A Hat In Time (Switch) Review

A Hat In Time (Switch) Review

Release Date: 18 October 2019

Date Played: 21 May 2022

I saw one review online that described A Hat In Time as, "a beautiful mess."  Despite my best efforts, I can't think of a more apt way to describe this game.  It's full of extreme framerate drops into the single digits, sub-par graphics, tons of texture pop-in, wonky and slippery controls, an incredibly frustrating camera, game crashes, and near game-breaking bugs.  But, despite all of that, it has so much variety and charm that it manages to overcome what would normally be a nail in the coffin for most other games to present itself as not only an above average game, but also a must play.  In the last 20 years of gaming, I can only think of one other game that was so broken and janky that it should have been relegated to obscurity but managed to win over the hearts of most of the people that put in the time to appreciate it.  That game was Deadly Premonition.   

Story:

You play has Hat Kid, a little girl who is trying to return to her home world on her spaceship.  After passing over a planet, the Mafia comes to collect a toll and Hat Kid refuses to pay.  In retaliation, the Mafia bust open the spaceship's time vault and all of the hourglasses (the ships fuel) spill out over the world below.  You have to travel around the planet's four areas collecting time pieces by completing various tasks. These different areas are locked behind a minimum number of hourglasses, a la Mario 64's stars. With 25 hourglasses required to finish the game. Along the way, you'll make many friends and enemies.  You'll complete tasks for the Mafia in their beach-front, tropical themed world, help make several movies in a bird themed version of Hollywood, sell your soul to the devil in a haunted forest and mansion, and platform your way over perilous crevasses and tricky puzzles in an alpine themed stage.  Obviously, the game is not only quite zany and silly, it's also quite varied. The characters you meet are fantastic and have some very funny dialog.  There are some campy bits, but it just adds to the abundance of charisma that the game has. Every stage feels very different and unique and is one of the game's best features.  

Gameplay:

A Hat In Time is a 3D platformer.  Which, if you've read any other my other reviews, you'll know is not a genre that I'm very fond of.  So, to say that this buggy and wonky game won me over is a huge complement on its behalf.  As mentioned above, the game's 4 stages all play very differently.  The tropical Mafia world plays like a 3D collectathon style game in a sandbox type environment,  the Hollywood stages are more focused on stealth and investigation,  much of the haunted forest area plays almost like a survival horror game, and the alpine section is straight up white-knuckle platforming. The game can be a bit challenging at times, but dying is never to much of a setback and you're always able to jump back in at the most recent checkpoint. Of course, most of these area's are split up into different levels that will have you performing various tasks and challenges. They all really feel different and the game does a good job of never really letting itself get into a lull where you feel like you're doing the same things over and over again. 

Hat girl can double jump, wall climb, dash, attack, crawl, and all of the other things your would expect to be able to do in a 3D platformer.  While you do finally get the hang of the controls and the camera, a lot of the time, the controls feel slippery.  You'll constantly miss platforms, overshoot your landing, come up short, wall-jump when you don't want to, and fight with the camera that loves to swing around right at the last second and makes you miss your landing.  It can be extremely annoying at times, and I didn't really feel like I had the hang of controlling Hat Kid until about 75% of the way through the game.  Once I did though, the game became much more enjoyable to play.  Luckily, the tougher platforming sections are reserved for the end of the game and are opened to you at the perfect time. If there was some more serious platforming towards the beginning of the game, I'm not sure I would have stuck it out and seen Hat Kid's adventure to the end.

To help out Hat Kid, you can collect balls of yarn scattered around the various stages.  This will allow her to craft a new hat that comes with a new set of abilities.  One lets you run faster, one lets you explode walls, another reveals hidden platforms, one lets you jump to hidden areas, etc.. You can also unlock badges to put on your hats to give them additional bonuses. These can be mildly beneficial while you play but aren't required to progress. These different mechanics give the game a bit of a metroidvania feel as some areas are inaccessible until you've gained an ability to reach it.  You'll have to come back and revisit old stages once you've unlocked a few hats. Some required storyline chapters require specific hats.  So, you'll have your progress halted a few times where you have to go visit a different area than the one you're currently working on in order to get some yarn to craft the hat you need.  It's not too bad, but I wish the game explained this better.  At one point, I was playing through an area of the game and was given a notification that I couldn't progress anymore.  I had no idea what to do and had to look online to figure out what was going on.  Apparently, you're supposed to go on to the next area of the game to unlock a new hat, then come back later to finish off the previous area. A bit esoteric, but not a grievous sin.

There are also some really awesome platforming challenges that you can unlock by finding hidden warps in the 4 areas of the game.  So, be on the lookout for those.  But, make sure you don't jump into one while you're in the middle of completing another objective during a stage, because once you enter the warp, you'll lose any progress you've made on your current mission.

Presentation:

A Hat In Time looks like a Playstation 2 game.  I'm not sure if this was on purpose and trying to cash in on the retro look, or if the developer just didn't know how to do any better.  It looks pretty bad, to be honest, and I have a pretty strong tolerance for older looking games as I mainly play retro stuff.  Luckily, all of the fantastic art design and little details scattered around the game once again make up for its short comings and allow it to rise above the sum of its parts.  Cute touches like the Roomba that wonders around the spaceship, the fantastic artwork on the title screen of each level, the character's cute mannerisms, and the remarkable humor of the game puts such a big smile on your face that you're more than willing to overlook the shoddy graphics and the insane amount of texture pop-in.  

To top it off, the game has a stellar soundtrack that once again elevates it.  It's catchy and can be either very calm or exhilarating when it needs to be. My daughter and I both found ourselves humming along to the music whenever we were playing. She said that it was her favorite music in a video game ever, and considering she played Mario Odyssey not that long ago, that's a pretty huge complement.

As I mentioned earlier, the game is a mess in terms of its technical presentation.  There are spots where the game drops into a single digit framerate.  This often coincides with some of the more epic, and difficult, set pieces that are thrown your way and will almost guarantee that you die because you can't see what's going on or control your jumps.  At one point in the game, in the haunted mansion at an especially tense point, I had to sneak into a room and solve a puzzle to get a key while being chased.  Every time I walked into the room, my entire screen would glitch out and I would only be able to make out what was going on in the very bottom right corner of the screen.  It was almost game breaking.  I had to watch a playthrough of this section of the game, and then just jump around until I got lucky enough to solve the puzzle.  It was almost like playing the game blindfolded.  What should have taken about a minute ended up taking over an hour.  There were also many times that the camera rotated when I wasn't expecting and caused me to miss my jump.  It was a constant struggle fighting against this camera, and once I decided to play with its settings in the options, it became better, but not good by any means.

Conclusion:

A beautiful mess... That's really the best way to sum up this game.  It's just so charming, fun, varied, cute, interesting, and well thought out that it's impossible not to love.  It's really hamstrung by all of its technical problems and it's substandard controls and if these weren't an issue, this game would be one of the best 3D platform games ever made.  You know all of the beloved games that RARE made on the N64.  Games like Conker's Bad Fur Day, Donkey Kong 64, Banjo Kazooie, etc.?  All those games that everyone loves, right?  Well, not me.  I have never enjoyed playing any of those... and I LOVED A Hat In Time. I'm really taken aback that this game is so good that it not only overcame its shortcomings to be awesome, but it also made ME overlook my aversion to 3D platformers and reconsider my opinions of them. I wish I could say that it would like me appreciate them more, but it's just so good that it might make me be more harshly critical towards them. Yeesh... only time can tell.

You owe it to yourself to try out this one.  Yes, you'll have to work for your enjoyment at times, but it's more than worth it.

Final Status: Beaten

Final Score: 8/10 

  
 

Sayonara Wild Hearts (PS4) Review

Sayonara Wild Hearts (PS4) Review

Date Released: 19 September 2019

Date Played: 2 December 2021

I won't keep you waiting.  Sayonara Wild Hearts is an absolute masterpiece of a game that not only dazzles you with its unique and beautiful visuals, compels you with its fluid and addictive gameplay, worms its way into your subconscious with its catchy and pumping music, but also reaches through the walls of your emotions to touch your heart in a way I've not seen many games be able to accomplish. It's a must play for any video game lover and is so good that I could see it bringing non-gamers into the fold and help them discover what a video game can actually achieve.

At its core, Sayonara Wild Hearts is a game about the despair and loss one can feel after a difficult breakup.  As everyone knows, after an important relationship falls apart the depression and isolation that surrounds you can completely derail your life and drastically alter the way you view the world and all of the people in it.  It can feel as though there's no escape and that you'll never be able to find any happiness ever again.  Sayonara is an allegory for combating these internal struggles that a heart-broken person attempts to defeat during the healing process.  It also serves as a series of vignettes showing how forcing your self to re-enter the world, reaching out for the company of friends, and facing the inner demons of those who have betrayed you can help mend the broken heart.  Never have I seen a game so accurately depict what it feels like to battle your grief in order to fall back into the groove of your life.  I applaud the developer, Simogo, for their amazing achievement and for Annapurna Interactive for publishing this game so the world can experience it.  This game helped me work through some inner struggles and I know it helped a lot of other people out there as well.

You play as a woman who has been struggling for a long time with the sorts of issues I mentioned above.  One night, a butterfly comes into her room and whisks her away to an abstract and surrealistic world.  As you gain control of the character you find yourself chasing said butterfly while skateboarding along a winding path as you make jumps and avoid obstacles. As you slide and swerve through the stage, the dark blues and purples of the environment surround you and the striking neon accents highlight your objectives and add a sort of shimmer and brilliance to the darkened areas.  A EDM remix of Debussy's Clair de Lune accompanies you while you absorb the gorgeous and breathtaking experience of the first level.  As the music and game crescendo, you'll finally fly off of the end of the level to try to grab the illusive butterfly only to see a tarot card of the The Fool flash before our eyes and thusly changing our protagonist into her masked altar ego.  The metaphor isn't subtle and we know our heroine considers herself a fool for trying to chase after and catch something... or someone she knows she can't truly have.  Only through this transformation will she be able to guard herself against her self doubt and continue her journey. 

Each of the next 22 levels serves as a new chapter of this journey.  While the main component of the gameplay consists of gathering various types of hearts to increase your score and up your score multiplier to earn a higher rank, the gameplay style of most levels change considerably. You'll find yourself skateboarding down ramps similar to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, driving a motorcycle through winding city streets while avoiding obstacles, flying and dashing through tunnels a la Tempest, drifting around turns in your car as you traverse the desert at night, and more.  You'll even find yourself in situations reminiscent of a shmup and quite often you'll be in an on rails shooter scenario like Panzer Dragoon.  There is a strong rhythm-game feel to each one of these levels and along with the pop music and graphical aesthetic is one of the only constants you'll have as the game pulls you in so many different directions.  Even with these drastic and sudden style changes, the game never feels like it's spread too thinly in any section and the whole mish-mash of ideas and concepts blend together harmoniously into a exhilarating and cathartic adventure I've never encountered in any other game.  Never does the game feel phoned in or uninspired.  The brilliant and mind-bending mechanics thrown at you masterfully keep you engaged and on your toes.  Even when an idea is only touched on for a brief moment it never feels like a gimmick.

As you twist and turn through these differing levels, the camera perspective changes frequently and serves to alter what I can, for lack of a better word, only describe as attitude. You'll pull into a first person view from an isometric one.  Then, suddenly, the camera will whip around and line up in 3rd person, or even a Dutch angle.  These perspective changes often coincide with the changes in the music that is the driving component of the entire game. There's a special kind of impact of having the game switch to a heart pounding first person view right as the music hits the intense chorus. I couldn't get enough of it. This soundtrack, honestly, could be a stand alone album with the game serving as a sort of interactive music video for it.  The way both mediums work with each other to create such an awe-inspiring blend is beyond reproach. Full of tons of cool beats, interesting and relatable lyrics, and enough hooks to satisfy the most hardened pop aficionado, the music never lets up and never lets you down. The presentation is magnificent and each song suits each level perfectly. They blend so well, in fact, that it's almost indistinguishable whether the game was created to coincide with the music, or if the sound track was scored to fit the game. You'll have demure and minimalistic tracks for slower and more thought provoking stages, bumping and manic beats to accompany the hectic moments of the game, and hook filled vocal tracks to give words to the emotions our protagonist is going through as she has to combat not enemies of the game but also the stages themselves. You'll find yourself singing or humming along to these stages almost constantly. 

One the surface, the game can feel more like a music video than a game itself. Just finishing the levels doesn't require much skill and dying throws you back into the game immediately.  Even if you fail the same part several times in a row, the game will give you a prompt asking you if you'd like to skip ahead. Some of the more bitter reviewers have taken note of this and made their feelings heard. However, once you delve into the scoring side of the game, you begin to learn just how well designed and fun it can be and can stand solidly on its own in teams of gameplay.  As you gather both small and large hearts, your multiplier will increase the leads to an ever increasing score. You'll need to hit certain milestones to gain either a bronze, silver, or gold rank in each of the stages.  Crashing causes you to lose your multiplier, so if you want to get a high score, you'll need to give some effort to learning and perfecting the level. Also hidden in each level are a handful of square hearts and these serve as the game's collectables.  Finding these can be challenging sometimes; and even when they are in plain view, it can take a tricky maneuver to reach them. Learning to rout through the levels while gathering the highest multiplier you can and never crashing a single time can be tough and earning the gold medals on a lot of these levels will take some true skill. Many of these levels took me several tries to master, but it never became tedious or frustrating and all of the crashes felt like my fault. If you ignore the scoring portion of the game, you can just blow through the 23 stages in around an hour and a half or so.  Getting the gold medals and truly learning the stages will take considerably longer. 

In addition to this, all the trophies in the game are tied to Zodiac riddles.  These change the way the way the stages are played and give you alternate objectives.  These range from things like scoring zero points in a level, getting a gold medal on the same stage 3 times in a row, getting all perfects on the quick time events in a specific stage, or earning a rank on the game's endless modes. "Solving" a lot of these riddles was a lot of fun and make me look at the game in a totally different way.  The clues on how to complete these objectives and be a bit obtuse, but isn't that what a riddle is supposed to be about? Speaking of those endless modes, they are there for people who want an additional challenge.  The first of these has you playing through the whole game in one go.  That's not so bad.  The second one has you playing through the whole game in one go without getting hit, failing a jump, or crashing a single time.  Essentially a perfect playthrough...  Good luck!  These Zodiac riddles and additional modes add a considerable amount of depth and replayability to the game.  I'm thankful they are there and I was having a great time trying to complete most of them. I spent some time with the endless modes as well, but didn't want to overspend my time with the game and have it lose some of its magic.  These extracurricular modes are quite challenging and probably would take an order of magnitude more time to complete than earning all of the gold medals on each of the stages.  The only slight negative I have to say about this game is that every trophy in the game is tied to completing these riddles rather than focusing on the game.  I found it strange to have completed all of the stages and still have not unlocked a single trophy. Still, trophies are optional and at their best should serve as hints to secrets or challenges hidden in a game.  In this case, the trophies do exactly that.

So, we have a fun and fluid game that has a lot of replayability and is quite addictive. We have a stunning and beautiful presentation both in terms of the art direction, graphics, and music. And, finally, we have a metaphorical story that has something to important to say about life and confronts the issue that everyone has had to struggle with before. Every component of this game has been handled masterfully and with a sense of compassion, empowerment, and care that caused me to be truly taken aback.  During my first playthrough, I went from feeling wistful, melancholy, invigorated, and revitalized within the span of a couple of hours.  There aren't many movies I've seen that can do this and I actually cried tears of joy for the heroine of this game when it came to its conclusion.  It is, without a shadow of a doubt, a masterpiece by any metric... and can stand proudly along side the other greats of the video game world.  It rivals the best experience I've ever had playing a game and won't soon be forgotten.

Oh, and Queen Latifah narrates the game!

Final Status: Beaten (All gold medals and collectables found.  Almost all Zodiac riddles completed)

Final Score: 10/10 (Masterpiece)

Cotton 2: Magical Night Dreams (PS4) Review

 

Cotton 2: Magical Night Dreams (PS4) Review

Date Released: September 2021 (PS4 Port)

Date Played: 11 November 2021

I'm not going to beat around the bush.  Cotton 2 is a really fun and unique cute 'em up that is worth your time. It's beautiful, colorful, and not quite like anything else out there. However, this PS4 port is abysmal and has 10 frames of delay and input lag.  It essentially makes the game unplayable in any serious manner.  If you are interested in playing the game and learning its ins and outs, try a better version.

Cotton 2 is the fourth game in the Cotton series.  It is a horizontal shmup and you and your fairy companion have to travel through 7 stages and defeat a ton of bad guys and bosses so you can retrieve some candy or some other foolishness. The story is all in Japanese, but that's what I was able to glean from it.  You're greeted by a cute anime cut scene that shows our witch protagonist becoming frustrated before setting out on her journey.  These cut scenes are also present between the stages as well as the ending credits.  They are well done and suit the whimsical and childish nature of the game very well. It's difficult to know what's happening because I don't speak Japanese, but it looks like your typical frustrated anime girl sort of fare.  I don't really know what else you would expect from this game.

You'll find yourself traveling through a haunted forested area, an old castle, underwater, through a cave, through a spooky swamp, and finally through a chapel before facing off against the main character's arch nemesis.  All of these stages feel very unique, have really good enemy placement and some tense sections, beautiful artwork, and magnificent music.  In terms of presentation, there is nothing bad to say about Cotton 2.  It's one of the most interesting and memorable shmups I've ever seen in terms of it's aesthetic and I have to give the art designers of this game kudos.  It's bright and colorful while maintaining that spooky Halloween vibe.  The graphics have that retro feel from the Sega Saturn era that was so delightfully charming. The excellent soundtrack goes along perfectly with it and is full of memorable and fun themes that will keep you humming along long after you put down your controller (or joystick in my case). 

As for the gameplay, Cotton 2 is a bit complicated (as are most of the Cotton games) when you delve into its mechanics. This is a real surprise because the game looks so childish (for lack of a better word) and many people are caught off guard by it's depth. You have only one life, but that's supplemented by a life bar.  Usually, that's a sign of poor game design, but that isn't the case here.  Enemy patterns are well thought out and routing is as fun as ever.  You fly around on your broom while destroying enemies and trying not to get shot yourself.  All the while, you gather crystals that fall from enemies.  These crystals are differently colored and picking them up determines what type of shot you have.  These range from fire, wind, water, etc. attacks that can really help you on your way.  By pressing the magic button, you are able to discharge your shot into a powerful magical attack.  This can wreak havoc on your enemies, but sadly exhausts your collected crystal and lower your standard shot attack power.  Up to 3 of these crystals can be stored at a time and you'll want to hang onto them until you really need them. I often find myself saving them for the boss fights and using a few of these in a row can shred the boss' life bar in no time.  As the crystals float around on the screen, you can shoot them to make them change colors until you find the one you desire.  If you shoot them several times, they will turn yellow and these crystals can be gathered to increase your level.  Each level will increase your attack power (up to a maximum of 5 levels) and getting hit will cause you to loose some of this shot power.  In addition to this you can also grab enemies when they are close enough and throw them back at their comrads.  This is especially useful in tight quarters or if some enemies take too many shots.  Finally, there are several special attacks you can perform a la Street Fighter controller commands.  These are the standard movements like charge back forward, or quarter rotations, etc.  These can be a little difficult to pull of when things get hectic and you're trying to dodge, but are a nice addition that give the game some flair and help it stand out apart from its graphics and music. At the end of each stage is Tea Time (like all of the other Cotton games) where you collect tea cups the fall from the top of the screen and these increase your score and restore some health.  All of these elements combined together make a really fun and challenging experience that has some great replay value.

As for scoring, it's one of the best parts of the game.  If you do one of the special attacks mentioned above on an enemy and then grab it, you can toss it at enemies and re-catch it to build up a chain.  Each time this counter increases, so does your score multiplier.  It's a ton of fun and it's really cool to see the counter get bigger and bigger. Before long you'll be chaining for large portion of stages and trying to figure out how to keep it going as long as you can.

Cotton 2 is a really fun and addictive game and I would recommend it to any fan of the genre as well as any newcomer.  

As for the PS4 port of the game, it is absolutely terrible.  It has English translations in the menus and some save state and rewind features that are nice additions.  But, apparently this port is nothing more than an emulator running the Sega Saturn version of the game (which already has like 6 frames of lag).  This bumps up the total input delay on the game to 10 frames of lag which is totally unacceptable and practically unplayable for anything other than the most casual player.  There is a noticeable delay on your movement, dodging, firing, and everything else that makes the game feel like it's just not accepting your commands.  You'll get hit and die from an enemy bullet before you even see it appear on screen.  You'll try to do a quick dodge only to see your character sit there for half a second before finally moving. It's an absolute shame what City Connection did when porting this game.  They were extremely lazy in their port job and I would advise anyone who wants to try this game to find a different way to play it.

I was able to beat the game using the continues provided on the easiest mode... just barely.  I was also able to unlock all of the trophies for the PS4.  However, I really wanted to work on a 1 credit clear, but I just don't think it's possible on this version of the game.

Final Status: Beaten

Final Score: 3/10 (because of the botched port job.  Cotton 2 is actually an 8/10 game)