It’s a glum old world out there if you’re one of those types who follow worldwide hostility, local housing market prices and the current dominance of Manchester United in the Premier League. In addition to all this the weather seems to be having its usual annual struggle to kick its own arse into gear and give us some sun, thus meaning that every morning on the way to work I am greeted by grey skies. Luckily for me, No More Heroes landed on my doorstep and injected a well-timed boost of happy and silly into my bloodstream just at the right time.

Developed by Killer 7 chaps Grasshopper (fronted by the improbably-named Suda51), No More Heroes comes running at you the very moment you slot the disc into the Wii disc slot. With a rather glorious electronic soundtrack (sounding very much like Daft Punk in places), colourful cel-shaded visuals it’s hard not to be taken in by the sheer kookiness of the whole thing, and that only increases when you take your first steps into the story behind the whole thing.

This can be largely attributed to Grasshopper giving No More Heroes a story that’s madder than a square egg. Lead hero Travis Touchdown wins a sword in an online auction and, having met a rather sassy girl whilst wasted in a bar one night, decides to embark on an adventure to become the best assassin in the world. Problem is, Travis is ranked at 11 and there are 10 tough-as-nails opponents standing in his way, so things won’t be all that easy and will involve a heck of a lot of button mashing, Wii-mote waving and nunchuck swashbuckling along the way.

Of course, this comes as good news to people wanting something a little offbeat for their Wii. The little white box o’ tricks still suffers somewhat from a comparative lack of top-class third-party titles, so it’s great for me to be able to tell you straight off the bat that No More Heroes is not only something really rather different from anything else on the Wii, but that it also makes good use of the control system too. Don’t go celebrating just yet, though – it’s not all sunshine and roses in the garden.

See, No More Heroes is very much a game of two parts. One part sees you running your way around a simple series of corridors and rooms slashing your way through enemies left, right and centre before you get to the end assassin, whom you must defeat in order to advance your rank to the next level. Whilst legging your way around you can pick up the usual health bonuses and such, as well as collecting trading cards to put back in the motel room which acts as the hub for the external part of the game.

It’s during these parts of the game that No More Heroes is brilliant, mindless fun, and this has much to do with the way it all works with the control system. Guiding Travis around with the nunchuck analogue stick, you are able to angle your beam sword high or low by tilting the Wii-mote to suit, with repeated presses of the A button slicing your sword at anything in range and a directed slash performing a finishing move. It works really very well indeed, with the Wii-mote being sensitive enough to neatly sidestep any grumbles about not having it do what you wanted it to.

There’re also a couple of additional tactics you can use to defeat your enemies, the primary of which are the wrestling moves that Travis can learn either by purchasing videos in the open world portion or by picking up masks during the boss battle bits. By stunning an enemy Travis can grab hold of them, at which point a little diagram pops up on the screen giving you some control movements that you have to replicate to pull off your move. It breaks up the button mashing very well and is a genuinely useful ability, giving you a few moments of calm to finish off a downed opponent or to get away to recharge your beam sword, which you do by shaking your Wii-mote and not laughing like a big kid about the rather lewd way in which Travis does it on-screen.

It’s the general oddness of such things as the above, as well as your opponents and the characters you battle throughout the game, that really add to the battling portion to make it so good. Slashing your way through countless foes might not sound terribly varied and to be completely honest it’s not, but the controls combined with the settings really work well together to alleviate any boredom that could have cropped up. Right from assassin number ten through to number one it’s quality, stress-busting stuff.

Unfortunately, it’s the bits in-between the battling sections that really let No More Heroes down. Due to Travis having to pay an entrance fee to take them on, he must therefore go and get jobs around town to stump up the cash. At this point you’re taken outside the confines of the simple levels you’ve been battling through and given freedom to wander around the place picking up secret items, visiting shops to buy clothes, videos and weapons and to pay a visit to the job centre.

In theory this sounds quite fun, but soon it becomes really quite monotonous. As you go through the game Travis requires increased amounts of cash to unlock the next assassin battle, and due to this you end up spending more and more of your time riding around on your motorbike, getting frustrated with the dodgy collision detection with other cars and objects and flitting in-between numerous mini games to earn you your moolah.

The jobs you get vary to a reasonable degree, starting off with you having to punch trees to get coconuts and ending up with you doing things like disposing of landmines by digging for them at the beach, or fuelling cars at a gas pump station. Each is akin to a three-minute mini game during which you basically do the same thing over and over again, and quite soon it really begins to drag. The assassination quests which you can take on at the same time are also quite similar to each other and usually involve you travelling to a certain area to battle through waves of attackers, and although the combat is still good fun, the lack of variety in setting isn’t.

In fact, it’s fair to say that it’s at these points that No More Heroes loses a great deal of momentum that it builds up during the assassin sections. Whilst you can appreciate that Grasshopper were probably trying to affect some sort of balance for the hectic combat, the sheer volume of samey stuff you have to wade through to get your entry passes makes it feel as if the game is grinding to a standstill. Okay, you get to buy new stuff, learn new moves, gain strength and pet your little kitten in your motel whilst watching videos and such, but it slows the pace far too much. If I wanted to have to do mundane things to be able to afford other exciting things, I’d just turn off the Wii and go to work (disclaimer: I love my job, please don’t fire me).

The other big grumble for us European folk is the censorship that the game has been through, with blood replaced by enemies exploding in clouds of black dust. It’s rather ludicrous that in a game based on violence and packed with swearing and many, many sexual themes that blood seems to have been deemed too risqué. The worst part of it all is that some of the key scenes have been made rather nonsensical by having their visual gore removed, the worst being when one character detonates a grenade in her mouth, only to remain standing apparently none the worse for the experience. Heck, it’s not as if No More Heroes is a painfully realistic vision of the real world either – the visuals and general story being as they are make the absence of over-the-top injuries even more pointless. It’s as if we’re only getting a sneaky peak at the lead artist’s original vision.

It’s a genuine shame that the open world sections, combined with butchering of the game’s visual impact, dampen what otherwise is a really rather good title. The cel-shaded visuals aren’t exactly crispy sharp but they are well drawn and pack in a great deal of character, and the general humour and offbeat nature of the whole thing is a breath of fresh air. No More Heroes should certainly be commended for that and it is definitely worth a go if you’re aching for something a little darker and mature for your Wii, but a classic it certainly isn’t. With a little bit of tinkering here and there and a bit more bravery when it came to the adult content in Europe (there’s an 18 certificate for a reason, chaps) it could have been a serious contender, but as it is it’s merely a pleasant if slightly frustrating change of direction from the norm.