1. What makes Travis' Schpeletiger new is that it is now twice as long (in addition to the better controls).
2. This has already been verified, but there have been doubts and concerns as to how Grasshopper is going to have 50 unique bosses, from their appearance to actual fighting capabilities. Suda explains to EDGE that basically there is nothing to worry about as they incorporated both the original NMH development team and the NMH2 team (many members being of both teams including the character creator) to brainstorm and according to Suda they had no problems shooting out several ideas and characters from that.
3. The name of the "schoolgirl assassin" we all know about is Kimmy. How appropriate. Suda also mentions that Kimmy wants to keep Travis "all to her self." Possible Misery references?
4. At the end of every boss fight, a 2D image of Travis will walk from one end of the screen to the other to hop onto the Schpeletiger and drive off, accompanied by some new piece of midi music.
5. The idea of Travis using other weapons, even projectiles, was considered by Suda, but ultimately canned as Suda says that the sword/beam katana is what Travis should always use. Suda calls Travis the "modern samurai."
6. It was implied that Bishop actually does not die or get killed off, as the article explains that Bishop will have a bigger role to play in the game. At the same time, Suda says that "Travis is fighting for himself" not for anyone else. Travis is fighting for revenge, but perhaps for someone else other than Bishop?
7. Speaking more specifically on the city, Suda explains that Travis had actually left Santa Destroy for those three years, and it wasn't until he came back that he had seen how much it had changed. Where Travis had gone is not said. Only a portion of the original city will be traveled, based on fan responses on the first game. The streets and sidewalks will be much more busier and cars will "get out of the way" of Travis' bike. There are construction signs and lights everywhere. One of the fighting grounds will be a "new school", "construction yard", and a graveyard. Not sure if the school is new in the sense that it is an additional one to the Santa Destroy High School or if it is just a remodeled SDHS.
8. There are still side jobs such as coconut collecting and a new one involving plumbing. Suda explains that he still wants the player to feel like he has to work hard to play the game as that is what it means to be a punk. Otherwise, he says, there is a disconnect between the videogame world and reality. Still, the side jobs are still improved and provide humor as well as entertainment.
9. It is confirmed that Destroyman comes back as a cyborg as wanting revenge against, who else, Travis.
10. Finally, the bosses themselves: it will not be as difficult, time consuming, and at times boring to collect enough money to advance to the next boss fight. In fact, Suda purposely wanted to mix things up to keep it from getting repetitive by having Shinobu and Henry as playable characters and, at times, fighting more than one boss fight, sometimes one right after the other, and sometimes simultaneously.
Secondly, the Bizarre Jerry 5 vertical shooter that you can play in your apartment is a solid game.
A lot of the charm of the first game were the creative bosses and witty script. All of that has returned in the sequel. It's just as good as the first one in this regard.
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There is a sequence in the game where you will have two boss battles where you will be able to jump around a fair bit while in combat, which sounds great, but in those boss battles they have some platforming introduced (which when you control the camera and the collision detection is not generous is a bad thing). Lots of falling off things -- you don't die, but you do hae to climb all the way back up.
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The HUDs are as good as ever, the 8-bit music and mini-games are entertaining. One gets a very good feel that if Grasshopper was around in the 80's by now they would be legends.
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The game is a lot "sexier" this time around -- more jiggling etc... I'm all for that usually, but it feels like it's laid on a bit thick.
Sounds awesome, especially the jiggling. I've seen it in videos and its hilarious. Can't wait for this one. How do you get new moves here? Lolikov balls?
You find chests that give you issues of a wrestling magazine. No ball collecting in this one, since there is no open world.
My review will be up later today, just have to finish the last boss.
If you plan on playing this game, avoid spoilers man, there is some good stuff toward the end. Unfortunately, there is also some bad stuff -- like a bug in the penultimate battle where I was about to kill the boss when I got stuck inside a texture (and then killed). Shoddy. They make up for it after that battle though.
Will read, thanks. Hope there are no spoilers.
You know in europe we're sitting around until the end of April for this game. Looking back to the reviews on page 5 on a whim, its pretty amazing to see the universally great critical reception for a gamers game and then see gamers, ignoring it.
Gamer games are many but gamer gamers are few and far between, even those calling themselves hardcore are mostly casual, just going for the next hollywood blockbuster esque mainstream hit, and NMH isn't it. Not to mention minimal marketing, you'd think they'd push it more after the first did very good and became Suda's biggest seller yet, what did they expect from one of his games? More than that? Did they look at his previous titles on even the PS2 before deciding to publish this? Meh, I can't wait personally, I loved the first even censored, and this won't be! I kinda think it's gonna be his last crazy punk-type games, for a while at least, I get the feeling his other projects are more conventional development stuff made to be more mainstream and succesful (can't blame him).