you don’t run to a glowing crystal, you run to the toilet. I think that gives a pretty clear sense of the level of depth in the story. This isn’t going to be Killer 7-2.
Once you exit the toilet you run into a warehouse with Travis and there were enemies draped in red suits waiting for him. The analog stick on the nunchuck moves Travis around, but you don’t attack by swinging the remote. The A button makes Travis swing the beam katana. When you’re ready to do a finishing move an arrow appears on the screen and you swing the remote in the appropriate direction to deal the final blow. I think No More Heroes hit balance on the head with this system. There is just enough motion control to immerse you in the game as if you were holding the sword and you’re not swinging the remote around all over the place. Travis combos seemed automatic, but you can mix up the action by pressing the B button to do wrestling moves. The other major motion controlled moment comes when Travis gets into a scuffle where he locks blades with another enemy. At this point you have to spin the remote in a circle to push the enemy back.
Once Travis exits the warehouse he gets a phone call on his cell phone about how he is going to die in the next building. While you could hear the phone call on screen you could also hear what was being said through the Wii remote’s speaker. It was crystal clear too, which was a rather neat use of an underused function.
In the next building Travis meets Destroyman, a tenth level assassin who looks like he is out of an American comic book. Destroyman tells Travis to shake before he fights him and takes this opportunity to electrocute Travis and taunt him by saying Travis “fell for the oldest trick in the book”. The fight begins and Destroyman shoots a horizontal laser beam that you need to dodge. The trick here is to lock on with the Z button and strafe around to a safe distance where you can begin slashing with the beam saber. If Travis gets in trouble you can use the D-pad to make Travis do dodge roll like motions.
When Destroyman’s life bar depletes to half he changes his attack pattern. He grabs a hold of a chain and flies up to the celing where he can safely fire Destroy Beams at Travis. You have to hit the right switch to make him fall to the ground so you can continue your assault. Using wrestling moves was the easiest way to finish of Destroyman at this point, which promptly ended the demo.
See the tiger icon in the upper right hand corner? I asked about it since the function was unused in the demo. It’s actually a meter for Travis’ transformation into a super mode, which will be in the final game.
