Today on the Dispatches, we finally reach the finish line of Suda 51’s No More Heroes, a real piece-of-work in every meaning of the phrase.

By the time I finished enough of my schoolwork and personal projects to summon up the will to spend enough time to get to the end of the tale of Travis Touchdown, I felt somewhat disappointed by the way I was able to fall back into the familiar rhythms of the game– busy yourself in boring, part-time jobs to open an assassination-gig, make enough money to afford the next boss-fight, play a few times to recognize the boss’s patterns, dodge, wait, attack, rinse, dry and repeat. After long enough, even the bosses themselves started to feel more like chores, even when their challenge began to ratchet up considerably.

While I admired the way the last few bosses try and trick you into attacking with false-weak moments, I wasn’t struck by them as being anything entirely original or innovative, either. Ultimately, the failing of most of the matches in this game was the sheer endurance they had, which meant spending about fifteen to twenty minutes per boss, as a minimum. Sometimes I’d lose after spending ten minutes on one match, and just decide not to play anymore as I didn’t want to waste that much time all over again. It’s a problem common with boss-battles, and really has more to do with the player’s patience than anything else, but even in the most challenging bosses I’ve faced in the past, the snipe-and-stealth duels of MGS3 or the herculean labors of Shadow of the Colossus, failure was more due to performance, seemingly, than effort, necessarily.

In other words, when you face-off with The End, or climb the mountainous body of any one of the giants of SotC, the degree to which you can wound a boss is always determined by your efficiency with the game’s nuances. If you can get off a head shot, for example, you’ll always hurt your opponent more than with a mere flesh-wound. There’s no such degree of nuance in No More Heroes, besides the number of times you can effectively spot a boss’s vulnerabilities and exploit them, something that doesn’t offer the same amount of sheer thrill to put into motion as a well-aimed shot or a fully-charged strike.

In the end, however, I beat the game. And I beat it with the real ending, as you can see above– a nice touch, I thought, for a game about an obsessive collector Otaku that part of the key to winning the game was to collect all the different types of lightsabers along the way, no matter what the cost. Still, at the end, I can’t say that I felt very triumphant, right away. More than anything, I just felt spent.

Very often when I beat a game, it’s something that happens with a mixed sensation of triumph and regret. It’s always intensely satisfying to reach the end of a great series of challenges, and somewhat validating as well. However, those rewarding feelings are also always tinged with the sadness that such an exciting, invigorating enterprise has come to a close. Games are fun, they’re fun to play, and it’s certainly fun to win, but it’s no fun to have to finally say it’s over, and put everything back into the box.

I didn’t feel that way with No More Heroes. Instead, I felt relieved.

Because No More Heroes is a good game, but it’s also a trying game, as well. Suda does his best to throw everything he possibly can at the player in terms of sheer, unbalanced challenge, and offers only the bare minimum in terms of what we would ordinarily think of as reward. Much of the time, he teases the player with the elements of his design– he offers a sprawling, GTA-style open world environment where most of the game’s busywork is done, but refuses to allow the player to commit the same type of wild, GTA-style rampage that kind of an environment implies, and instead forces them to perform everyday chores. He creates a game of lightsaber dueling for the Nintendo Wii, a system that would appear the most physically suited for those kinds of space-operatics, but then reduces most of the combat mechanics to mere button-pressing.

At every turn, Goichi raises expectations, only to deflate or distort them in some way. No More Heroes is one of the few games I’ve played that is designed to seemingly hold a grudge against the players, and therefore is one of the only games in my experience that actually posits itself as an antagonist in the player’s experience. It’s the sort of game that induces a sense of vertigo in my eyes– from the outside looking in, it’s a brilliantly audacious example of design, absolutely willing to antagonize the player in any number of ways to prove its point.

From the inside looking out, however? Well, let’s just say that No More Heroes gets a lot of mileage out of the fact that it reminds you of what it is every chance it gets.

Endlessly self-referential as a game itself, from retro-stylized HUD and sound effects, arcade-style ranking lists of bosses and Looney Tunes-style banter that merrily breaks the fourth-wall as it rolls along, so many of the game’s infuriating qualities are supported, and sometimes redeemed, by the game’s active recognition as itself as a game. Because honestly, there’s no reason you’d put up with any of this kind of bullshit in real life unless you were being paid hard cash, or some other commodity of intrinsic value. No More Heroes is just a game, on the other hand, and therefore needs to constantly remind you of the boundaries of its magic circle just to keep you from shutting off the system. As long as it’s just a game, and this kind of game is up your alley, you’ll sit through this kind of mindless, patronizing garbage. In real life, however, you should have more respect for yourself than that.

Now, why should you have more respect for yourself? Well, that’s where the game’s elusive point comes in, I suspect. See, among other things, No More Heroes is a very specific genre piece, one that belongs to an old, vibrant tradition that’s spawned countless works over the years, and will continue to do so ad infinitum. Some might call it the coming-of-age tale, but I prefer to look at it as the angry-young-man genre, stories of boys in the midst of or just out of adolescence, bodily and/or psychologically, who react to the uncertainties and unreliabilities of the world with a mix of physical and emotional violence. These protagonists are often destructive to everyone and everything around them, including themselves, and take a seemingly long time to come to grips with their share of influence and responsibilities to the world around them.

Now, when I first began playing the game, it was easy to make a certain number of purely superficial observations, noticing the similarities Suda’s characters, environments and combat had to any number of pop-cultural institutions. Much of the punk mannerisms reminded me of Cowboy Bebop and David Bowie at once, oddly. I’ve pointed out the game’s resemblances to Grand Theft Auto in the past for the purposes of contrast. In its story of an assassin hunting down a series of fellow assassins to win the heart of a young woman, the game is very reminiscent of Alejandro Jowordowsky’s El Topo with which it shares an absurd, surrealist flavor. But before we get into the real meat of my argument here, let’s get the obvious elephant out of the way, first:

God, I’m glad I got that out of my system. See, the last time I posted here, I got a little bit of a shoutback because I compared the “flawed visionary” of Goichi Suda unfavorably to the “hack” that is George Lucas. Now, perhaps I’ve been a little hard on Mr. 51, but don’t go after Lucas while I’m around, pleasant dreamers. Snicker and laugh behind my back all you like, but I actually like his movies– everything from THX 1138 through the Star Wars prequels, and everything in between (well, except for Howard the Duck, of course. And most of More American Graffiti. And I haven’t seen Radioland Murders, but I’ll go ahead and guess that it probably sucks, if it makes everyone happy. But don’t you dare lambast Willow, if you know what’s good for you).

Now, I could spend most of my time on this post extolling the virtues of Lucas’ post-digital verite cinema, but this is a gaming blog, so I’ll restrain myself ever-so-gently until we get back on track. See, besides the painfully obvious way that Travis’ lightsaber resembles the classic weapon of the Jedi trade, there are so many nods to Star Wars in the course of No More Heroes that it’s just as valid a reference to what’s going on in the game’s mechanics and narrative as Bowie or Jowordowsky. Heck, there’s even a poster in various places in the game that’s basically a lo-rez clone of the poster for Revenge of the Sith, so even if you want to call Lucas a hack, Suda’s definitely cribbing a few notes from him enough to make the familiar archetypes of the Skywalker saga stay in your mind throughout the gameplay. And chief among those archetypes– more than lightsaber fencing, more than “trusting your Force,” more than even the corniness of last-minute family revelations from fathers, sisters and evil identical twin brothers (well, actually that’s more Kojima there, but whatever, still the same kind of deus ex machina instant backstory) was something far deeper– something that gave me genuine pause.

When I first read of Goichi Suda’s game of a lightsaber wielding, sexually perverted Otaku assassin, I had my first glimpses into this character. Even the name “Travis” felt right for the typical angry-young-man, owing a little bit to the arrested-development assassin of Taxi Driver (considering the violence, I suppose it’s a more apt name than, say, “Holden”). But the moment I really knew that this was going to be an awkward game about awkward phases was when I took a good look at Travis, and realized who he reminded me of:

Now, I know what you’re thinking– a red jacket and blue-jeans does not automatically a James Dean reference make. It could just as easily be an homage to Futurama as Nicholas Ray’s 1955 movie of teen-angst and the consequences it can bring. But for me, that’s exactly where the connection is. If you know anything about the development of the Star Wars prequels, you probably know that Lucas modeled Anakin after James Dean as a similarly troubled, hot-tempered hot-rodding kid (true, his whines are more in league with Sal Mineo, but it still makes sense). It was the Anakin-Travis connection that made me see the Dean-Travis connection, and while it’s easily the more plainly insane of the two, I believe that it’s easily the most relevant, because No More Heroes is exactly the same kind of teen-angst game as Rebel Without a Cause is a teen-angst movie (well, except for the teen thing, seeing as Travis isn’t exactly a teenager. But then again, neither was James Dean).

Rebel Without a Cause is basically a story of alienation– most of it generational, but a fair amount of it also just between people in general. It’s about the choice between keeping out of trouble, and therefore being bored out of your skull, or giving into the temptations of conflict, like knife-fights, drag races and Natalie Wood. It’s about choosing between staying at home with your square parents or going out into the wilderness of Los Angeles, with its abandoned streets and planetariums, to make friends and enemies alike. And of course, having friends and enemies means dealing with the consequences either bring– the consequences of what happens when you defeat an enemy, or when you can’t rescue your friends from themselves. As such, it’s a movie about weighing the pros and cons of emotional attachment, and the emotional maturity that arrives when you can appreciate the price of friendship, as well as its rewards.

At this point you’re probably wondering– what the hell does any of this have to do with slicing people up with a lightsaber? One word– alienation.

Travis doesn’t really have any friends, unless you count the Canadian-sounding chick who hands out his assignments, but he’s got plenty of enemies. Thanks to its wide-open, and boringly benign open-world environment, No More Heroes is a bit like Shadow of the Colossus in its presentation of the choice between peace and action– sure, you can spend all your time in the game roaming around and exploring this place, but wouldn’t you rather get back to killing things? It’s a nice approach to the open-world theme that GTA‘s free-for-all citywide rampages doesn’t support– unless you’re really into Rockstar’s mission-and-cutscene writing (for some reason), you’re probably only ever going to complete just enough missions to unlock all of the game’s map, and get back to your hit-and-run sprees– and while Goichi Suda doesn’t offer anything close to the epic grandeur of the battles in Fumito Ueda’s game, the contrast between the fighting and non-fighting portions of No More Heroes is much more vibrant and well-defined than that in Shadow of the Colossus.

In Ueda’s game, you actually could spend a lot of time enjoying yourself in the vast, diverse landscape of the Forbidden Lands, especially in the popular pastime of climbing the gigantic temple. In Suda’s game, however, the game’s overworld of Santa Destroy is pretty darn boring. And now, in the context of GTA and Nicholas Ray, I understand that’s exactly the point. A peaceful life is boring, static and alienating– you can’t even find enough human connection to run people over– but a violent life is not. It can be dangerous, repetitive and difficult to the point of exhaustion, but it’s never quite boring. On that first level, No More Heroes asks the same question all games imply, but few are aware of– is it better to have enemies, than to be left alone? Anyone who reaches the end of a game like that, in some way, is answering “YES.”

Of course, because No More Heroes is a game that gleefully points out the fact that it is a game, it’s also a game that does more than ask the same question every angry-young-man story asks. Instead, it widens its net and becomes a kind of freewheeling satire of the entire culture that games like this and its gamers sit in. By showing such a marked and elaborate contrast between the “ordinary” world of Santa Destroy’s lifeless corpse of a town, peppered only with occasional errands to run, and the “extraordinary” world of assassination gigs and ranking-match boss battles, Suda draws the lines of his game between a caricature of the average life a gamer leads and the adventure they covet in games themselves.

Besides fighting legions of henchmen and flamboyantly psychotic bosses, Travis doesn’t really have much of a life besides watching videos, doing odd-jobs and playing with his pet cat. It’s easy to read No More Heroes as a kind of wish-fulfillment story, where you’re meant to question the very reality of Travis’ assassination escapades, and wonder whether or not it’s all just a game, or a dream for him. After all, he does dream up his own retro shoot-em-up before one boss level on the train, so it’s certainly thematically relevant to the process of the game, on some level. So does Travis dream up the entire game that we’re playing, or is he simply playing it as a game himself? Or perhaps it’s just there to point out the commonality between himself and the player– what kind of boring, hopelessly static life are you escaping by playing this game? How many part-time jobs did you have to do to get the money to buy this game, in the first place? Forget how much about Travis reminds you of your own adolescent power-fantasies– how much of Travis’s pathetic existence reminds you of yourself?

In the end, that’s what helps Travis remain a nice variation on the angry-young-man archetype. Through all sorts of pop-culture references and in-game gimmickry, Suda crafts his protagonist as a guy who’s not really all that tragic, romanticized or really even all that likeable outside of the player’s control. As much as I’ve been frustrated by the way this game is designed to be as trying on the player’s patience as possible, I can honestly say it’s been one of the most interesting gaming experiences I’ve had in some time, and one that I’d recommend, if only to share the pain and suffering I’ve felt here with everybody else. I can’t say whether or not it was worth it, but I can’t say that it did me any real damage, either.

Anyway, that’s it for now, daddy-o. Next time, look forward to the ongoing coverage of a game that should surprise absolutely nobody on this blog, as well as the posting of a new dilemma of mine, once I figure out how to embed things on the fucking web. Until then, pleasant dreamers, remember to do the right thing and just walk away from greasers the next time they challenge you to a chickie-race–unless you want to hook up with Natalie Wood, of course…