[Mac Sirloin]

I've been catching up on some much needed Not A Hero.

Not a Hero is probably my favourite game released this year. Unfortunately, it's not yet available on The Vita. Maybe it would be if shlubs like me had actually bought it in the first place. There are plans to port it ("Fall 2015") but all of the news is months old. It took five years for Meat Boy to get ported to a Sony system so my expectations aren't high.

Hotline Miami is a game that helped me descend into a certain kind of madness. I mention this because there are many parallels between Not a Hero and Hotline; they both use sparse pixel graphics to tell a very violent story, they're both published by Devolver and they both have an undercurrent of black humor. Hotline Miami and Wrong Number ended up being essays on the nature and use of violence in culture, a sort of dissertation on why the amount of fun you have playing them isn't a good thing. They're great games, but at a certain point the guilt trip on your bloodlust becomes clear and they become less engaging. Also, I got most of the cheevos so I'm not replaying them for awhile anyway.

Not a Hero holds no such pretensions. The story is told Mad-Libs style in the form of several Powerpoint presentations outlining missions and objectives by the main character, Bunnylord. Bunnylord is not playable, nor is he a participant in the majority of your missions but he is central to the game's ridiculous and lovably obnoxious story; Bunnylord (a seven foot tall, purple rabbit-man) travelled 50 years into the past to prevent the apocalypse by getting himself elected Mayor in some unnamed English City. His strategy? Murder all criminal elements and seize as much power as he can.

He employs a team of nine assassins/mentally ill people to bust heads and shoot doors. It's an incredibly fun game with a confluence of learning curves that help to accentuate the general ridiculousness of the entire presentation. Not every character is functional in every level and sometimes specific traits need to be exploited in order to complete side missions and unlock more characters. Here are a rundown of some of those characters: Jesus from The Big Lebowski. It's definitely him. A pelvic thrusting, purple-bloused nymphoid who can roll into an execution maneuver and sips a martini before collapsing if killed. Jesus rules.

Next up is my personal favorite, Mike. Mike is a twitching alcoholic rendered in all of 40 pixels. He's incredibly fast, he can execute without bullets and most of his audio is drunken slurring. Mike is my workhorse, unlocking him allowed me to blaze through a third of the game with no sweat.

The gameplay is very slick and easy to understand but difficult to master. Not a Hero is "a cover based sidescrolling shooter", genre blended as can be. The key to success is using your characters dodge, the distance and agility of which is determined by that characters speed, to slip into cover, knock over enemies and dodge out of incoming fire. You can take cover anywhere and everywhere but shooting will expose you. It's very quick, very twitchy and extremely fun. Getting caught in a crossfire is generally a death sentence so making use of space and knowing when to back off is essential.

The game worlds are populated with preset powerups and random drops that help make each attempt at a level unpredictable and fun. The difficulty curve is hard to master, with the first, second and third acts separated by clearly indicated skill levels; after a few levels in Act 3 it's difficult to look at Act 1 as anything but an extended tutorial.

What really sets the experience apart is the humor, Not a Hero is a genuinely funny game. Somewhere between the sardonic elevator music used to illustrate objectives (that mostly consist of kill everything) and the randomly placed ad-libs in the dialogue lies something really clever and heartfelt. The game knows it's funny, but it also knows you know it's funny so it never lays it on too thick.

I recommend everyone give Not a Hero a try because we need more games like this. It doesn't take itself seriously and as a result has endless allowance for fun.