News Hit

This past couple of weeks we’ve been going through the best games of 2009. We’ve covered #10-6 and #5-2, which only leaves us with one more game to mention.

As much trouble as I had deciding what should go in the top 10, I had barely any trouble deciding what should be number one. Out of all the games I played through the year, this one just stuck out above everything else.

Because it’s Friday somewhere in the world, here it is: News Hit’s Game of the Year for 2009.

Platform: Playstation 2
Developer: Atlus
Publisher: Ubisoft

I can imagine what you may be thinking: ‘What the hell is a Persona, why are there four of them and why does this deserve the number one spot over (insert game here)’? Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 is a Japanese role playing game released in Australia early in the year, and it is one of the best video game experiences I’ve had in a long time. It was an experience I’ve plunged over a week into (79 hours and 47 minutes playing it and over 100 hours watching other people play it), and do you know what – I regret none of it.

If you look at Persona 4’s features – copious dungeon crawling, turn based combat, a cast filled with high-school students – it looks like an extremely traditional JRPG filled with extremely dated concepts that would only serve to bore today’s over-stimulated gamer. However, Persona 4 takes these JRPG tropes and makes some vital alterations. Dungeon crawling is made less painful through the variety of interesting environments. Turn based combat is made fast-paced through the emphasis on exploiting elemental weaknesses rather than simply eroding down health bars.

There’s also a lot of customisation through the titular Personas. Think of them as mythological Pokemon. Each one has its own moves and stats which can be adopted by the main character. Battles become about having the right persona equipped to exploit the enemy’s weaknesses. It’s simple yet tactically satisfying, not to mention strangely addictive - as demonstrated by my hours spent fusing personas together to form more powerful Personas.

The rejuvenated gameplay helped keep me playing for quite a while, but it is everything else outside of combat which will make this game so memorable for years to come. The story, for one, is unique and well told. It eschews the clichéd fantasy setting that’s stapled on to pretty much every other JRPG in existence and instead takes place in the rural Japanese town of Inaba. And instead of being a ‘save-the-world’ epic, Persona 4 is, for the most part, a murder mystery – a compelling one with plenty of red herrings, foreshadowing and everything else that’s good about whodunnits. Not to mention the sometimes dark themes that are covered throughout the game.

Apart from the main story, though, each character has their own story to tell through the game’s progression but also through elements that take place outside of combat, where you get to know these people better through dialogue trees. The stories told in these vignettes range from decent to utterly compelling, and all of them demonstrate the abilities of the writers to do something special.

Lesser developers would have done some horrible and horribly clichéd things with this cast of Japanese high school students (and a creature in a bear costume). Instead, Atlus, and its American localisation team, have taken these stock figures and imbued each and every one of them with unique personality and character.

How good is the writing in this game? Let me put describe it this way: With most other story-driven game I’ve played, the story always tended to fall by the wayside in the list of priorities behind more game-y things like reaching the next objective, levelling up, finding that last collectable or however else I can get a cheap endorphin boost. With Persona 4, my main purpose became discovering the next part of the story or learning more about the characters.

Persona 4 is simply an incredibly well crafted video game. It refines so many elements of the JRPG genre (although this s a trait of the prequel, Persona 3) and quite simply tells a hell of a story. Many years down the track, long after I’ve gone through so many video games, I can easily imagine I will still fondly remember my time spent in Inaba with the likes of Chie Satonaka, Kanji Tatsumi and even Teddie.

And that is why Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 is News Hit’s 2009 Game of the Year.

So that’s it for 2009. What was your favourite game of 2009? Leave some words in the comments below. Don’t worry – they’ll be right where you left them.

Postscript: Since compiling the list, I have started to play Batman: Arkham Asylum. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but that game is freaking awesome! Definitely worth all the critical and fan love it’s gotten in the end-of-year lists.