Directed and written by Killer7’s Goichi Suda, No More Heroes is about teenager Travis Touchdown, who obtains a deadly beam katana from an Internet auction site in order to fulfill his goal of being the world’s number-one-ranked assassin.

The structure of the game is fairly straightforward. The player, as the assassin-in-training, pays an entry fee to a blonde, who then sets them up with a battle against the next big assassin in town. After the fight, they are forced to accumulate more money to pay entry fees to further the story of the game.

Assassinating people gets expensive, which launches Travis’ weird job opportunities, ranging from collecting coconuts to killing CEOs. The cash from these jobs not only pays entry fees, but can also be spent on new weapons, clothes, wrestling videos or training sessions. It is only during these quests that No More Heroes opens up into a free-roaming world.

Although the open world is fairly limited to quests and shopping, you can ride to any location in Travis’ motorcycle, “The Schpeltiger,” which looks like a fusion between a moped and a space shuttle, while still oddly resembling the monorail at Disneyland.

The plot has the blood, babes and cheesiness of a Tarantino movie, while the game’s script manages to incorporate extreme exaggerations of iconic pop culture and anime culture clichés almost as a means of parody.

Aside from the cheesy script, mediocre graphics and exaggerated voice acting, the game’s cinematic experience and game play is refreshingly stylistic.

In the first few minutes of the game, the player is instantly thrown into combat without reason or explanation. The combat system molds together excessive button mashing and the motion capabilities of the Wii-mote to create a fast and fluid system for slicing enemies in two (or sometimes three).

Despite No More Heroes linear and repetitive game play, awful camera and boring mission system, the game is worth playing for the style, quirky dialogue and the well designed scantily clad women.

My favorite part of the game was when a little blonde girl called me on my Wii-mote to tell me about the upcoming battles so that I could go to the bathroom ahead of time, if need be. Travis’ voicemails from the video store complaining about him returning the film [How to Please a Woman in Bed 101: Part 2] with scenes of a man humping a pillow in place of the original footage comes in as a close second.

[Reach reporter Jennifer Au at arts@thedaily.washington.edu.]