As time progresses, the Wii is slowly becoming synonymous with the casual gaming audience. The very notion that a new release isn't a mini-game compilation or title geared toward those who don't play games is a rarity in itself. On a console that doesn't have many serious, hardcore gameplay experiences, No More Heroes lights up the playing field with more red body fluid than Kill Bill parts 1 and 2 combined. With a quirky, Japanese sense of humor pervading the proceeds, this is one of the most unique experiences to be found on the Wii, and that in and of itself is quite the achievement.

You play the game as Travis Touchdown, a somewhat dorky protagonist who wants to become the number one assassin in the business. To do so, he'll need to compete in a tournament ran by a young woman named Sylvia, who oversees the proceedings. With each successful kill, Travis not only increases in rank, but begins to earn the affection of Miss Sylvia - a task he originally thought was not possible. With each successive victory, the narrative gets crazier, and while none of it is particularly deep, it's entertaining enough to keep you going.

The combat is extremely visceral and is the best part of the game.

Gameplay consists of two major components: killing and driving. Other mini-games are sprinkled throughout the rest of the experience, but for the most part, slicing off limbs with the beam katana (a fancy lightsaber) is the main focus of this game. The designers could have chosen to abuse the motion sensing abilities of the Wii, but instead, they opted to nuance each kill with a swing of the Wii-mote, which was an excellent decision. While the A button handles each regular slash of the beam katana, an enemy can be finished off when a directional arrow is displayed on the screen. Simply wave the Wii-mote as instructed, and Travis will deliver a brutal finishing attack.

For those who like to mix it up, there is some depth to the fighting as well. If you want to smash your opponents with Lucha Libre style wrestling moves, the option is there - just stun by your opponent by holding the B button and go at it. The more you play, the more moves you'll learn, either by watching a wrestling video in the comfort of your apartment, or finding wrestling masks placed just before most bosses. High and low attacks have also been incorporated into No More Heroes, but using them properly doesn't matter until later in the game when many of the enemies block attacks from specific directions.

The beam katana isn't some all-powerful weapon though, even if it appears to be at first. After cutting a few guys up, you'll find that the battery power tends to run out pretty fast. To refill it, you'll need to press the 1 button and continuously waggle the Wii-mote. While doing so, you'll be completely vulnerable to attack, as Travis will shake his katana in a very provocative and somewhat perverted motion. Despite the funny animation, the fact that the katana must be powered up is a key gameplay element, and is something that you will constantly need to do, especially during boss battles.

Speaking of which, the boss fights highlight the best of what No More Heroes offers. Each battle is different than the last, and all of them feature memorable characters that you'll probably want to assassinate. Despite the fact that each assassin has fairly recognizable patterns, many fights may take you several tries until you've mastered how to properly evade attacks at the right moments. Still, the challenge is part of the fun, and you'll feel a great sense of accomplishment after defeating some of the more difficult bosses in the game.

With such exciting combat, it's unfortunate that No More Heroes begins to falter when it strays from the fighting. Since the money you acquire over the course of the game needs to be spent, you'll have to traverse the city of Santa Destroy to do so. While most of your cash will go towards the fee for entering your next ranked battle, you'll need to spend additional funds on training and purchasing new weapons. More often than not, you won't have enough to pay for both the entry fee and the updated weaponry, so the game allows you to participate in side missions to make a little extra dough. Unfortunately, this requires you to drive an unwieldy motorcycle across a bland landscape to two separate locations for every mission you wish to participate in. Despite the fact that there are a few gesture-based minigames to engage in, you probably won't want to bother with many of them after driving around for as long as you're forced to.

In a lot of ways, it seems like this open-world aspect of the game was never truly finished. The driving aspect is the primary problem, as Travis' motorcycle handles quite poorly and often comes to complete and unanimated stops when brushing up against another vehicles. The hitboxes from other cars are also particularly bad, as they seem to extend beyond the models themselves and sometimes cause you to crash on what appears to be nothing. And finally, the environment isn't particularly interesting to explore, as there are a ton of graphical blemishes and an extremely sparse amount of civilians and cars populating the area. Ultimately, the game would have been better off if the open environment was completely scratched in favor of a traditional menu-based navigation interface.

Driving around in the bland city of Santa Destroy gets old fast.

When it comes to the graphics, it's clear that the designers were going for that over-the-top anime style that's prevalent in so many Japanese titles. The cel-shaded look hides what amounts to be some very simplistic geometry, but for the most part, it still works. Travis looks great, as do most of the enemies and bosses. Moreover, it is clear that the developers behind No More Heroes are fans of the arcade era from the 1980s. Most of the menus, icons, and status indicators are often huge, pixelated throwbacks to that bygone era, and even the screen that shows Travis climbing the through the assassins' ranks is punctuated by an interface that is reminiscent of a high score screen from Galaga or Defender. The only time the low polygon count becomes an issue is when navigating through Santa Destroy, since it causes everything from the vehicles to the buildings come across as simplistic and visually underwhelming. Overall, the graphics look good enough, but the city could have used quite a bit more polish.

The sound and music, on the other hand, are the highlight of the presentation. Everything from the crazy comments after dispatching an enemy to the catchy music in Naomi's Lab works very well in the context of the game. The voice acting is also quite funny at times, especially in many of the boss-related cutscenes. Travis is perfectly nuanced as a bad-assed dork, and Sylvia wouldn't be the same without the exaggerated French accent. In fact, all of the conversations with each major character in the game are genuinely well-acted and unanimously entertaining.

No More Heroes is like the kid you went to high school with who had his own style, and he didn't care what anyone else thought. This is definitely a different game with its own sense of humor and style, but it's not for everyone, and it does have some problems. Still, if you are looking for a solid third-party Wii title that isn't just a compilation of mini-games, you can't go wrong with No More Heroes.