That’s my Occam’s Razor take on things, anyway.

In the interest of reducing confusion, you can always use my nickname. The funny thing is that a large part of the reason I got a nickname in the first place was that there was a proliferation of Michaels in my high school.

I don’t know if this should be classified as ironic or not, but I wonder if Yahtzee, in an odd way, is sort the pot calling the kettle black. He needs to be petulant and aggressively cynical because that’s his signature, but in this case maybe he gets in his own way. He likes the game, but he spends a significant amount of time knocking it down with humor…sort of because he has to. Which is funny when you consider that his basic criticism of NMH is that Suda becomes a kind of prisoner in his own satirical game design. The game could be more fun, but Suda’s voice keeps interfering, he seems to be saying. In a way, the same could be said of Yahtzee’s review of NMH. Just a thought.

Thanks for the conversation, Dan!

There’s a lot of subtle backpedaling in his review. After deriding the game for being a GTA clone, for example, he adds “Well, that was a bit uncalled for”; after complaining that the battle system is “mash A until bored, then mash B for a bit instead,” he admits that “Actually, the swordfighting is pretty fun.” He pretty much needs to criticize the game somehow — after all, he’s made a name for himself as a professional cynic — but I think his positive opinions still shine through.

Towards the end of the video he says that “in spite of the last eight paragraphs of petulant birdlike warbling, I enjoyed No More Heroes a lot.” Personally, I find his endorsement of the game despite his issues with the gameplay to be a sign that he “gets” it — that he appreciates Suda’s satirical intentions and the game’s underlying artistic merit. Because of that, I put Yahtzee more in our camp than in 1UP’s.

Oh, and as for 1UP (and the other similar reviewers), I agree — they didn’t get it. Hopeless philistines, the whole lot of them. :)

Man, there are enough commenters here now that I have to differentiate between Michaels. I love it. :)

Having said all this, I think where Yahtzee and others get it wrong is in severely under-appreciating the combat system in the game and the crazy, inventive ways it’s implemented. Clearly, the game riffs on all sorts of stuff, but Grasshopper has incorporated a seriously well-tuned swordplay system with motion control in this game, and the wrestling moves are icing on the cake. Add to that the indelible boss assassins (I mean, they are utterly unique villains), and it seems to me there’s a lot of fun to be had, regardless of what you think about riding around town on the motorcycle. Yahtzee is fun because he’s so over-the-top, but sometimes that approach ignores a lot of subtleties, which this game has in spades.

It occurs to me that the last line of my post is a bit of a non sequitur, as I never mentioned whether I actually think the game is fun. I do. I also happen to think Yahtzee is right that the game sometimes sacrifices fun to make a point, but I’m okay with that. James Joyce sometimes sacrifices prose quality, and The White Stripes sacrifice audio fidelity, but that doesn’t make their work bad.