A Hat in Time Review

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Release Date: December 5, 2017 (PS4)
Platform(s): PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Mac
Developer: Gears for Breakfast
Price: $29.99

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In A Hat In Time players play as Hat Girl, a top hat wearing child captaining her own ship from world to world on her own. As the game starts, you encounter a bald mafia man knocking on the outside of your windshield and demanding you pay a toll for occupying his planet’s airspace. When you refuse, he smashes the window, sending you, along with 40 hourglasses that power your ship, falling towards the planet.  To make it back home, she must venture down to the surface and collect all the time she lost. Naturally, the only way to survive the planet's strange locales is to utilize a bottomless collection of flashy headwear.

Stages come in the form of different planets, floating across the universe, waiting to be unlocked with timepieces. Hat Girl’s spaceship is filled with cuddly toys, pillows, and even a Roomba. Jumping on the latter unlocks a trophy, highlighting one of the many excellent touches A Hat in Time hides across its charming world. The hub area is filled with nifty secrets, many of which are discovered naturally once you unlock new hats.

Along with collecting the hourglasses needed to power your ship, you can also collect balls of yarn.  These balls of yarn are used to craft different types of hats that can be used in many ways.  You’ll only craft a small range of hats throughout A Hat in Time, but the number of ways they can be used are vast. Whether it’s a hat that gives you the ability to sprint or see into the nether realm, platforming and puzzles are engineered to make you think both fast and outside the box.  Gaining different abilities using these hats made me want to go back to previous levels to explore for more hidden goodies.

Visually, A Hat in Time looks wonderful and the controls are smooth, for the most part.  However, my one main gripe is that the camera can be unpredictable from time to time, making some platforming elements difficult and frustrating.  The main levels are fairly easy to get around and enemies are easy to defeat.  The boss battles are a lot of fun and each one is different.  While they are not difficult, each boss battle takes some thinking to figure out the best way to defeat the boss.  Again, each hat you craft can help you defeat these bosses in different ways. 

Overall, A Hat in Time gives off a Super Mario 64 vibe and is a very fun platformer collect-a-thon.  There is a lot to explore and collect, levels are a decent difficulty and each boss scene is fun and unique.  I found myself using the different hats I crafted to explore as much as possible and reach areas that I thought weren’t possible before obtaining certain hats.  

Pros

• Lots of collectibles to find with many ways to explore the world.
• Visually fantastic
• Boss battles are fun and unique

Cons

• Camera can be very unpredictable

Thank you to Gears for Breakfast for providing a review code.  This review was done on the PS4 version of the game.

Airscape: The Fall of Gravity Review (PC)

Airscape: The Fall of Gravity is a fast-paced, gravity-shifting, action platformer about a deep-sea octopus who has been kidnapped by a mechanical alien race.  Players control an Octopus  on an adventure to save it's family from the clutches of the motorized menace.  Jump, dodge, and swim through an environment full of floating islands, water formations, and robotic terrors where the laws of gravity do not apply.

The gameplay in Airscape: The Fall of Gravity is what you would expect from your casual platformer, the only difference being gravity, or lack thereof in some cases.  Each environment has its own form of gravity.  In most platformers, you move left and right while jumping and dodging your way through the levels.  In Airscape: The Fall of Gravity, you will find yourself moving left and right, as well as up and down.  The beginning levels are pretty easy and give you a good feel for the controls, but progressively get more and more difficult as you make your way through the 60+ levels.  

Since you are constantly moving up, down, left and right, the camera in the game moves so that your character is always standing “upright”.  This causes the screen to rotate and shake quite a bit. If you are like me and tend to get motion sickness from games that rotate or move a lot, this game may cause some sickness.  Unfortunately, I am one of those people and I did have to take breaks while playing in order to settle my stomach.

Visually, the game looks amazing.  The colors and art style of the characters and environments look great.  There are lots of bright colors that jump out and the style of the darker levels do a great job of making the level feel just that, dark.  The sounds and music in the game fit the game perfectly.

The controls are very simple and feel perfect when playing.  The level design is great as well, and if you find yourself dying a lot, it is because you messed up and not because of level design or controls.  The game may start out fairly easy, but becomes more of a challenge the further you get, which is a big plus.  I found myself having a hard time with quite a few levels, but always found myself trying over and over.

Score: 4 out of 5.

It is well worth the $9.99 price tag on Steam and there is also a demo available for anyone that is still trying to decide on purchasing.  It is one of the best platformers I've played in awhile, just wish it didn’t give me so much motion sickness...

Anna's Quest Review (PC)

Anna’s Quest is a point-and-click adventure game by Daedalic Entertainment. In Anna’s Quest, Anna, the main character in the story, goes on a quest to find a cure for her grandfather’s illness. What makes this quest special is that Anna has led a very sheltered life with her grandfather and barely knows what creatures linger outside her home. Anna’s love for her grandfather drives her to leave the safety of her home and venture out to find the needed cure for him. Unfortunately, she hits her first roadblock right away as a witch, named Winfriede, kidnaps her and performs an experiment on her. This experiment gives Anna the power of telekinesis, which serves as a unique and key feature throughout the game.

While Anna’s Quest’s foundation is of the classic point & click adventure, the various elements are what make the game unique. You’ll explore the world by inspecting the environment, solving puzzles, and using your newfound telekinesis to overcome the various obstacles you encounter throughout the game. Interacting with other characters to form friendships while you gain more information, or even to obtain an ally, are ways that the world of Anna’s Quest can expand. Through the various exploration methods, deeper messages behind the story start to unfold that not you would expect. You’ll also gather items to combine with one another, use in the environment, or fulfill requirements to get you one step closer to obtaining a cure for Anna’s grandfather.

At times the game does get tricky, so expect a challenge from time to time. There are many times you will need to combine certain items you wouldn’t normally expect to combine, or use specific items on things in the environment that you normally wouldn’t. Although the main focus of Anna’s Quest is its unique and compelling story, characters, and atmosphere, it's gameplay is very good. It may be viewed as quite basic, but it does feel very fitting as a package with how the game is presented. The dialogue is straightforward, easy to understand, and conveys what it wants to in a fairly simple and concise manner. In addition, when conversing with other characters, you have choices between certain questions or inquiries that Anna can ask about important information needed or to learn other mysteries within the world of Anna’s Quest.

The art style in Anna’s Quest is simple, yet looks great and fits it's dialogue and presentation perfectly. Even with its simplicity it is capable of expressing each character’s personality very nicely. The voice acting in Anna’s Quest is very good as well, with different accents and styles for each character.

Anna’s Quest is your classic point-and-click adventure game, but mixes in it's own art style, and environment. Any fan of point-and-click games will enjoy Anna’s Quest, no doubt about it. I’m not a huge fan of point-and-click adventures, but found Anna’s Quest to be a great game. The unique story and puzzles will keep players coming back for more.  It is currently $19.99 on Steam and worth every penny.

Score: 4 out of 5

Nevermind Review (Early Access PC)

Nevermind is a very unique and strange horror early access game that takes you into the minds of psychological trauma victims, with the goal of solving the puzzles inside the creepy worlds to figure out what the victims have gone through and help them reach clarity and peace.  

The game can be played with a variety of biofeedback sensors, which monitors your heart rate.  When played with one of these sensors, Nevermind detects your fear level and the game becomes increasingly harder as your fear level increases.  The goal of Nevermind is to teach you to be more aware of your unique internal responses to stressful situation.  Unfortunately, I was unable to play the game without one of these sensors, but I still really enjoyed playing it without.

The gameplay in Nevermind is great.  Even without the biofeedback sensors, it was challenging to solve some of the puzzles.  You really have to look hard and think deep in order to successfully solve the puzzles and help the patient.  Being a horror film and game fan, I was excited to see just how scary this game would be.  I’m the type of person that is not easily scared, especially when it comes to games. (P.T. wasn’t really scary to me, but I’ll admit I jumped a couple times.)  I didn’t really find this game very scary, it was more creepy and dark.  It didn’t have me jumping out of my seat, except for maybe a few times, but I wonder how much my heart rate really changed throughout the game.  While it may not have been very scary, I did find myself “on edge” quite a bit.  I was constantly wondering what I was going to come across next and just what was going on inside of this patient's mind.

The graphics in Nevermind are amazing.  The environment design is very dark and unique and keeps you looking around at all times.  You never know what you will come across in each spooky world.  Every patient’s mind has a completely different look and feel, which keeps the game fresh and shows that the developers really put their time and effort into each world.

The music and sounds in the game are very good.  It is a pretty quiet game for the most part, but the creepy music and sound effects greatly increase the intensity of the game.  As you get deeper in the mind of the patient and things get creepier, the sounds and music do an excellent job of reflecting that.  The voice-overs are pretty good as well, but the developer has mentioned that they may be changed at a later time.

Overall, Nevermind is a great game, even being an early access title.  It is a fun, unique game that should only improve over time.  This game is full of potential and I am excited to see what the developers add and change to the game to make it better.  The game play, graphics and sound are all great already, so the possibilities are endless. I really wish I could have played it with a biofeedback sensor to see just how much it adds to the game.  Maybe I will pick one up in the future and try it out.  If I do, I will be sure to post a follow-up for everyone to check out.  

3.5/5

Thanks to Flying Mollusk for providing a code for review. 

The Witcher: Adventure Game (PC) Review

The Witcher Adventure Game for PC is a digital adaptation of the tabletop board game of the same name.  In this game, the main objective is to complete the set number (one, three or five) of main quests, which is determined before the game starts.  Players select their first main quest from 2 randomly selected quest cards to begin.  Players then travel around the game board attempting to gain red, blue and purple points which are needed in order to complete side and main quests.  Points are gained by investigating or developing, which may require drawing cards or rolling dice in order to complete a task and gain the points.

Having never played The Witcher Adventure Game on either tabletop or in PC form, I was a little overwhelmed at first, but there are plenty of helpful tutorial videos to help you learn the basics of the game.  Once I watched a few of these videos, and started playing around with the game, I found it pretty easy to catch on.  

After playing through a few games, I found the game to be very repetitive.  When it comes to battles and other things that require dice rolls, you simply click on the game area and your dice roll onto the board.  You then select what dice to use in order to pass or fail your battle.  I think having some battle animations of some sort would make the game more interesting for players like me that are not board game purists.

One aspect of the game that kept me playing was online multiplayer.  I was able to play with some players that helped me learn some new strategies and overall made the game experience much more fun than single player.  Most players I have played with have been very helpful and great to chat with.  The only problem I had with multiplayer was that it sometimes takes awhile (5+ minutes) to find up to 4 players to play with.  

Overall, the game plays very smoothly and is exactly what it is intended to be, a digital adaptation of the tabletop board game.  It is nothing real flashy or graphical, but it gets the job done.  Fans of the tabletop version, board game purists, and anyone looking for a new board game will enjoy this game.  The online multiplayer is great for making new friends and learning new strategies or playing with friends and family.  

I highly recommend this game and look forward to playing more and learning new strategies.  It is a great way to pass some time while waiting for The Witcher 3 to release!

I give this game 3/5.