The Silver Case (1999)
Killer 7 (2005) 7/10
No More Heroes (2007) 5.5/10
Shadows of the Damned (2011)
Lollipop Chainsaw (2012) 5.5/10
Killer is Dead (2013)
Goichi Suda ("Suda51") has always exploited "quirkiness" as his signature style in the many video games he's directed, and No More Heroes, with a player-protagonist like Travis Touchdown (an ex-professional wrestler who chooses a life of professional killing for the prime objective to get laid) is naturally no exception.
The game's story sets Travis with an aggressive ambition to be the very best of all the world's professional assassins: requiring him to plow through a repetitive multitude of fights, each ending with gruesome mutilations of all those in his path with his beam-katana (as well as the unnecessary and perhaps excessive aid of some chance-based power-ups fueled by a slot machine and the passionate shouting of dessert flavors).
And yet despite this quirky madness, this plow through all of Travis's enemies finds a way to get tedious, for in order to progress to the next "ranking battle" ( boss fight) the player is most often tasked to fight huge crowds of bad guys using the same sword moves over and over again, with the exception of the different wrestling moves you can acquire as you defeat more bosses and move higher up the world's top 10 killers list. (Although there is a handful of moves you can unlock by amassing hidden collectibles scattered around the open-world map of the game).
But other than these missions solely composed of reusing moves on different hoards of enemies, you can also progress to the next ranking battle by completing "job" minigames that task you with a refreshing variety of actions to play through for your success. (IE Gas refueling, picking up litter, cleaning off graffiti, picking up cats, picking up scorpions...etc)
Then there is the open-world aspect of the game where you move Travis around either on foot or on his ridiculous motorbike, and I can safely say that this open-world portion is the worst part of No More Heroes mainly because of these three reasons: traveling on your motorbike results in many frustrating clipping errors or accidental collisions with cars (that did not need to be implemented; I wouldn't have minded if the motorbike's absurdly huge tires crushed any opposing cars like a tank to keep the vehicle-movement's flow steady); insultingly dull and moribund designs for the city scenery; and a pitiful mistake in controls concerning how the same button to dig for buried cash is what you press to get back on your motorbike -- so don't park on grass for the life of you! (Although this mistake can be in a sense "fixed" by moving a little away from your bike and calling some nobody character to bring your motorbike closer to you... but this process is irritating and time-consuming).
And the writing can be alienating, as it has its own audience. (That is, the audience who don't give a shit about writing and just want the fun and "quirkiness" from Suda51.) There are scenes of some forced and uncomfortable drama (the burial of a killer on the beach), and many "quirky" jokes simply aren't funny; but it should still be understood that there is a particular breed of players who will love absolutely every exaggerated and ridiculous thing the script of No More Heroes has to offer.
But for me... "Quirkiness" is fun and all, but once its moment of glory is done, I tend to forget about all the cheesy nonsense and foolery that's supposed to keep me laughing even after I put down the game.
At least each of the big killers you fight are so colorful and intimidating that it came to the point where I was always excited to enter the next ranking mission just to see them.
No More Heroes is, in a nutshell, a fun waste of time interrupted by open-world filler and occasionally tedious combat; and yet I'd recommend some hypothetical hacked version that beheld exclusively the boss fights.