Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes (2019)

Rough in some edges but dead set on being as charming as the original No More Heroes, Travis Strikes Again puts top-down action with a partner into an uneven but exciting experience.

Badman, father of Bad Girl, has come to take revenge on Travis Touchdown for killing her all those years ago. Awakening a dormant unreleased video game console that can grant wishes but carrying a sinister purpose, Badman must team up with Travis to bring back his daughter and solve the mystery behind this game console's creation.

The game consists of some standard hack and slash fare with some fairly helpful skills and charge shots. Healing fields, spinning tops, stun bursts - the game can get pretty difficult as it goes on, so any advantage helps. Co-op is likely the most ideal approach with quick and easy resurrection and double the firepower, but single player allows a much more focused approach for action. Along with hacking and slashing, some segments involve minor puzzles (flipping streets to match paths while getting attacked by a giant blue skull), bouncing on doughnuts to platform through forests and deserts, racing minigames that most definitely resemble Redline, cheeky segments that heavily reference the Unreal Engine development process, time attack stages in hellish pinball obstacles, and throwbacks to some older Suda games. Killer is Dead, The Silver Case, Killer7, and even Shadows of the Damned all make their appearance in some way, shape, or form.

Graphically the game builds on the nature of cool ideas and unfinished games, with high concepts giving way to buggy creatures and glitchy details. The low-res nature of the game cements this idea, but that may likely be due to budget constraints. The music is SOLID, and has some intensely catchy tunes (Electric Thunder Tiger II stage, Brian Buster's fight, etc). Along with the main game some visual novel segments flesh out the wacky story of Travis tracking down the Death Balls and coming to terms with more endless cycles of killing and revenge. Badman also gets a tragic but appropriately gritty origin story, and both stories have a very PC-88 feel to their presentation.

As for content, the game can seem a little repetitive for featuring high concepts for games but doesn't overstay its welcome, even with two extra characters (ain't saying who) in the DLC. For a game about development and the slow but eventual journey to No More Heroes 3, Travis Strikes Again provides a fairly fun excursion in the meantime.