A Hat in Time Review: I don't usually like Collect-a-thons

A Hat in Time Review: I don't usually like Collect-a-thons 

Title: A Hat in Time 

Release: 5th October 2017 

Developer: Gears for Breakfast 

Platforms: PC (played), PS4, Xbox One  

Originally, I was going to talk about South Park: Fractured But Whole because I bought it and played the first one and thought it was really fun and when I played the second, I liked it... But then it just sort of kept going: it's not a bad game, not at all, but every time I try to play it I just end up thinking about different games- whether that be Life is Strange: Before the Storm (I thought it was great but I don't care to review episodic games, plus it'd just be me saying 'I see some problems but I don't care because I'm emotionally invested' and now, thanks to Before the Storm, I went back and started the first Life is Strange again 'cause I just really like being sad. But wait! I don't always play depressing games! A Hat in Time! (I didn't know how to go from what I was saying to announcing the name of the game so that's the best you're getting). A Hat in Time is a hella happy Collect-a-thon, and as you could probably tell from the title; I'm not a fan of collecty games. So, what did I think? Well I'll tell you my hunky, skippy, comrades.  

Presentation:  

This is the sort of game that's like Windwaker, because the way that's styled means that it means that in years to come people can look at it and say "oh, this looks like it's aged really well."  

The reason that I love this game aesthetically is because it's so heckin' cute, in a world of drab colourless shooters (although, colour has been coming back in the past few years) a Hat in Time is a game that's just filled with so much colour and happiness that it's just so joyful to play, then the second world I played was horrifying, and then all the other worlds, that I played, were just so happy. It's a happy game. Even the second world was still so nice to look at even if it was more of a horrible level. A problem I had was that I had a huge problem with depth perception and I have no idea why because I never normally do, maybe it's just this type of game. Although thank you game for making things fade out if it's blocking the camera, that really is a godsend.  

Gameplay: (and story, I guess?)  

I feel like a lot of people who played this game also played games like Banjo-Kazooie when they were younger I, on the other hand, didn't. I've never owned a N64 but when I eventually played those games on the Rare Replay collection I found them utterly boring. Honestly, there was nothing about them that really made me think "wow; this is why so many people like these games."  

When I eventually got around to playing a hat in time I wholly expected to get that exact same feeling but instead I understood for those first few hours. The first six hours or so was filled with just unbridled joy that made me understand why people loved games like Banjo-Kazooie. For those who may not know this sort of game is usually split into different worlds, this one in particular has a few different worlds with different acts contained in said worlds, and in these worlds you have to collect certain items that is depicted as important by the story. In a hat in time you are a little alien girl who really really likes hats and travels around in this super cool space ship and have loads of time pieces; because you're a Time Lord (that's my personal head cannon at least); but then a horrible mafia man is mean and you lose all your time pieces. It's a pretty good set up and your thrown into mafia town where you start your quest. You can hit things with an umbrella, jump, double jump, use different hats for different abilities and even wall run. There's three main collectables to find: Timepieces which are the main objective, yarn which when you find different types of yarn you can make the corresponding hat (providing you have enough yarn all together) and a currency that I'll just call bubbles. You've got other collectables such as tokens and and relics but they're just little optional things, they are fun and give a nice reward. I keep mentioning how that I had so much fun for around six hours, and I did. But at the end of the day I'm still not a fan of this type of game and as the difficultly started to rise I just got more and more annoyed at little things, for example the statues at the mansion were just getting me angry, although you aren't meant to try and fight them you're just meant to run away. I will say that's my favourite level; that I've played it was like Outlast but scary. Seriously, that short level actually made me on edge and I loved it. I do find it weird that you don't seem to progress through the game by going world 1 then to world 2 and so on, instead it seems like you do the first world then the game just opens up; I do think this is a really good thing because it means if I have trouble with one level then I jump out do something else then go back feeling more refreshed; meaning I don't end up hating the game.  

My point is that I haven't finished a A Hat in Time and I feel like I would jump back into now and then but I don't feel like I'd ever actually finish it, it's a great game, a beautiful, cute, amazing game but... It isn't really for me. I was hoping that maybe this would be the game that would make me change my mind and like this type of game but it just isn't for me. However, I am so happy that I played the game and if you do like this sort of game you'd be doing yourself a disservice by not playing a Hat in Time. 

Hella Heckin' cute/10 

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