Game details Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture

Publisher: Grasshopper (digital), Nintendo (retail)

Platform: Switch

Release Date: January 18, 2019

ESRB Rating: M for Mature

Price: $30 ($40 with "season pass")

Links: Amazon | Nintendo.com | Official website Grasshopper Manufacture: Grasshopper (digital), Nintendo (retail): SwitchJanuary 18, 2019M for Mature: $30 ($40 with "season pass")

Have you heard of video game developer Goichi Suda, better known to fans as Suda51? If so, you're likely familiar with his brand of weird games, from Western cult classics Killer 7 and No More Heroes to decidedly Japanese visual novels like The Silver Case.

But Suda51 has mostly lingered on the edges of the Western game industry, in part because his biggest games didn't attract huge audiences here. One big reason is that his best fare on the GameCube and Wii targeted older gamers, who were arguably too busy playing PlayStation and Xbox consoles during those eras to notice. And his decidedly Western-minded followups, Shadows of the Damned and Lollipop Chainsaw, suffered from development issues and sloppy gameplay.

This week, Suda51 will enjoy a rare moment of front-and-center attention thanks to a cozy spot on the Nintendo Switch's quiet January calendar. Between the usual dump of indies and a six-year-old New Super Mario Bros. U re-release comes the latest game from studio Grasshopper Manufacture: Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes. "Hey, I've heard of No More Heroes, and that Suda-fifty-something guy," you may think to yourself while flipping through the Switch's "latest games" listings. "I could go for some of that slick, weird Japanese action he's all about."

Should you dive into Travis Strikes Again with that attitude, be warned: you don't know what you're in for. By that, I do not mean that you need to have played prior games in the hack-and-slash series. Rather, I mean that TSA is an absolutely bizarre action game that has little interest in meeting anyone's expectations.

Serious potential, but...









































For one, TSA has been loudly billed as a No More Heroes spin-off, as opposed to a true sequel. Though it features a few of the earlier game's characters, including lead sword-brawler Travis Touchdown, TSA sees that character jumping to a frozen-in-time, continuity-be-damned chunk of the series' universe. Travis has uncovered a rare video game console, so he hunkers down in a trailer in Texas to try to play video games he's only heard about. Trouble is, his first gameplay session is interrupted by a foe he has never met—and a scuffle leads them to accidentally warp inside of the game console.

From there, TSA offers two types of missions. The first are hack-and-slash battles through six distinct game worlds, each based on a different, entirely fictional game universe. Suda51 confused game fans when he first announced TSA by talking about how the game would include allusions to major indie video games, but Travis doesn't step into the worlds of indie games you've heard of. (Not even Hotline Miami, though that game gets a ton of name-checks here, owing to Suda51's very public appreciation for that indie classic.)

Instead, Travis's action scenes alternate between top-down and side-scrolling romps against a cast of roughly eight enemy types, plus a smattering of bosses, and they all play out with the same controls. Some of these levels are broken up with slight twists, like a puzzle in which you must rotate a level's roads to create a path, or a drag-race mini-game that requires button taps to handle your car's manual transmission (which you don't even have to steer). But for the most part, Travis runs forward, slashes deformed skeletons, and occasionally jumps or pokes into corners to find hidden collectibles.

I found that only six of the dozen-plus collectible chips are worth equipping

The combat starts with serious potential. Travis and his optional co-op partner Bad Man begin with a basic array of a quick attack, a "fierce" attack, a dodge roll, and a hop, but these are soon augmented by a series of "chip" upgrades. Each fighter can equip up to four of these chips at a time, which enable lightning strikes, turret placements, healing zones, and other special moves; these must all recharge for a while before they can be used again. But in my experimenting, I found that only six of the dozen-plus collectible chips are worth equipping, in terms of controlling waves of enemies.

In good news, the battle sequences mostly look clear and rapid-fire, thanks to a subtle cartoon-border effect drawn onto enemies and foes and a largely locked 60fps refresh rate. But when TSA misses its fps mark, the results are painful, and the game has clearly sacrificed polygon counts and other effects to keep its frame rates high. A few moments in the game look absolutely stunning, particularly a run through a city sequence in which the floor reflects all of the nearby neon, but many of the game's environs either rehash the same details over and over again or, in the case of at least one outdoor sequence, look like they're teeming with placeholder art.

And the core control system that players must rely on feels surprisingly wooden and unresponsive, especially in the heat of a crazy fight against an enemy swarm. TSA will buffer any frantic button taps, which means you'll likely lose control of Travis by accidentally triggering two slower "fierce" attacks in a row or two consecutive dodge rolls, when you really only needed to do one of either. The lack of enemy variety doesn't help matters, nor does TSA's propensity to pad its levels with repetitive fight after repetitive fight after repetitive fight. Even the first "tutorial" level takes roughly an hour to clear, while the aforementioned rotate-puzzle level has eight obnoxiously long chunks that repeat the same few concepts.

"Let's play a game... of death"

So why are we even talking about this game? Because Suda51 has clearly been smoking some strong stuff, and for his fans, that may be enough to stick through.

















































TSA sees Suda51 uncork his very specific vision of how a video game world should look and feel, and the result is a meta-verse of fourth-wall breaks and snide, vulgarity-filled references. Suda51's previous games are often mentioned, whether in subtle or glaring ways. Other game franchises make surprise appearances. General gaming tropes come up on a regular basis (including self-deprecating criticisms of TSA's worst attributes). Heck, even Unreal Engine 4 gets mentioned, including a few surprising behind-the-veil reveals of how the game's engine works.

Part of this quirky sensibility comes from "Travis Strikes Back," a regular feature that asks players to boot into a classic, monochrome computer interface and tap through page after page of visual-novel dialogue. These sequences include nothing in the way of choices; instead, they include a series of lovingly rendered 1-bit comic panels, a surprisingly robust classic MIDI soundtrack, and a globe-trotting story full of vengeance, suspense, and talking cats. It's odd, but it's cute.

And each combat mission includes its own pauses for gonzo dialogue, including lengthy shout exchanges between Travis and his foes or snippets of advice from a ghost (who mostly encourages players to stop eating fast food and seek out more ramen). Between those chunks of text and large instruction manuals for each of the games-within-a-game, Suda51 wants his players to have a text world so big that they can swim in it. But it's not necessarily a warm bath. My biggest beef with the text is that it prioritizes ethos and attitude, as opposed to characters. TSA is fiercely outside of No More Heroes' canon, and the result is a story whose characters are all whackadoodle archetypes, all trying to live up to some ideal of Tarantino or French new-wave filmmaking.

Eight hours, with an asterisk

Some of the game's action lapses might have been forgivable if the co-op gameplay had felt tighter, but TSA doesn't scale well for a second player. More enemies will pop up, but the way that they move and swarm makes their increased numbers moot; a second player tilts the scales too far into "easy" territory. Unless you want the game's overlong combat to also feel overly simple, stick to solo play (and enjoy it in portable mode, where the game's 60fps refresh and bright colors look good enough to overshadow some of the simpler visuals).

That's not to say the game is an utter failure, but its most impressive combat is diluted by so much padding, and its unsatisfying, seen-these-before bosses don't help. And while the conceit of multiple games-within-a-game includes some hilarious FMV sequences and dialogue, it's hard not to be disappointed that the ideas to which they refer are wasted, be they Contra-style blasting or Resident Evil-style mansion exploration. They're all just thin gimmicks on top of nearly identical battles.

If the game's eight-hour runtime (which doesn't count returning to levels to find secrets) had been sliced in half, I'd be more likely to recommend any random passer-by flip through pages of text, confusedly laugh, and then enjoy a few sensational, memorable battles. Instead, I urge casual action fans to steel themselves for lousy pacing, disappointing co-op, and surprisingly fun text. If Suda51's singular sense of humor is your cup of tea (or, in this game's case, your bowl of ramen), you will likely forgive these lapses—and particularly appreciate some of TSA's crazier reveals.

Otherwise, consider following Suda51's lead and just playing Hotline Miami again.

The good

Even when the script sometimes lacks heart, it's still usually cute and hilarious.

Suda51-specific easter eggs make this a must-play for fans of the developer.

A few finely choreographed fights prove that Suda51 knows how to deliver a solid action game.

The bad

...but too many of those fights are overlong, padded, and repetitive.

Beyond a few eye-catching moments, the game typically looks serviceable at best and rough at worst.

Co-op is absolutely blown by a lack of good collaborative maneuvers and poorly scaled difficulty.

The ugly

The only collectibles in this game are T-shirts that you can put on your character... but these are entirely obscured during gameplay. They're a waste.

Verdict: If you like Suda51, there's enough here to keep you hooked. Otherwise, tread cautiously.