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Fight For The Top 50 2014 – Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is straight-up demented, but that’s what makes it so damn intriguing. This visual novel adventure game keeps the tension rolling as you and a group of students are trapped in a school by a sadistic bear named Monokuma. Your only way out? Murder. If you kill another student and successfully get away with it, you can get your freedom back.
Learn more about the Game Informer Fight For the Top 50 Challenge 2014.
The stakes are costly, but Danganronpa is all about psychological torment. How far can you push people before they finally succumb to murderous tendencies? This intriguing premise kept me engaged, wondering who the next victim would be and which student would betray the group next. The results were always downright twisted and the storyline was often unpredictable (even when you knew a murder was coming). Danganronpa is easily one of my favorite games this year for the dread and hope it instilled in me, and I’ll be fighting hard for it to earn a spot on our top 50.
Two Danganronpa games came out this year, but this game has the stronger cast, giving it the edge. Each student is the best and brightest, excelling in one particular area...aside from the main character, who got in by lottery. You have Toko, the neurotic writer who's more twisted than she lets on. Byakuya, an affluent progeny, who feels he's above everyone in the group. And then there’s Sakura, a kind girl with a deep voice and tons of muscles who looks like she’s straight out of Street Fighter. These characters are rarely what they seem and even harder to trust. After all, you can never really know someone and first appearances can often be misleading.
The whole time you’re trapped in the school getting to know these students, you’re essentially waiting for a murder to occur. Once it does, you must accept the fact that someone in your group is the killer and try to prove their guilt during a trial. These trials are intense and unpredictable, as you can think the case is going one way, and then a new detail totally derails your progress. You play through simple minigames, like presenting evidence and shooting down letters to fill out a phrase like hangman. But my favorite part of these trials is how even when you win, it feels like a loss; you must then watch the killer brutally executed before your eyes.
This isn’t even touching on how maniacal Monokuma is; the crazy bear grates on you as he laughs while throwing another curveball to urge your group to murder. Things are messed up, and emerging victorious through it all and seeing where it all leads is just as satisfying. Hope isn’t easy to come by, but maybe it says something that through all the bad these characters still can believe in others and have the will to live.
The Top 50 Challenge
Not that many people on the staff have played through Danganronpa, but I’m confident that people who play it will see what I see: a delightfully disturbing premise that’s far from your typical anime game. Mike Futter immediately came to mind as someone who would be great to give this game a spin. I remember telling Mike about Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward and he loved it. It’s why I felt he’d be perfect to take on the challenge to play Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, since he already has experience with text-heavy games. Mike had already expressed interest in Danganronpa, and I’ve been after him to play it ever since I reviewed it.
Danganronpa takes its time getting started, but once that first murder hits, you really discover what you’re in for, which isn’t bunnies and rainbows... Unless you’re playing Danganronpa 2. Then you can expect one bunny. The only problem I can see Mike having is that the minigames can be a turn off. Who wants to play a rhythm minigame when you’re about to unmask a killer? In my opinion, those don’t hinder the experience and the twists and great writing make up for the slight faults. I realize some of the characters come off trope-y, but plenty of them have unique parts to their personality that aren’t revealed until later. At any rate, I’m curious what Mike will think of the intense premise and the zany characters.
Mike was given one day to play Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc. Come back tomorrow at 7:00PM CST to read his impressions and see if it’ll get his support for Game Informer’s Top 50 Games of the Year.
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