Half-Minute HeroThe Xbox Live Arcade has been a weird and wonderful place throughout its existence, home to some of the most thoughtfully made and original games seen on the console. The likes of
Super Meat Boy and
Braid would never have seen release as anything other than digital downloads, and those games alone are better than many full retail releases.
That said, there hasn't been a truly impressive Arcade release for some time, and since the release of
Full House Poker in March (which itself was heavily flawed), I haven't even considered a title worthy of purchasing. And then one day, completely out of the blue, a dashboard link to
Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax appeared.
The convoluted name would usually have put me off, but both the artwork, and the fact that somewhere in my mind, I'd heard of this game, enticed me to try the demo. Five minutes later, it'd been purchased.
SettingThe premise of
Half-Minute Hero is a simple one - the world is about to end, and players have thirty seconds to save it.
An evil being (Noire) is travelling the world, teaching various lords the spell of ultimate destruction, an incantation that would destroy the planet. Fortunately, as with all such spells, there's a catch - it takes thirty seconds to cast. After joining forces with the Time Goddess (a money-obsessed, slightly flirtatious woman with the power to reset time) the customisably-named Hero in question must track down Noire, stopping various evil lords from casting the spell along the way.
As premises go, it's the archtypal RPG plot, condensed down into thirty second chunks. The usual stalwarts of RPG-dom are all here - levelling up, a variety of allies, weapons, and armour, and the standard good-vs-evil backdrop. But therein lies the beauty of
Half-Minute Hero - it takes a problem many have with RPG's (the sheer amount of time required), and dispenses with it completely. It's a radical idea, and one that works susprisingly well.
GameplaySince no game could be founded on thirty seconds of total gameplay, Half-Minute Hero is split up into over thirty quests, each with their own title card and credits sequence at the end. That said, there's still an overarching storyline, with the usual big boss awaiting at the end.
Each quest takes on a similar pattern - players start off at level 1, and need to defeat the Evil Lord in a nearby castle. This is achieved through levelling up, conversing with NPCs in towns and villages, buying armour and weapons, and finding allies. Naturally, achieveing all of these tasks in thirty seconds is unlikely, so players can reset the timer by praying to a statue of the Time Goddess. This process costs money, and this amount increases after each use - thus providing an incentive to finish levels as fast as possible.
The battle system is as basic as you can get - players will be randomly attacked whilst travelling the land, and an automatic fight will take place, with both parties simply charging towards each other, and inflicting damage until one dies. The simplicity is intended - in this way, players can charge through battles in seconds, and level up at astonishing rates. Healing can be performed through the use of herbs, or at food stalls in villages, at a price.
And that's essentially it. A typical quest usually involves a slice of levelling up, before talking to villagers to find the way to the castle, before some weapon or armour purchases, a time reset or two, and then racing to the castle to defeat the Evil Lord. And then moving on to the next land.
If all of this sounds repetitive, the most blunt answer is that yes, it can be. From start to finish, the main part of the game is thirty quests long (and this is excluding the optional routes, which bring the total to around twice that), and though there's a fair amount of variety in how each quests is solved, a few less quests may have been beneficial in the long run. It's a funny quirk really, that the main criticism of this game is that it drags on a little, considering the premise!
But don't let that put you off. For the most part, the quests have a good amount of variety, from dodging avalanches, to stopping an earthquake-causing mole. Furthermore, each quest has a number of objectives to complete in it, a great addition for completionists. As well as providing an incentive to replay each level, these objectives highlight how many routes there are through them, and how differently they can all be played. And there's the obligitory time trial leaderboards, for the most obsessive amongst us...
Upon completion of the main game, extra game modes become unlocked. Essentially these work like one-off quests, all with a time limit to defeat an Evil Lord in before doomsday, but with different characters. They make for a nice change, and a good challenge to those looking for one - particularly "Hero 3", which has a
three second time limit! And there's a multiplayer mode, which pits up to four players in a race against time to level up and kill the big boss. As with most multiplayer modes currently, the less said about it, the better.
DesignGraphically,
Half-Minute Hero is all over the place. But in a good way...! Though the game was originally released for the PSP in 2009, the entire game has had a graphical overhaul. The sprite-style character models are gone - replaced with stylised cartoony characters. Weirdly, the landscapes retain their sprite-style, and the typefaces seem to have been chosen to stand out as much as possible. The menu system too, is pretty messy. But for some reason, this all seems to come together rather well. The game feels haphazard, but this suits the offhand tone of it down to the ground. And if you want, you can revert to the original graphics, which is a nice touch, even though most won't bother.
In terms of sound, this game is
loud. And awesome. Right from the off, you'll be treated to epic guitar riffs and drum fills. As far as the game's concerned, your thirty seconds of fame should be as awesome as possible, and it's bang on. The old RPG pitfall of hearing the same music one or two times too many does rear its head as you move through the levels, but it's a minor point. As a backdrop to the game, it'd be hard to think of anything better.
OverallCriticisms aside,
Half-Minute Hero is still a well-designed game. The controls are simple and effective, and the level designs are as sharp and quirky as the dialogue. Yes, it drags at times, but it's a case of "too much of a good thing" rather than having to wade through level after level of blandness. For anyone looking for something a little different, it'd be hard to suggest anything better right now, and at 800 points, it's a steal.
3.5