Since autumn we’ve seen a series of sequels that not only improve on their originals, but specifically address every gripe and whine we threw at them. Didn’t like the repetitive missions and the tedious guild cutscenes in Assassin’s Creed? They’re gone in number two. How about the laundry list of not-for-prime-time features in Mass Effect? BioWare fixed or cut them all, even going so far as to ship a role-playing game that has no inventory system. These gamemakers are so responsive that you almost wish they’d tell us to stick it. “I’m sorry, do you have a degree from Digipen? No? Well then why don’t you just shut the hell up and get back in that Mako?”

Last week brought No More Heroes 2: Desparate Struggle, the follow-up to director Suda 51’s rough and trashy cult classic. The game takes all the drag out of Touchdown’s life. You don’t have to shlep around town on your motorbike. Money-making jobs go faster, and you can careen from boss fight to boss fight with none of the hassles in between. But the streamlining goes too far. It’s not just that No More Heroes 2 is an odd game to iterate on, or that this is the least surprising sequel since Kill Bill Vol. 2. The streamlined game abandons the most important side of protagonist Travis Touchdown: it forgets that he’s a working stiff, and reduces him to just another comical action star.

To be clear, I’m enjoying the game. At least, I enjoyed it after I finally found my Wii, which had been missing for months and I hadn't even noticed. Turns out it was right where I stashed it - in a safe in the attic, under my first grade report card, some Pets.com stock, and my will. As soon as I was up and running, I started beating my way back up the ranks of the United Assassins Association. I instantly flashed back to the geysers of blood and the motion-controlled finishing moves.

Like the original, Touchdown has to win a series of “ranking matches” – big boss battles where the game’s best content lives. In the original, Touchdown had to earn his way into a match by raising money through side work that was relentlessly demeaning. We watched Touchdown mow lawns, pick up litter, and shlep coconuts back and forth around a park. Sure, he shot across town on a gigantic “look what’s between my legs” motorcycle, but it was a bear to steer and every time he hit something, he landed in a pratfall. Touchdown was a loser.

The game divided his life clearly between fantasy and reality – between his inner adolescence, his pop obsessions, and the fantastical ranking matches that gave him the illusion of a career as a celebrity assassin; and the reality, which was that none of this stuff would ever get him anywhere. The UAA is revealed as a scam, sort of, but we knew that all along: beating assassins and getting to number one was never going to change his life. And we didn’t learn that from the script or the cutscenes, but from the game mechanics.

If you didn’t watch Touchdown make a fool of himself, if you didn’t look at the ridiculous jobs he worked, you wouldn’t understand him. Here’s a guy who doesn’t have a better way to make money than menial labor and killing people. And when he makes the money, instead of using it to make something of himself, he spends it on this ridiculous competition. He may as well have blown it on scratch tickets.

So who is Travis in No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle? We know that he lost the top slot without dying over it, and he’s still broke and forgotten. But he’s more like a washed-up reality star, someone with a little cred in his pocket. And thanks to a random killing of a character that I’ve forgotten all about, he’s out for revenge. And that’s no fun, ‘cause you can’t argue with revenge. It’s always a good thing to fight for – tragic and pointless, sure, but nobody’s going to think you’re a loser for risking your life on vengeance.

In the first game, Touchdown wasn’t even tragic. And as with a great crime novel, his shortcomings as a person informed every decision he makes in the game. The mechanic that drove the point home may not have made for fun gameplay, but it was crucial to his character – and it was half the reason we cared about him. As an action icon, Touchdown has more fights left in him. But as a character, his story has been told.

Chris Dahlen writes about games, music, pop, and tech. You can find him online at @savetherobot, or drop him a line at chris [at] savetherobot.com.