Danganronpa: Trigger Happy havoc |
8/10
James Davie |
DEV: Spike Chunsoft
PUB: Spike Chunsoft
RELEASE DATE: 25/11/2010
FORMAT: PSP & PS Vita
Hour by hour trickles past in Danganronpa as you read reams of dialogue, interacting with each of the fifteen students and accustoming yourself with the twisted and seedy school environment, not knowing what brutish and malicious things you’ll uncover whilst consuming every drop of exposition in this whacky and zany murder mystery romp. Time you’ll no doubt be investing juicy amounts in, whether getting to the bottom of a murder mystery or attending Monokuma’s belated, yet gripping class trials. Some will simmer the experience down to constant eye skimming and text mapping across the Vita’s portable real-estate, along with lambasting the sporadic droplets of gameplay within, but the characters and mystery make for a portable experience that stands apart from anything in Vita’s vast library.
You are Makoto Naegi, a promising student prospect, who is cordially invited to the benevolent Hope’s Peak Academy, where only the very best students are entered into its hallowed corridors. Upon arrival however, all is not as it seems, when a freakish turn of events has you and 15 other hopefuls participating in a deadly whodunit series of murder mysteries and trials to determine which one of you graduates, spearheaded by Monokuma- a two toned bear, who is mischievous and conniving, but also very smart, and is always one step ahead of the sophomore brood.
The characters include an overweight nerd, a buxom wench, a modest sweetheart, a two-faced psychopathic aspiring novel writer, a couple of hard-assed thug types and a couple of enigmatic girls with noticeably eccentric hairstyles and an arrogant young gentleman who has a superiority complex; the characters are stereotypical, yet the story binding them together and the balance between hope and despair within the circumstances, makes for an adventure that’s hard to put down, with many moments where startling revelations spring up and the unexpected is always a stone throw away. Combined with witty and humorous writing, the characters always seem at odds with one another, some are snobs, whilst others can’t go without cursing for more than a minute. The strength and diversity of the individuals, coupled with themselves trapped and helpless in a school environment brings to the fore the aesthetic of dependence, working together for the greater ‘hope’ of making it out of the academy, yet hope in itself is always far out of reach, due to the scheming of Monokuma, and the numerous rules he lays down to ensure getting out becomes more and more impossible. Your only hope is to face the fears and work together to turn the tide against insurmountable odds.
PUB: Spike Chunsoft
RELEASE DATE: 25/11/2010
FORMAT: PSP & PS Vita
Hour by hour trickles past in Danganronpa as you read reams of dialogue, interacting with each of the fifteen students and accustoming yourself with the twisted and seedy school environment, not knowing what brutish and malicious things you’ll uncover whilst consuming every drop of exposition in this whacky and zany murder mystery romp. Time you’ll no doubt be investing juicy amounts in, whether getting to the bottom of a murder mystery or attending Monokuma’s belated, yet gripping class trials. Some will simmer the experience down to constant eye skimming and text mapping across the Vita’s portable real-estate, along with lambasting the sporadic droplets of gameplay within, but the characters and mystery make for a portable experience that stands apart from anything in Vita’s vast library.
You are Makoto Naegi, a promising student prospect, who is cordially invited to the benevolent Hope’s Peak Academy, where only the very best students are entered into its hallowed corridors. Upon arrival however, all is not as it seems, when a freakish turn of events has you and 15 other hopefuls participating in a deadly whodunit series of murder mysteries and trials to determine which one of you graduates, spearheaded by Monokuma- a two toned bear, who is mischievous and conniving, but also very smart, and is always one step ahead of the sophomore brood.
The characters include an overweight nerd, a buxom wench, a modest sweetheart, a two-faced psychopathic aspiring novel writer, a couple of hard-assed thug types and a couple of enigmatic girls with noticeably eccentric hairstyles and an arrogant young gentleman who has a superiority complex; the characters are stereotypical, yet the story binding them together and the balance between hope and despair within the circumstances, makes for an adventure that’s hard to put down, with many moments where startling revelations spring up and the unexpected is always a stone throw away. Combined with witty and humorous writing, the characters always seem at odds with one another, some are snobs, whilst others can’t go without cursing for more than a minute. The strength and diversity of the individuals, coupled with themselves trapped and helpless in a school environment brings to the fore the aesthetic of dependence, working together for the greater ‘hope’ of making it out of the academy, yet hope in itself is always far out of reach, due to the scheming of Monokuma, and the numerous rules he lays down to ensure getting out becomes more and more impossible. Your only hope is to face the fears and work together to turn the tide against insurmountable odds.
anganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is heavy on textual exposition. Strands of dialogue appear continuously with few intermissions, which can make your eyes drop to the floor with tiredness, but this is hardly an issue as games of this ilk, such as Hotel Dusk and The Last Window were successfully driven by the ample existence of reading dialogue to tell its tale, thus Danganronpa follows suit, with hours and hours of lines to read. Yet it’s within reading that you’ll follow and understand character’s motives, and complete the class trials to which you’ll be assigned to do.
Your school life runs through a Persona-like day/night cycle. Monokuma’s pre-recorded video-taped messages will softly rise you out of bed in the morning and rest you into sleep come bedtime. During the day, you can interact with your chums by spending time with them. Sadly this doesn’t do anything but grant you the opportunity to give away gifts, which you can buy with in-game currency called Monocoins. Your friends tend to get very picky about what they like, so it’s best to experiment with what they don’t like, as there is no clear way to know what they will accept as gifts, unless you follow their personality traits and pick accordingly. There’s little interaction in the environments as a whole, with floors cordoned off as a gatekeeper’s way of saying ‘You haven’t finished this chapter, and until you do I won’t open the way forward’. The environments and facilities feel like set-dressing, only being recognised when a murder has taken place- drawing you away from breathing in the school’s sense of history and place- leaving you with very little to play or interact with.
Outside of leisure time, you’ll have to contend with the murder investigations. One of Monokuma’s signature video messages will appear, informing you of the grisly act that has recently taken place. You’ll then receive a file from the duplicitous bear, stating the facts of the case, such as where, when and how the murder took place. Your job then, is to rush to the scene of the crime and examine it. Using your cursor, you can interact with objects in your field of view, with a bleeping cue to signal the availability of a button press. Clicking on them will open up a wave of information, which if to do with the case, will go straight into your evidence cache for later usage. Investigating like this is good fun, however not everything can be interacted with, and at frequent intervals, you won’t be allowed to leave until you’ve uncovered a pivotal piece of evidence. Tinkering with the environment is a guided experience, with you being led off to another location without any choice in the matter, but seeing new floors being open chapter by chapter ensures you aren’t always seeing the same place twice, even if they aren’t constructed with purpose outside of the narrative. You will also talk extensively with the others about any revelations they may have or any leads or analysis they may be willing or offering to share. You, yourself can gain valuable information by selecting a purple hue telling you about innermost leads in a character’s conversation, letting you gather perspective in the process, by being further curious and sceptical of your considerations about a case. After collecting all the nuggets of intrigue you can muster, Monokuma will once again appear, telling you all to gather for the final leg of the chapter.
Your school life runs through a Persona-like day/night cycle. Monokuma’s pre-recorded video-taped messages will softly rise you out of bed in the morning and rest you into sleep come bedtime. During the day, you can interact with your chums by spending time with them. Sadly this doesn’t do anything but grant you the opportunity to give away gifts, which you can buy with in-game currency called Monocoins. Your friends tend to get very picky about what they like, so it’s best to experiment with what they don’t like, as there is no clear way to know what they will accept as gifts, unless you follow their personality traits and pick accordingly. There’s little interaction in the environments as a whole, with floors cordoned off as a gatekeeper’s way of saying ‘You haven’t finished this chapter, and until you do I won’t open the way forward’. The environments and facilities feel like set-dressing, only being recognised when a murder has taken place- drawing you away from breathing in the school’s sense of history and place- leaving you with very little to play or interact with.
Outside of leisure time, you’ll have to contend with the murder investigations. One of Monokuma’s signature video messages will appear, informing you of the grisly act that has recently taken place. You’ll then receive a file from the duplicitous bear, stating the facts of the case, such as where, when and how the murder took place. Your job then, is to rush to the scene of the crime and examine it. Using your cursor, you can interact with objects in your field of view, with a bleeping cue to signal the availability of a button press. Clicking on them will open up a wave of information, which if to do with the case, will go straight into your evidence cache for later usage. Investigating like this is good fun, however not everything can be interacted with, and at frequent intervals, you won’t be allowed to leave until you’ve uncovered a pivotal piece of evidence. Tinkering with the environment is a guided experience, with you being led off to another location without any choice in the matter, but seeing new floors being open chapter by chapter ensures you aren’t always seeing the same place twice, even if they aren’t constructed with purpose outside of the narrative. You will also talk extensively with the others about any revelations they may have or any leads or analysis they may be willing or offering to share. You, yourself can gain valuable information by selecting a purple hue telling you about innermost leads in a character’s conversation, letting you gather perspective in the process, by being further curious and sceptical of your considerations about a case. After collecting all the nuggets of intrigue you can muster, Monokuma will once again appear, telling you all to gather for the final leg of the chapter.
Following the extensive investigation into the murders of your classmates, you will all gather to a small room, where a lift awaits for you all to jam-pack in and descend downwards to the heady depths of the class court. You will then need to select a powerup, which can be used to aid you with the fierce debating raging on in the game, it will additionally grant you one more opportunity to review your compilation of proof in defence of yourself and others you don’t accuse. Once you’ve risen, Monokuma will skirt over the rules of the trial- simply put, if you lose you and everyone dies except the perpetrator, and the opposite occurs if you are victorious in the proceedings. The structure of the court is circular, giving reverence to knowing that one of you had dropped the knife, and committed the crime whilst deviously concealing any traces of evidence and composing him/herself formally, as to not give away that he or she is the crook behind the killing. Class trials are long-winded affairs, and play out similarly to Phoenix Wright games, often taking ninety minutes plus to finish; thankfully they don’t become as tedious as a real court trial, with many bickerings and twists and turns, keeping every case tense and unpredictable.
Minigames crop up several times in the courtroom, forcing you to defend your stance and viewpoint. Keep in mind, failing once to many, will lead you to retry and the most generously allocated checkpoint. The most frequent of these asides are the verbal exchanges. Here, you weed out a contradiction in a series of statements. Starting off easily, you’ll soon have to contend with dialogue strips that impede the highlighted contradiction, and there will be a rising flow of false contradiction, having you listen very carefully and intelligently weave through the chaff for the correct abnormality. Another minigame is similar to that whiteboard game you used to indulge in with your own classmates, where you have to fire off at letters to make a buzzword relevant to the case, or you will perish. The least enjoyable of these mini amusements are the comic-book style evaluations, where you have to piece together every event in a step-by-step order, if you get one wrong, its curtains for you. The last and most bizarre has you fending off rebuttals in time to a rhythmic beat, before striking them with hard-hitting evidence, if only these popped up more times in other aspects of the game.
Gameplay may take a backseat in Danganronpa, but when it asks you to interact, it can be a fair bit daunting. If you are struggling, the game does a good job of throwing you back in without have to rethread much ground. The cases aren’t perfectly etched for portable play, with no saving inside the trial itself, and investigations limit your interactions, but those dedicated on getting to the bottom of the trials and revelling the examinations, will find an exacting and gratifying saga unfurled across their Vita’s OLED screen.
Minigames crop up several times in the courtroom, forcing you to defend your stance and viewpoint. Keep in mind, failing once to many, will lead you to retry and the most generously allocated checkpoint. The most frequent of these asides are the verbal exchanges. Here, you weed out a contradiction in a series of statements. Starting off easily, you’ll soon have to contend with dialogue strips that impede the highlighted contradiction, and there will be a rising flow of false contradiction, having you listen very carefully and intelligently weave through the chaff for the correct abnormality. Another minigame is similar to that whiteboard game you used to indulge in with your own classmates, where you have to fire off at letters to make a buzzword relevant to the case, or you will perish. The least enjoyable of these mini amusements are the comic-book style evaluations, where you have to piece together every event in a step-by-step order, if you get one wrong, its curtains for you. The last and most bizarre has you fending off rebuttals in time to a rhythmic beat, before striking them with hard-hitting evidence, if only these popped up more times in other aspects of the game.
Gameplay may take a backseat in Danganronpa, but when it asks you to interact, it can be a fair bit daunting. If you are struggling, the game does a good job of throwing you back in without have to rethread much ground. The cases aren’t perfectly etched for portable play, with no saving inside the trial itself, and investigations limit your interactions, but those dedicated on getting to the bottom of the trials and revelling the examinations, will find an exacting and gratifying saga unfurled across their Vita’s OLED screen.
Danganronpa is an eclectic mixture of ideas balled together into a cohesive and deadly vision. Murder, fear, despair and an unsettling, terrifying and a frighteningly nightmarish scenario continuously juxtapose the cheery students, hope and friendships, making for a rampant concoction of ideas and themes. The visual style fits nicely with the eccentricities of some of the characters, and the unbalanced nature of others. The music likewise feels at once homely, and the next grim and devilish with rising notes playing up the tensions, you’ll become very familiar with the soundtrack by the end of the game. The intelligence and the diversity of the dialogue plays along with the seriousness and the voice acting is brilliant at selling all the character’s traits.
Trigger Happy Havoc is a standout novelty on the Playstation Vita. The story and characters, along with the moulding together of ideas, perfectly rubs a sizeable niche for itself on SONY’s delightful portable. It isn’t necessarily catered to portable play, with very long class trials containing no save options within, and the world isn’t as open and free to explore as you may expect, but if you want lunacy, craziness, over-the-top thrillz, killz and chillz, there is no denying that Danganronpa will massage your cravings in all the right ways.
Trigger Happy Havoc is a standout novelty on the Playstation Vita. The story and characters, along with the moulding together of ideas, perfectly rubs a sizeable niche for itself on SONY’s delightful portable. It isn’t necessarily catered to portable play, with very long class trials containing no save options within, and the world isn’t as open and free to explore as you may expect, but if you want lunacy, craziness, over-the-top thrillz, killz and chillz, there is no denying that Danganronpa will massage your cravings in all the right ways.
Second Opinion
Danganronpa has a fantastic story, one of the best I have experienced in recent years. Its dark, its compelling, its funny, its at times incredibly poignant and most importantly it inspires hope in a world of despair. This 20-30 hour text based detective game will draw you in with its engaging characters, intriguing environments, exciting story and addictive gameplay. There is a reason why Danganronpa went on to spawn an anime, manga and sequels that have reached huge popularity levels in Japan, and its because it is simply fantastic.
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is an essential title for Vita owners. Its near perfect blend of three gameplay styles, with a good relationship simulator, great evidence collection mechanic and simply amazing class trials alongside it utterly brilliant cast and story only cement the fact that this game is one of the Vita's greatest.
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is an essential title for Vita owners. Its near perfect blend of three gameplay styles, with a good relationship simulator, great evidence collection mechanic and simply amazing class trials alongside it utterly brilliant cast and story only cement the fact that this game is one of the Vita's greatest.
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+Fantastic, Unpredictable Story +Brilliant Characters +Gripping and Varied Gameplay +Superb Presentation Standard |
10/10
Ben Hughes @potatoes351 |
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