No More Heroes 3 is a game that relies on you putting as much of yourself into it that you can. It isn't just about it relying on you grinding money and experience, playing the past 3 games, or the Silver Case series, or other Grasshopper games. It asks you to know about Takashi Miike films, 80's mecha shows, game development and modern internet culture around video games, story clichés, Japanese wrestling, and a big dose of both suspension of disbelief and benefit of the doubt. It asks you to look at the open world and think both "this is cheap and bad" and "this is something I want to play in." It asks you to go through wave after wave of enemies with a combat system that, while fun, just doesn't have a lot of variety (though the deathglove powers you get do help). Much like the first No More Heroes, it is a lot of grinding to get to a boss fight that is usually crazy, and tries its best to surprising and delightful. It is a game that I found frustrating at parts, charmingly boring at others, and there are peaks that are so wonderful that I found myself cackling at the idea of it all. In a way, No More Heroes 3 is the pinnacle of video game story telling as it relies on you to really put the parts together to make a narrative about one sad man trying to talk to his wife while a CEO and his alien childhood friend want to kill you. In another way, it is a mess that sort of falls apart if you pull at the wrong blocks. Suda51 has indicated that this is going to be the last Travis Touchdown game, and while it was not how I really wanted it to end, it is hard for me not to say that it ended exactly how it should have. While I'm not sure if I would recommend this game to anyone, it may just be my game of the year, which for all I gave it, maybe I am just giving myself the "GOTY." But is there anything better than a game giving you the feeling that you accomplished something more than just pressing the buttons at the right time?
