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

Poly Bridge Review (Early Access PC)

Poly Bridge by Dry Cactus is a bridge building simulation Early Access PC game available on Steam in which the player’s objective is to build a bridge stable enough to support multiple types of vehicles while staying under budget and suiting the needs for different factors, such as ships that may need to pass under the bridge. Players can choose from a variety of different materials such as wood, steel, cable, and hydraulic pistons and must take into account the weight of the various vehicles, the max joint stress of different parts of your bridge and your budget for the level.

Gameplay in Poly Bridge is pretty simple and the game is fairly easy to navigate.  There is a tutorial available to help get you through getting started, if needed, but I was able to figure things out rather quickly without needing the tutorial.  There are also helpful tools, such as the ability to reveal the high and low stress points of your bridge.  There is a campaign mode where players must solve puzzle-type levels by building bridges that have the capability of getting vehicles from point A to point B.  The levels in campaign mode start off fairly easy and plain but get more difficult and interesting as you go along.  I didn’t find any of the levels too difficult, but found myself going back and playing some of the levels multiple times to try out different designs and ideas.  There is also a Sandbox mode in which you can create your own levels and have fun trying out any design or idea you can come up with.  I found myself spending quite a bit of time in Sandbox mode just playing around and creating levels with anything from simple bridges to multiple suspended bridges.  It is a lot of fun coming up with all kinds of crazy bridges and seeing what they are capable of doing.  

The visuals in Poly Bridge look nice and are what you would expect in a bridge building simulation game.  Building is done using a 2D dotted line map.  This is where players select and place the materials they wish to build the bridge out of, along with any other features they would like to add.  The rest of the game is in a 3D type environment which shows the cars, land and water features and of course, your bridge.  The graphics in this environment work great for the type of game Poly Bridge is.  Stunning, life-like visuals aren’t necessary for this type of game and the cartoony style graphics fit the game very well.  

I have played a few bridge building games in the past and was pretty skeptical about Poly Bridge before playing it.  Being an Early Access game, there are a few minor bugs that I ran into while playing, but they were nothing bad enough to really effect the gameplay and the developers at Dry Cactus have been doing a great job at working on and fixing bugs and responding to the Steam community.  It is an addicting game that keeps improving and is well worth the $11.99 on Steam.

Score: 3 out of 5

Dirt Rally Review (Early Access PC)

Dirt Rally, from Codemasters, is an early-access Steam game that returns to an authentic and dangerous off-road racing experience.  Currently, the game has four massive environments and 38 challenging stages. You can drive them during the day or night, along with different weather conditions, such as dry, overcast, sunny, misty, wet, rainy and snowy. Dirt Rally also currently has 20 cars you can drive, from old to new, each which handle and drive differently.  Codemasters plans on releasing more cars and tracks as the game develops.

Dirt Rally also features a few different types of events for players to participate in, such as Rally Championships, Rally Async and custom Rally Events.  The game also features a great team management system where you can hire up to four engineering staff to work on your vehicle between stages.  The car upgrade system is also a great feature where your engineers will become more familiar with your cars the more you drive them and will research upgrades that will unlock the full potential of the car.

The gameplay and physics in Dirt Rally are amazing.  The game is a straight-forward simulation style drift racing game.  There are no over-the-top stunts or bonus points for long drifts.  Codemasters has done a great job so far of creating an emotionally-charged game.  You feel the intensity of every sharp corner as you hug the edge of the turn and do everything you can to keep the car from falling off the cliff while tearing through the track as fast as you can.  Every car has a different feel to it and each car can take some time getting used to.  The controls in the game feel very realistic and fluid.  I used an Xbox 360 controller for the most part while playing and it worked very well.  This is one of the few racing games out that has made me want to go out and buy a racing wheel for my PC.

The graphics in Dirt Rally are gorgeous.  Everything from the cars to the environment have amazing details which will likely only get better as the game progresses towards final release state.  The sounds of the game are also great.  You can hear everything from the gravel hitting your car to your brakes grinding when you hit them too hard.  The graphics and sound combined are some of the most impressive I have ever seen in a racing game.

Overall, Dirt Rally is one of the best racing games I have ever played, even though it is in the early-access stage.  If you enjoy arcade style racing games, this game may not be for you.  If you enjoy realistic, simulation style racers, this game is definitely for you.  It takes a while to get used to the handling of the cars, as one little mistake can send your car spinning.  Once you are used to it, it feels amazing when you hug each corner and improve your times each race.  I am really looking forward to seeing what more Codemasters can do to improve Dirt Rally.

4.5/5

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.