10 best gaming surprises of 2021 (and 5 terrible ones)

Terrible Moment – No More Heroes III phones it in

I enjoyed No More Heroes 1 and 2. I liked how unique the first game felt and how much work seemed to have gone into the characters. And two felt like a genuine improvement with better environments, more customization, and even new weapons. Then…then we got the third game.

Honestly, not to be harsh, but if they didn’t want to make this game maybe they shouldn’t of. No More Heroes 3 was such a huge step down for the series that you could possibly convince people that this was made on the Wii before the first game came out.

The environments are woefully devoid of detail. There are two NPCs that you’ll see walking the landscape over and over again. Vehicles appear and disappear seemingly at random. All the extra weapons were taken away leaving you with only one sword again. The stores where you could buy clothing were gone. A lot of the cool extra stuff you could do in the game was gone. And instead, you got left with a confusing story that required people to be intimately familiar with every single spin-off of the game. So much so that even me, someone who considered myself a No More Hero fan, was completely taken aback by how confused I was with the story in the beginning.

Combine this with the fact that every single level is a boring slog leading to a ridiculous alien who looks like a boss out of Starfox with all its polygonal glory and you get one of the biggest disappointments of 2021.