Why "No More Heroes 3" is Hot Garbage. (2/4)

There's an alien named Jeff Baptiste the VI, or FU. In the intro, a young Damon Ricotello (Damon was in Travis Strikes again in a side plot, apparently he beat Dr. Juvenile until she was unconscious once over something really small, and Travis beat him for it) finds a young FU and helps him fix his spaceship, FU promises to come back after 20 years and they'll meet again in the future. (Oh yeah, also Damon got alien powers from some technology left at FU's crash site, which he used at his disposal to be the CEO of Utopinia.) 2 years after the events of TSA, Shocker, FU comes back ...but to take over the Earth. Now grown, FU is now a douche to everyone, he's feared by everyone on Earth and in Santa Destroy. He sets up the Galactic SuperHero Corps, claiming he and his terrorist friends are "superheroes" and not terrible beings who want to take over the world and claim it as their own. Of course, it's like every other NMH game, rank your way to the top and defeat the first ranking, Jeff Baptiste the VI.     I left out a crucial scene here. You're probably wondering, "Where's Badman, Shinobu, and Badgirl?" WELL after the intro of the game, Travis is greeted by a bunch of aliens in the parking lot of the motel he stays at. In Travis fashion, he kills them all, and using his mecha suit (yeah he has that now) he flies into the sky, landing on a spaceship. After the first boss fight, FU and Travis meet for the first time, and Shinobu gets her fken arms ripped off by FU (this girl's arms can never catch a break in the series, she got one of them cut off in the first game and in the second she has a cyborg arm and now none). Badman sees Shinobu getting her face almost crushed by FU's boot, so he tries to help which ends up KILLING BADMAN. 

BADMAN DIES

It's like...giving me Omid from Telltale's The Walking Dead Season 2 vibes. Just killing off a character in the first part of the game that was well-liked cuz why not? It just left a bad taste in my mouth, I don't wanna sound like a suck-up, but Badman had huge potential for a main NMH side character. If you played TSA, you would know they gave an entire backstory to him, so it's not like he was just randomly dropped in a story to have a random goal, no, he was an actual character that had an interesting backstory and I was excited to see him in NMH 3. But then they just killed him off, so everything about him in TSA doesn't matter. 

Also, his character design had to be one of my favorites, I dunno but it's just something about the washed up baseball player turn assassin is an aesthetic I never thought I would love.    

So...what about Shinobu? SHE'S COMPLETELY ABSENT THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE GAME.

Unlike NMH2 and TSA, you get to actually play as her but you can't even interact with Shinobu. Technically you can, but interacting as in talking to someone barricaded by a glass window while they're unconscious. Yes. Shinobu is in a coma throughout the entire game. 

Well, that's ok, we still have Badgirl right? Nope, she now has PTSD or something and keeps saying "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy" over and over again, traumatized by the loss of her father, Badman. 

So that's great, you can't play as any of the characters from TSA. Let alone interact with them during the game. Great. Well it's up to Travis to save the world from evil space aliens, now let's talk about the combat

The gameplay has potential. I feel like the gameplay is almost as fun as NMH2 but it's slim because you can only equip the Blood Berry. There's no more Rose Nasty or upgrading your Beam Katana. It's just the Blood Berry, which honestly sucks but it kinda makes it up for the Death Drive Chips. In TSA, there were special moves you could equip called chips, they're in NMH3 and the gameplay is in the original NMH "Hack n Slash style" of games and I have to admit it's pretty fun and satisfying. NMH3 is the game that's pretty close to an actual Hack n Slash because it has combos you can do. There are also skills you can upgrade when you go to Dr Naomi, who is now a tree. (she's a tree because....get it? You go to her for skills? A "skill tree") There are also different enemies in the game. Unlike NMH 1 and 2 (not counting TSA where you're fighting "bugs") where you fight random men in suits, sometimes with guns, and sometimes with chainsaws, you have different types of aliens that have different attacks in the game, granted there's technically only like 8 you can fight during the game but it's cool that they're trying to give you a challenge.  The gameplay is basically a mixture between TSA's chips and button mashing from the recent NMH games and I feel like they go pretty well together but now let's talk about jobs and this is where the problems kinda come in

Whoring yourself out or "getting a job" in NMH are fun mini-games that earn you money so you can pay to enter the next ranking battle. Personally, NMH2 is my favorite when it comes to jobs. In NMH2 they had a SNES style of games and they were all fun to play. In NMH3, there aren't really a lot of jobs to choose from. There's this scorpion-catching job, trash pick up, defending the beach by giant alligators (yes), mowing the lawn, and that's all I remember. I'm pretty sure there's more (if you wanna count unclogging the toilet mini-game) but I probably didn't get to them yet and they all kinda seem boring. They don't even have the OG coconut-grabbing game. I know it feels like I've been crapping on this game a lot, but this is just kinda how it is. 

Also, you can't change your outfit anymore, I mean, you can but it isn't as manual as you would think. Instead of choosing what eyewear, belt, shirt, shoes, wristbands, and pants to wear, you can only choose an already pre-established outfit in No More Heroes 3 or just change the shirt. Which means I can't drip him up like this anymore  but at least you can still wear this, I guess.    

Blog 2/4