Half-Minute Hero Review

When 2009 comes to a close and we look back to reflect on the year now behind us, a countless amount of lists will emerge that attempt to run down, in order, the “best” or “worst” of varies things over that past year. This will, of course, also happen in our little video game industry, and while not all of the nominations or winners may yet be clear, it isn’t hard to make an educated guess (or two) at what may be up for awards.

For example… oh, I don’t know… perhaps the media darling Scribblenauts. It is inevitable that the game will not only be nominated for a number of awards recognizing the “most exciting”, or “most creative”, or “most unique” game of 2009, but that it will also go on to win a number of said awards. And, really, it should! Scribblenauts was indeed exciting, and creative, and unique, and deserves every bit of praise that it has had heaped upon it from press and gamers alike.

My vote, however, may now no longer be able to be tossed into its pile.

The reason for this is that I’ve fallen passionately in love with a little game called Half-Minute Hero. Not the platonic kind of love that one can find themselves feeling for a game they’ve come to enjoy, but a deeper, more heart-felt love, the kind where you leave the PSP turned on at night, sitting beside your bed, so that you can fall asleep in the comfort of the screen’s soft glow as the game’s soundtrack sings to you like a lullaby.

How do I explain what makes Half-Minute so special?

It starts with an idea: our hero–-named by default, unsurprisingly, “Hero”–-is pitted against a cavalcade of ne’er-do-wells, all intent on casting a spell taught to them by a nefarious magician. The spell will bring total annihilation to the world, and takes but thirty seconds to cast.

I have, again and again, bemoaned Japanese RPGs for including the “stop the baddie in time” segments where in reality I could explore around, do some levelling, play a mini game or two, and still magically make it before the imaginary doomsday clock ran out. Here, somebody had the crazy idea to take that one simple plot device and create an entire game around it.

So, what does this mean? That you have exactly thirty seconds to save the world, or it’s game over? Well, actually, yes. Er, and no. The idea is first introduced after you’ve arrived at a new land, where you meet a king who asks for help in protecting his kingdom from evil. Valiant hero that you are, it’s off to the evil castle, which is, conveniently, no more than a five-second walk away. The spell is cast, you fight this introductory bastion of evil, you die, you head back to the castle to try again, time runs out, the spell is cast, the world ends, game over.

As you start wondering what in the world kind of sick joke this game is, from the heavens appears the Time Goddess, a deity with the power to control time. Stating that having the world end just won’t do, she decides to help you, offering up her services to turn time back to the start of when the spell was being cast. Well, offering her services so long as you’re willing to pay: she may be a goddess, but she also has a love of money, and is more than eager to help so long as you’re not stingy in sharing the spoils.

And thus, the game’s dynamic is created. You, as the Hero, must travel around the game’s world, stopping all of the miscreants ready to destroy said world at a moment’s notice, and doing so within a 30-second time limit where resetting those thirty seconds comes with a cost. Random battles fit in with the game’s sense of urgency and speed: your character automatically runs across the screen once in battle, and anything he touches he fights with until either he’s dead, he’s been pushed back off-screen due to the monsters being too strong, or he’s laid waste to whatever it was that previously stood before him. The 50-odd quests Hero must go through (almost) always end with a boss battle and the prevention of the spell being cast, but how you get to that point and what you must accomplish in order to do so differ with every challenge. In the early portions of the game, don’t be surprise to be able to finish a particular quest in just a little over a minute; later in the game, a “lengthy” quest may take all of five minutes.

That’s the what of Half-Minute Hero, or at least its main mode (more on that in a moment). But why is all of that so compelling? Maybe it’s the mix of old and new that we’re presented: an action RPG that plays to the youth of today and their impatience for games that don’t offer instant gratification, and an homage to the history of the Japanese take on the genre that both makes fun of the stereotypes and customs we’ve come to expect while also wrapping itself in them. Maybe it’s the fact that I can’t remember playing a game like this before, an especially wonderful feeling at a point when I’ve come to find so many games out there seeming like carbon copies of one another. Maybe it’s the wonderful retro stylings that the game offers up, and how much Half-Minute does with seemingly so little. (It says something when the blocky 8-bit sprite characters presented here at times show more personality and depth than a lot of characters from “real” RPGs.) Or maybe it’s the game’s wonderfully funny shorelines and character dialog, all supported by a very well done English transition from XSEED.

What I know for sure is, not even ten minutes into Half-Minute Hero, I was in awe. The feelings I felt playing were the feelings of being a kid again, when video games were still new and exciting, when I could play a game and it could offer me something that I had never seen or played before. Having been a gamer now since the days of the Atari 2600, and earlier if we’re talking quarter spent at arcades, it’s hard for me to be swept away by games at this point, and even when I am, they’re still experiences that feel familiar in one way or another. Half-Minute Hero was different; it was that NES game I unwrapped on a birthday so many years ago, a game I never even knew existed until that day, and a game that, when I put it into Nintendo’s big grey box and powered it up, showed me a world unlike any my eyes had previously seen.

All of this is said only taking into consideration the game’s main “Hero” quest line. Along with that, Half-Minute Hero contains a number of other companion gameplay types, including a “shooter” mode, a real-time strategy mode, an a few other unlockables that I won’t spoil for you. Every one of the modes all have clear, basic concepts behind them, but the brilliant execution of those concepts is what keeps Half-Minute enjoyable and entertaining for the countless amount of minutes you’ll be spending with it. Mostly-brilliant execution, I suppose; the Princess-focused shooter quests really could have been better.

One of the benefits to working for Play is that we aren’t ashamed to admit when we’re fanboys (or fangirls) of a particular game, raving on and on about its virtues even if a more objective person might be a bit more critical in their review. Half-Minute Hero is a great game, there’s no question about that; it is ridiculously charming, immensely engaging, and a hell of a lot of fun. For me, personally, it was not only all of that, but also one of the most entertaining experiences I’ve had with a game this year.

It may not have the hype that Scribblenauts had, but damn it, it absolutely deserve it.

S Special	One of the most entertaining experiences I’ve had with a game this year. If you own a PSP, you owe it to yourself to add Half-Minute Hero to your library.
Half-Minute Hero was reviewed using review code, physical copies, or hardware provided by XSEED Games. Scores are graded on a scale of E (Bad) to S (Special) in homage to Japanese video game grading scales, with the understanding that an S still does not denote a "perfect" score. Scores may have been adjusted from the original source to better fit my personal scale.