@RogerRoger That Sonic Rush music is pretty fantastic (especially like the boppy Waterbike music)! It is pretty embarrassing how bad the music in TDB is in comparison, I will say. And I guess it makes sense that a bad soundtrack would help to make people feel sour about a game. I don't know about WRPGs that much, but music is an INCREDIBLY big element in any successful JRPG. And the ones people remember most fondly? The timeless ones? Guarantee you half the time people are mentally replaying their favorite tunes in their heads when discussing them.
The Archie comic started off pretty light-hearted, a bit more like Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, but the storylines became more complex and ambitious once it became clear to Archie that people were digging the darker action-adventure vibe of the Sat AM cartoon. And the problem with a comic with long-running arcs is that it becomes easy to lose your place in the narrative and become disengaged.
I'll give it to Sonic: while I do maintain a sort of ironic appreciation for some of the 90s Mario TV shows I've watched over the years (especially the hilarious Super Mario Bros. Super Show), none of them are legitimately good. But Sonic Sat AM? Fantastic show. One of the best saturday morning cartoons ever made. When I was able to keep up with its storylines, I really liked the comic as well. And even Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog had a fun, Looney Tunes-esque appeal to it. I've not watched much of the Sonic anime that have come out over the years, but I'm sure those probably aren't too bad, either.
@ralphdibny Fantastic. Yeah, the sound design in DOOM 64 is remarkable, and does wonders for the atmosphere. I had no idea it was a result of hardware limitations, but it seems like that's often a thing with horror, like the original Silent Hill and how its iconic fog effect was used to mask a short draw distance.
The level design is probably the area that saw the most improvement over previous DOOM games, IMO.
I've unfortunately not had the opportunity to play Final DOOM yet, although I think I'll make a point of returning to that next year after I've completed DOOM 64 and Eternal on PC.
I think DOOM 2016 is due right after Hollow Knight, right? It'll be soon, so I don't expect you're due for much of a break unless you skip past DOOM 3 entirely for the moment.
Currently Playing: Resident Evil Village: Gold Edition
@Ralizah I decided to fact check my comment just to be sure I wasnt spreading misinformation. Turns out it was a similar or same soundtrack for the psx port of the original doom that had the memory constraints but it had to be adapted to the different memory constraints of the N64 when it was used for doom 64. I didn't read this whole article, just glanced over the relevant bits but this is an interview with the composer (that somehow manages to digress before even getting to the crux of the interview):
I'm sure/hope it'll be fine, I'll probably spend next week playing doom 3 and I'm not sure when they'll move on from hollow knight but sounds like they're all in the endgame so I imagine it'll be in the next week or two. maybe I'll be playing a bit of catch up and miss the first week of doom16 but I don't remember it being a very long game anyway so I doubt I'll have much trouble catching up!
I think we're on a similar track with final doom, I plan to get eternal if the deluxe edition that includes the season pass goes down to a reasonable price in black Friday sales, it's currently sitting at around £50 so hopefully it gets a bit cheaper!
@RogerRoger It's a bit weird seeing that Robotnik design in a not explicitly goofy context. Although it kinda fits, because the design is also creepy.
As to Sat AM vs Adventures, I mean... I have my preference, of course, but they're such radically different shows that it doesn't make much sense to compare them. But I do think it's worth tracking down. I'm glad I bought the DVD collection when I did, though, because, after a cursory look online, it seems to be weirdly expensive. Probably oop, I'm guessing.
Anyway, Jim Cummings will always be MY Robotnik
@mookysam DDS1 actually has unused placeholder pause menu graphics for characters that only appear in DDS2, so it seems likely that it was originally conceived of as one project and then, early in development, it was decided that the project scope was too large for one game.
@RogerRoger What did you make of the rumours regarding MS buying Sega. Did you breath a a sigh of relief or did you think it was a load of hogwash anyway?
Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
Mookysam’s Super Mario 64 Review, or, The Perils of Revisiting an Old Favourite
Time is a funny thing, reducing all in its wake to shrivelled, shambling husks, mere echoes of former glories. Of course, I’m not talking about politicians. Whilst other forms of interactive art - such as film or music - may continue to be revered for their aesthetic qualities decades later, gaming is almost uniquely subject to and bound by the technology of the day. In other words, many games find themselves quickly dated given the exponential rate at which computing technology has developed and how the state of the art of game design has been built upon.
Originally released alongside the Nintendo 64 in 1996 (1997 in Europe), this nascent 3D platformer was hailed as a masterpiece, a must-have for all new N64 owners. To be fair, the only competition at the time was Pilotwings 64 and Fog Simulator: Dinosaur Edition so pickings were slim. Playing Super Mario 64 as part of Nintendo’s Super Mario 3D All Stars collection has been a curious exercise; not only have I played the original many times in the past, I absolutely loved it and have consistently rated it among my all-time favourite games. It’s now been roughly 13 years since I last completed it and it is hard to pinpoint what exactly has changed, because the game certainly hasn’t. This is the same old Super Mario 64, warts and all. Except stacked against the likes of Super Mario Galaxy and Odyssey - and viewed through 2020’s delightfully harsh lens - those warts appear more like festering, necrotised appendages that have taken on some undead persona of their own.
One may ask if it is fair to be so harsh on such an old game and judge it by modern standards. Normally I would say this is a tricky question, yet here Nintendo has seen fit to release it as part of a three-game collection priced at £50. To provide a little context, Sony released the Nathan Drake Collection for £30, complete with substantial visual upgrades. Activision completely remade the first three Crash Bandicoot games and sold them together for £35. Nintendo have hobbled together three old games with pound shop sellotape, given the resulting collection a premium price, and sauntered away with a cackle. I am jolly well going to review it as such.
Waaaaah!
There are fifteen main levels in all, each accessed through paintings dotted throughout Peach’s castle. The main objective is to collect the 120 stars dispersed across the world, and later levels are inaccessible until a certain number of stars are obtained. Stars are usually found dotted across hard to reach areas in a level, or won by completing a specific challenge - such as collecting red coins or beating a boss. The levels themselves cover the usual platforming staples of “field-ish”, “icy death trap” and “fiery place”. There is also a vaguely Egyptian-themed level and haunted house thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately the most inventive level is also one of the most frustrating, taking place inside a giant clock and comprised of moving platforms suspended over a bottomless pit. Otherwise visual motifs are generally quite conservative, and it lacks some of the imagination found in earlier Nintendo platform games or later N64 platformers such as Rare’s Banjo-Kazooie. Music is another mixed bag, making sparse use of the N64’s sound capabilities. The jazzy tune that plays during “field-ish” levels is fun, though repetitive, and this theme, accompanying “watery death traps’ is a soothing favourite.
Then there is this wonder, that plays in a loop in the clock of doom.
The main issue with Super Mario 64 is a camera that refuses to work on a most fundamental level. There are two camera modes - one that frames the action from the viewpoint of a “friendly” Lakitu, and another that is supposedly behind Mario himself - with both having a “close-up” and “slightly less close-up” view. Neither mode works particularly well or offers the player an optimal viewpoint. For reference, Lakitu are the annoying enemies in the original Super Mario Bros. games that would float around on a cloud and throw spiked balls at Mario. It would seem they still hold a vendetta against him.
If you thought the main function of any camera would be to frame something from the most ideal vantage point, then Miyamoto and his merry band thought differently. There’ll be moments, flashes, really, where the player may be fooled into thinking it might just be on your side after all, only to swerve at the last moment like Pat Butcher on a particularly hectic bender. Thin ledge with chasm below? “I know!” Laughs the camera, a cruel twist barely perceptible on the corner of its thin lips. “Let’s jut in the opposite direction so that Mario can fall to his death!” And this dance replays countless times throughout the game. By Tick Tock Clock, a level Nintendo thought would be enhanced its maddening audio accompaniment, I became the husk and the game had absorbed what little remained of my essence.
Things are not helped by how the camera controls. Originally the camera was manipulated using the N64 pad’s “C buttons”. As modern controllers lack the requisite inputs, it is instead moved using the right analogue stick, which is to say a poor substitute when the game thinks you are still pressing buttons. If you manage to push the stick ever so slightly in the wrong direction, Lakitu and friends are not terribly forgiving.
Mamma mia!
Controls are another issue. Mario himself has a very wide turning angle, which at times works to make precision platforming much harder than it needs to be. I could swear that the controls were tighter using the N64’s more precise analogue stick, but am unfortunately unable to verify this. Mario also loves to slide off almost every surface with a greater than twenty degree incline. In the icy levels I suppose this makes sense, yet grass, sand or rocks are also bound by these bizarre physics. Strangely, the obelisks that dot Shifting Sand Land are not, and Mario can walk straight up them. Given that this is a platformer, camera and controls are hugely important components of the gameplay experience - perhaps even more so than in other genres. That they are so frustrating here undermines Super Mario 64 at its core.
It’s-a-me Graphical Glitch!
In all, Super Mario 64 plays like some surreal Pavlovian nightmare version of the game I once loved. With each successive level I wondered what horrors the game held in store. It reminded me of how, when I was ill with encephalitis, I thought I had died and somehow become stuck in purgatory. I shan’t judge it for being ugly - thought it is lamentable that it has only been upscaled to 720p - or that it runs at only thirty frames-per-second. It is a solid 30fps, after all. But if that is the only real positive thing I have to say about a game stacked with design issues, then we have a problem. Mario - and wider gaming - has changed immeasurably over the past 23 years. Of course this a wonderful thing, but it has come at the cost of dating into the Mesazoic those titles we once revered as masterpieces. It is therefore hard to recommend Super Mario 64 to today’s audiences. Arrive derci.
@mookysam Nice review. I was going to write out a long comment, but, now that I'm at 118 stars, I realize I'll probably want to write a review of some sort for this (and I imagine even more are incoming), so I'll save my material.
All I'll say is that it's vindicating to finally see other people acknowledge how poorly this clunky nightmare of a game has aged. Although, in your case, I'm sorry that it probably spoiled what were probably fond childhood impressions of it. Sometimes it's better to leave stuff in the past.
Currently Playing: Resident Evil Village: Gold Edition
@Ralizah You’ve totally overtaken me but I’ve been playing Hollow Knight and Assassin’s Creed to rid my mind of Tick Tock f***ing Clock. Urgh, I feel ill.
Cheers @Ralizah and no need to be sorry. I still value it for the memories from 1997, but it has indeed aged horrendously. It's interesting how for years many people were insisting it was of divine origin and no other platformer could possibly stand up against it. When did you first play it? Good luck with those final two stars and I look forward to your review. (which I hope judging by that is vicious!)
@mookysam 2009? 2010? Something like that. After it released on the Wii VC. While I did own an N64 as a child, I almost exclusively played terrible Pokemon games on it (ahhh, so many hours spent with the overexpensive Hey You, Pikachu!, yelling at the electric rat and getting pretty thoroughly ignored by it; an experience eerily mirrored years later by the dog in Nintentogs, who also ignored my commands). Although I have since tried it on an N64, and I can confirm that the plumber does control better on an N64 stick. Probably because Mario's littlest motions are tied to slight changes in the orientation of the stick, and the N64's stick is tall and brittle, so controlling Mario is more like handling a plane in a flight sim, frankly. Playing Mario 64 with joycons, or on anything other than an N64 controller, is like playing a flight sim with a broken joystick where you can only make extreme alterations to the movement of the plane. It is technically possible to move Mario slower and more deliberately, but it requires muscle memory after countless hours of making the wrong move and sending the plumber flying to his death, because the world of Mario 64 is, I'm convinced, made entirely out of textured ice, which is the only way I can explain away Mario's tendency to slide on dirt, grass, and stone like he does.
Did you find any of the levels to be more or less well-designed than others?
@Ralizah She’s in Eastenders over here, soaps are basically a breeding ground for gay icons in the UK cause they’re traditionally watched by.. less affluent mothers and while it’s a stereotype, the gays do love their mums. The trifecta would be Pat Butcher, Dot Cotton and probably Gail Platt from Corrie too. I actually found an article about this phenomenon from 1993 which is pretty cool, it’s so old it interviews Lily Savage before he made a career as just plain old Paul O’Grady, which probably won’t mean anything to you 😂
This thread has certainly taken a weird turn so I last checked in!
@RogerRoger Thanks for yet another write up of a Sonic game that I had no idea even existed and I am rather intrigued by it! As others have said, the background of the development for the game was also an interesting read.
@mookysam Thank you for your suffering giving such a fun, succinct read. The image headings got a little giggle out of me. And another +1 for the Pat Butcher reference which has reminded me of this "iconic" scene..
Super Mario 64 (Super Mario 3D All-Stars - Switch)
While many are taking the opportunity to 100% the game, I'll admit up front that I finished with 73 Stars, pretty much doing the bare minimum for completion. For reference, I had played it off and on as a kid via rentals, but this is the first time I've completed it (as a kid I only ever explored the worlds on the castle's first floor).
Gameplay:
A 3D platformer, and at the time of it's release the only one of it's kind, that introduced many design conventions that many games use to this day.
It takes place on the grounds of Peach's Castle, which acts as a hub world that connects the various worlds (which are housed within magical paintings, or other objects, such as a clock) you'll have to traverse in order to clear the game. The further you get, the more of the castle you get to explore.
There are 15 main worlds you're able to explore in the game, and each holds seven Power Stars to collect. These are the game's main collectable, and the more you collect, the more of the castle you're able to access. The game is pretty open ended in terms of it's progression, where even if you're playing one mission, if you find some other Star you're free to go after it instead, and there are nearly twice as many Stars in the game than required to beat it, so if you don't like a particular world or mission you don't have to push yourself to complete it (there are some exceptions of course, as if a world has a boss it'll usually only appear if you pick it's specific mission, and you need to beat Boswer stages to obtain keys to access different castle floors).
In addition to the to the 15 main worlds, there are also 3 Bowser levels (straightforward platforming levels that end with a boss fight with the big guy), 3 Cap levels (straightforward platforming levels centered around specific powerups, upon completion of which you unlock that power up for use in the main worlds, as some Stars require them), and the occasional hidden mini world which house 1 Star for collecting their red coins (Bowser & Cap levels also house a red coin Star as well). Along with a handful of Stars that are just given to you by Toads in the castle, there are lots of extras to find.
Thank goodness for it's open ended nature too, as the game is definitely rough in the gameplay department. Make no mistake, there's a great core here, and when things are going good Mario has a diverse move set that feels good, however the camera is finicky as heck & you often have to fight with it, and Mario is slippery as all get out which makes more deft platforming sections an exercise in frustration (also, the Wing Cap just flat out sucks. Great idea, a nightmare to actually try to controll unless launched via a cannon). I really think I did myself a favor by putting an end to it before reaching some of the later worlds which have reputations as absolute death traps. Granted, it apparently controls better on an actual N64 with it's stiffer control stick, but I'm not playing it on N64.
The top screen looks like a fair enough challenge, but as for the bottom? No thanks!
I personally had a really hard time with the Bowser fights too, as I just couldn't get the timing of when to throw him. I maybe could throw him into a bomb once for every 10 throws which isn't terrible for the first two fights which only require you to get him once, but you need to do it 3 times in the final fight, which really tried my patience (It probably took me 10 times to finally beat him).
To end on a more positive note, I actually found myself really enjoying the game's water worlds of all things (Jolly Roger Bay's eel mission notwithstanding). I generally had no issue controlling Mario under water, I thought they had generally good design, and they just seemed overall relaxing. Big Boo's Haunt was decent as well.
Audio/Visual:
While it naturally looks a bit rough these days, I think it looked pretty good overall cleaned up in HD. While they were probably impressive for their time, I don't think any of the worlds come across as anything particularly memorable today. I guess Shifting Sand Land & Rainbow Ride (and the other sky levels) were conceptually pretty neat looking, but they're some of the most irritating worlds from a gameplay perspective (Rainbow Ride in particular is one of those worlds that's so hard I really didn't try it). I guess I liked Hazy Maze Cave as a concept (and it had some of the trademark red scaffolding calling back to the original Donkey Kong arcade game), but it wasn't a particularly pretty world, even by SM64's standards. Again, I liked the relaxing vibe of the underwater worlds (even if Jolly Roger Bay looks a bit too drab when above water). There are some thematic stinkers though, such as Wet-Dry World (I think it's supposed to be a flooded city, but it comes across as a random jumble of floating platforms, which is a problem the first and last Bowser levels have too).
Some environments. I liked the underwater areas.
While it didn't particularly bother me, it's also weird in how "off brand" it feels in certain respects. While most of the iconic enemies (such as goombas, koopas, lakitu, and more) are present, as well as a few green pipes along the way, there are no "?" Blocks in the game (instead we get "!" Blocks), breakable bricks don't have their iconic brick texture, and series standard items like Super Mushrooms & Fire Flowers are nowhere to be found.
As usual, I don't have much to say about music. Guess it fits the game, though.
Story:
Mario gets an invitation to Peach's Castle only to find out that Bowser has taken over the joint and locked it up. Only by collecting the Castle's stolen Power Stars (which Bowser's minions have spirited away into magical paintings) can he further explore the castle & stop his old rival. Nothing more to it than that.
Bowser's at it again.
Overall:
There's definitely a solid core here, and it can definitely be fun when things line up just right, but there's definitely a lot of rough edges to cut yourself on along the way. Which begs the question, should Nintendo have given it a bigger overhaul? While their decision to make the collection as bare bones as it is was more than likely a decision based on frugalness, I don't think it's inherently a bad decision. If we are to posit that games are an art form, I think it's important that they should be playable in their original forms with minimal updates, warts & all (especially in a collection such as this, which is meant to show how the franchise has evolved over the years). Granted, whether you personally think that's worth the money is up for debate, but I think there's some merit to it, and should be tried out of curiosity's sake, even if you're just in it for the more modern titles.
I will say that as someone who only dabbled in the game during it's original release & hasn't much thought about it since, there was something satisfying & affirming about actually seeing it to the end, even if it wasn't the most positive experience at times.
Currently Playing:
Switch - Blade Strangers
PS4 - Kingdom Hearts III, Tetris Effect (VR)
@mookysam Just read your rather superb review and yes - Pat Butcher quote was a classic.
Having been playing Sunshine (or best say 'revisiting') I think you are right to count this as a full remaster as opposed to a basic port (which it is). I think these games need the Wind Waker HD styler remake - keeping what worked and tweaking what didn't. However they didn't and I have not enjoyed Sunshine half as much as I did back in the day. I would have loved an Odyssey engine remake of these games but alas - not to be.
I love retro games but I have never agreed with some view that games can truly hold up to today's scrutiny and that's FINE. It is unfair for them to.
Now I may be an idiot, but there's one thing I am not sir, and that sir, is an idiot
@RR529 Nice post. I also like the diversity of screen grabs on display.
I agree there's a solid core underneath the INCREDIBLE amount of jank and frustration here. The platforming moves on offer are excellent as well, but the weird lack of traction that makes it feel like Mario's always barreling to his doom kinda ruined it for me.
You should revisit the later levels one day. You haven't known suffering until you're played through Tick Tock Clock multiple times.
Currently Playing: Resident Evil Village: Gold Edition
@Ralizah, @RogerRoger, thanks for taking the time to read! I'll definitely give the later levels a crack one day. Rainbow Ride in particular looks aesthetically neat (tilting the camera up and seeing the airship high above was neat looking. You can tell playing around in 3D space was novel at the time, as while games are infinitely better looking nowadays, it seems like you don't get moments like that much anymore).
Currently Playing:
Switch - Blade Strangers
PS4 - Kingdom Hearts III, Tetris Effect (VR)
A Hat in Time Platform: PC Completion Status: 40/40 time pieces and all missions cleared
Indie developer Gears for Breakfast's A Hat in Time is another one of the early video game success stories on Kickstarter. What was promised was a nostalgic throwback to N64/Gamecube-era "collectathon" 3D platformer game design, and, to the game's credit, that's largely what was delivered. AHiT has a very heavy dose of Mario 64/Mario Sunshine in its blood, although it also struggles to live up to the standards set by Nintendo's early classics in some respects. Although it can perhaps be argued that if a fresh-faced developer is being compared in any way to one of the grandmasters of the medium, that is its own sort of compliment.
Players take on the role of "Hat Kid," a humanoid alien with the appearance of a small child dressed in a cape and top hat, who is confronted by mafioso demanding she pay a toll as she passes over a strange, unnamed planet. When she refuses, her spaceship is damaged, causing her fuel, portrayed in the game as "time pieces," to spill out over the planet, leading Hat Kid to become stranded on the planet until she can track down her fuel sources. While on the planet, she falls into the middle of a conflict between Mafia Town (a government run by and representing mafioso, apparently) and the troublemaking Mustache Girl, another small girl (who, yes, sports a mustache) who sports an unexplored resentment against said government. Mustache Girl agrees to help Hat Kid find her missing time pieces if she'll help to take down the leadership of Mafia Town.
The structure of this game is eerily similar to a 3D Mario platformer. In this case, the hub world of AHiT, which is Hat Kid's ship, which gradually opens up as you find more time pieces, and the space theme in general call to mind Super Mario Galaxy. Different unlockable rooms on the ship will sport telescopes which, when looked through, will grant access to different locations for Hat Kid to explore. Like in a 3D Mario game, each location is divided into a variety of missions, which also contain collectibles and offer the player a significant degree of freedom when it comes to exploration.
One immediate contrast between AHiT and the games that inspired it is how original the level themes feel compared to almost anything else I've ever played. Locations in this game are pretty wildly diverse — you'll explore, of course, a large town filled with mafioso; a haunted forest where you quickly find yourself under the thumb of an evil supernatural entity known as The Snatcher; a gigantic free roam area composed of mountainous islands; and a movie studio where Hat Kid becomes embroiled in the fierce rivalry between two bird film directors.
Aside from the time pieces you'll acquire at the end of any given story mission in a location (similar to the stars and shine sprites you'd earn in early 3D Mario games), you'll also be hunting for relics, yarn balls, and rift tokens. There aren't a huge number of relics throughout the game's levels, but collecting and assembling them all will open up special "time rifts" (more on that in a moment), accessible via Hat Kid's hub ship. Yarn balls, when collected in specific numbers, will unlock new hats for Hat Kid, each of which grants her a special ability when equipped. Finally, rift tokens are least necessary, but will unlock cute little randomly selected bonuses in the game: some will change the color of Hat Kid's outfit, some will unlock special remixes of the musical tracks that play in given worlds throughout the game, and so on. The rather prolific dispersal of these (mostly) optional collectibles means that exploring the levels in these games almost always turns out to be worthwhile, and they can help to pad out environments that are otherwise rather sparse.
I'd also like to briefly mention the badge system in this game. As you explore various worlds in this game, you'll come across a creepy merchant (he sort of reminds me of the merchant in Resident Evil 4, actually) who you can buy various badges from with the in-game currency, orbs you'll collect throughout the game's various levels. You'll eventually be able to equip three of these, and they have a variety of effects: some wildly useful (drawing in items to you; breaking your falls; making it where you don't bounce off walls you dash into; etc.), some largely ornamental (one, as I recall it, will change the way people sound when they speak in the game), and some even largely detrimental to your health (one badge, in particular, makes it where you die in one hit, versus the four you can normally take). It adds a nice layer of customization to the experience.
Some of Hat Kid's time pieces have broken and opened rifts in the space-time continuum. These special, bite-sized levels are accessible when the player locates an area where there is an obvious tear in space. Quite distinct from the coherent, heavily thematic designs of environments in story locations, the time rifts feature very sparse and abstract scenery and platforms. The aesthetics and gameplay of these rifts are HEAVILY inspired by the secret levels in Super Mario Sunshine, although, strangely, unlike that game, Hat Kid isn't deprived of her hat abilities (compared to Sunshine, where Mario is deprived of his FLUDD water gear and forced to rely on pure platforming skill to survive). These rifts frequently open up in previously cleared worlds after surpassing certain progress thresholds as well, which compels the player to revisit those locations to find the new rifts, which recalls the comet mechanic in Super Mario Galaxy. Interestingly, the game doesn't make it easy for you to find these rifts; instead, you're presented with pictures showing a zoomed-in view of their location, and that's the only hint you're given as to the location of any given rift.
In a lot of other platformers, this wouldn't be much of an issue, but AHiT's worlds, perhaps because they're low in number, tend to be sprawling. And this leads me into perhaps my first major criticism of the game: the level design is not great. As Hat Kid, you'll be forced to trudge back and forth across gigantic maps where everything sort of looks the same attempting to complete level objectives. Additionally, you don't have access to any sort of in-game map, so you just have to sort of muddle your way around, frequently getting lost in the process. The most irritating map is perhaps Subcon Forest, because, being a forest, it's difficult to tell where you're supposed to be going at any given time, but the world where the size becomes truly ridiculous is Alpine Skyline. Each island is enormous in and of itself, and you're supposed to navigate across multiple, complex islands to find a number of time rifts. It's probably easy to understand how the player can become turned around. Thankfully, the game features a built-in hint system in the form of Hat Kid's default top hat, whose ability is to point her in the direction of the nearest level objective. This often isn't helpful in missions with multiple objectives, which are usually the ones you'll want the most help with, but, early on, it can be invaluable when you're trying to find your bearings in these large landscapes.
Hat Kid's moveset is simple, but the game uses every move in her arsenal to full effect. Thus, while the game doesn't allow for tremendously absurd displays of platforming skill, it does frequently force the player to consider difficult platforming tasks in the context of smaller and less complicated movements. Hat Kid often feels just barely up to the task of reaching distant platforms in her path. One thing I'd like to mention, briefly, is that the player's control over her double jumps feels great thanks to being able to mid-air cancel out of a jumping animation. Hat Kid is, more broadly, a joy to control: she feels almost weightless, controls very tightly, and there's a satisfying tactile feel whenever she interacts with surfaces in her environments.
With that said, I did encounter a weird problem in the PC version. The game controls well with a controller (I played it using Sony's DS4), but, at one point, my controller died due to forgetting to charge it the night before, and so I transitioned to playing with a mouse and keyboard for a while. This was... OK, but the issue I had was that the game, for whatever reason, doesn't allow the player to remap key bindings within the game, which is a VERY weird oversight for a game that started on PC. The PC version has even received the majority of the developer's attention via patches and DLC. If you want to change the default key binds, you have to exit the game and alter one of its INI files, which players shouldn't be expected to do.
The game attempts to weave narrative in throughout the game's various missions, but these efforts often fell flat for me. As a result, the story/characters felt a bit underdeveloped and lacked emotional resonance. This became clear to me at the end when various characters you've met throughout gather to support you in your effort to defeat the final boss, and I was just left thinking: "I don't really know or care about any of these people." The designs aren't bad, and the concepts behind them are often interesting or creative, but something really got lost in translation for me, and it kind of took the air out of the game's climax, IMO.
In general, many aspects of this game are... just OK. The characters are just OK. The presentation is dated (although, given the efforts of this game to feel like a throwback, I'd argue this is perhaps more justified; it really does look like an HD conversion of something you might have played on the Gamecube or PS2). The music is perfectly acceptable, but never really stands out aside from the game's delightful main theme (linked below). The difficulty is pleasantly balanced, but it also lacks some of the memorable-ness of a 3D Mario game (I can cry about Mario 64'S jank all day, but its levels are permanently seared into my brain now).
The area where the game succeeds most fully, I'd say, is in terms of the personality it exudes. I expected the game to be cute and perhaps charming, but I didn't expect the writing to be so consistently sarcastic and funny. It's comparable, in some respects, to the Paper Mario games, except even your diminutive protagonist, despite her adorable looks, is quite the snarker. She's actually kind of a little brat at times! This is communicated in her body language, such as the way she'll stick out her tongue at mafioso when running by them, or in her optional "smug dance" taunt (itself a reference to a similar dance in Animal Crossing, another classic Nintendo game). But it especially becomes evident when you unlock a ground pound-esque ability and discover her secret pillow fort, which houses a diary. If you read the diary after any given story event or completed mission, you'll read Hat Kid's take on the situation, which is often... well, suffice to say, she looks adorable, but the personality perhaps doesn't match. It's a super fun little secret, though. The hub is actually full of fun little easter eggs and optional activities. My favorite is when you discover that a computer on her ship can play a sort of text-based adventure game. I mean, yes, it's short, and primarily a gag, but it's a great thing to just stumble across.
This also kind of ties into the game's great balance of platforming and exploration and the way it rewards player curiosity. There's always SOMETHING to collect in this game, and the collectibles almost all have some sort of larger gameplay function.
The game does need some QoL updates, though. It's really stupid that I can't look at the pictures showing off the location of a time rift when I'm actually loaded into a level. I kind of wish that worlds other than Alpine Skyline allowed for a free roam mode for when the player needs to go back to pick up collectibles as well. Most crucially, it's really frustrating that players can't go back and read previous diary entries Hat Kid has written throughout the game. And, thanks to the design of the game's mission flow itself, there are certain diary entries that can't even be viewed normally over the course of the game. It's a dumb, obvious oversight that should have been patched out. And, as mentioned before, key rebinding should be a thing in the PC version.
I do also want to mention that the third-person camera could use some work, as it has a tendency to get stuck zoomed in on Hat Kid, or even stuck on objects in the environment. Coming off Super Mario 64, I'm finding it difficult to get too worked up about this issue, as the camera in AHiT works well 90% of the time, whereas the camera in Mario 64 works well exactly 0% of the time. It's also less troublesome than the camera in Yooka-Laylee. With that said, again, the game could use some attention in certain places.
So, at the end of the day, I think A Hat in Time, as the first game by a novice indie developer, is a resounding success, but not necessarily a top-tier classic like other famous indie games such as Stardew Valley, Undertale, and Papers, Please turned out to be. It's full of charm, wit, and, even if the game's inspirations are perhaps a bit too evident in the way its designed, it's still very solid in terms of the fundamentals you'd want from a 3D platformer. AHiT is also one of the few games from the explosion of successful Kickstarters in the early 2010s to release with a minimum of drama or disappointment associated with it. It's an easy recommendation for anyone who likes the genre and, hopefully, will lead to future platforming classics from a developer that is clearly swimming with talent and passion for the medium.
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