Not a Hero Review

As a ‘vertical slice’, the kind of demo publishers and developers like to show off to press and consumers prior to release, I expect Not a Hero would be brilliant. Fast-paced, ultra violent non-stop action combine with vibrant pixel-art, a pumping soundtrack and a wise-cracking hero to create an underlying sense of cool. Storming through multi-storey buildings, sliding into bad dudes before executing them from close range, then smashing out through a window and into another as a thug is taken out before he has time to react; it’s easy to like the experience developer Roll7 has created. But a few levels into the final game, I was starting to lose interest.

Not a Hero is a simple game. A 2D side/up/down scroller in which you shoot bad guys, or throw molotovs at bad guys, or blow up bad guys, or laser bad guys, or send in a cat to blow up bad guys, almost exclusively inside buildings that look very similar to the last. You can slide, too, and duck in and out of cover like a twitchy Marcus Fenix. You’ll be given mission objectives by your boss, Bunny Lord, but level completion isn’t reliant on all of those being completed. So if, for example, you don’t find all the ‘cake’ or find the parrot, or kill everyone… you’ll still progress.

Bunny Lord, the kind of bizarre anthropomorphic character that wouldn’t look out of place in noughties’ humourous mind fart, The Mighty Boosh, is attempting to become mayor of his city, but to do so he hires a string of enforcers to clean things up. And by clean, he means kill. To begin with you’re limited to playing as Steve, a cockney hitman as stereotypical as they come, but soon Steve will be joined by other, equally stereotyped killinators, including a Spaniard with a hip thrust and a Welsh woman who sounds Welsh.

Aside from being stereotypes, these player characters each have unique attributes which change how you play. Old faithful, Steve, is accurate, can knee people after sliding to set up takedowns, and reloads quickly, but Spaniard Jesus can shoot while sliding, making combat that bit more lively when in his shoes. It’ll take some time to unlock all the characters, each requiring a certain popularity rating before being added to the roster, which is helped by doing well in each mission rather than just limping through.

There’s a learning curve to the core gameplay and the slight variation each character brings, but it’s not especially steep, meaning Not a Hero feels light and throwaway compared to the dev’s previous title, skateboarding hit OlliOlli 2. What’s on offer is certainly fun, but the gameplay hooks don’t get in deep enough. As I played I was adapting to each new enemy type (ninjas, samurai, etc), but that was it. Other than not running into enemies with swords and making use of each character’s abilities, very little was changing.

Mechanically Not a Hero just feels a little too basic for its own good. Difficulty ramps up in the final stages, with enemies being thrown at you in greater numbers, but here death feels almost inevitable with retries more common and frustration setting in. There’s a sense that if you keep going you’ll eventually pull yourself through by being methodical instead of stylish – which goes against everything you want to do while playing.

A large part of Not a Hero’s appeal should have lied in its humour and irreverent tone. Bunny Lord gives pre-mission talks to set up each job, throwing in zany lines such as “Also, somewhere in the near vicinity, a celibate panda is being held hostage by some crappy triad yakuza” and “We all know that pandas are consumately feck-pigs”. At first this dialogue comes across as crass but a bit cute, causing minor amusement due to its quirkiness. But soon it starts to feel forced, as if the writers tried to combine Russell Brand and Noel Fielding without considering what monster that would create.

When everything comes together and you run through levels like you’re every character in The Expendables, one-liners tickling you as enemies lie bloody and very dead on the floor while SWAT storm in via choppers, Not a Hero is undeniably cool. But most of the time the experience all blends into itself, becoming a kind of murder stew, indistinct and flavourless. To finish the game 100% you have to complete each mission with the entire cast, but I don’t really have any desire to do that – partly because a couple of the characters are a chore to play as, but also because I’m not sure I’d still be having any fun.

After each mission your character and Bunny Lord head back to Ruby’s Cafe for milkshakes and more wacky lines of dialogue that miss so often you’ll wonder if Roberto Soldado is hiding inside the bunny suit. “For now though, let’s just enjoy our chocolate and monkey milkshakes,” says Bunny Lord. I don’t know what a chocolate and monkey milkshake would taste like, but it somehow sums up Not a Hero perfectly.