Seems to be how it goes. A bunch of great PS3 games come out, and I'm there. A bunch of great Wii games come out, and now I'm over there. I'm on No More Heroes 2 at the moment, which came right after the twin late night horrors of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse. (Simultaneously, I'm rather accomplished in Animal Crossing, again, being very close to paying off my second floor.)
No More Heroes 2 is, unfortunately, not as good as the original. It has nothing to do with the characters or the look or the script. It has everything to do with a pile of totally bullshit bosses and a couple sections with seriously unpleasant controls.
If you love gimmicky bosses, go get NMH2. It seems like every one has some silly critical hit zone or secret weak moment that you need to master to get through. Tonight I got through Vladimir (#3 on the rankings; I'm pretty far in) and he starts off rather easy and dull... but then unloads an instant-death attack when he gets down to his final health. So what happens is you spend fifteen minutes slowly whittling this guy down, and then he kills you out of nowhere.
My tip to you for just about all the bosses is to master the dodge move.
The controls thing is more problematic, since the bosses can more or less be chalked up to hard. There's a Shinobu section and a (very brief) Schpeltiger section. Shinobu gets a jump move than Travis lacks, but it is criminally inexact. Of course, large portions of her levels require hyper-accurate jumping. Which means lots of falling.
The Schpeltiger bit is a prelude to an absolutely killer boss fight, where you're expected to use your bike to ram the boss's bike off a cliff. Except that the 'tiger controls like no video game vehicle you've ever used video game controls to control in a video game before. The fundamentals of gas / brake / nitro are there, but they are obscured in a magnetic, molassey mess. You're just going to have to fluke your way through this part on the enemy bike's initial joust and move on.
What #2 gets right is what the #1 got right. Combat is fun, motion controls are non-obnoxious, and the setting is darkly brilliant. It's just weird that NMH2 would try to fix things that were not broken and then cock it all up (the 8-bit mini-games outright suck). If you've never tried either game, definitely do not assume that because the sequel is newer that it is somehow better. Go get the first one. It is an Important Wii Game, and as far as M-rated Wii games go, it is waaaaay better than Madworld.
I'm still a huge fan of the franchise and will absolutely pick up the PS3 remake whenever it comes out. Not sure how they're going to map Travis's masturbation motion recharge to the Dual Shock, but I'm guessing it involves a shoulder button.
Overall, it has been a great Wii jag, NMH2 disappointments notwithstanding. Fatal Frame was excellent, Silent Hill an extremely impressive surprise, and my rebirth in Animal Crossing better than expected. Tomena Sanner, a $5 WiiWare oddity, is a worthwhile diversion, and Clark and I are still picking our way through Pokemon Rumble (holy crap, there's a second quest). Muscle March sucks, but it has resulted in Clark running through the house doing muscle poses and slamming into walls, which is hilarious. The dimmest light belongs to Super Monkey Ball: Step & Roll, which we have not played much but I can already tell is relying on motion controls and the Balance Board to its detriment.
If you use the classic controller for NMH2, the battery recharge is left and right wiggling on the right analog stick.
So, Madworld, I'm thinking about getting that for $20 new. Its not terrible, is it? I'm absolutely smitten with the visual style. I already have both No More Heroes, by the way. Love both games equally.
No, Madworld isn't terrible. It's just sort of blah. There's simply not enough wacky combat moves, even though the game is desperate to say there is. The audio commentary is really funny and dirty, but some sections of audio repeat and repeat and repeat. Also a couple of the built-in minigames are very poorly explained.
But for $20, yeah, it's worth that.