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.

Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic Review (Xbox One)

Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic by developer Bitfather is a turn-based action game that reminds me of a mix between the original Dragon Warrior and Oregon Trail.  It succeeds in satisfying nostalgic yearnings, but still leaves a few things to be desired.

In Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic, you begin your adventure in a pub where you must assemble a party of three adventurers from seven unique classes. Each class has its own strengths and weaknesses, which are of the standard RPG tropes of Strength, Dexterity, Faith, Life, and Intelligence. Additionally, each class has two specific skills that can turn the tide of any battle. There are a lot of characters to choose from, which is a really nice feature. Initially, these character options are limited to a handful, but through the course of play you'll unlock 30 unique characters, each with their own skills, strengths, and weaknesses. This massive amount of variety and options are a huge bonus to the game's replayability, and you will do a lot of replaying.

After getting your team together, you will set out to complete three different adventures that get progressively more difficult. Within each adventure, you will encounter six randomized dungeons. After completing these six dungeons, you will come to a "final" dungeon for the adventure. Beating the final dungeon will unlock the next adventure difficulty.

Each dungeon has its own unique style.  Figuring out a dungeon's weaknesses while defending against its’ strengths is can be very difficult.  There are 16 different status effects and four different elements at play within Pixel Heroes.  Knowing the weakness and strengths of each dungeon and being able to defend and attack against those is the biggest challenge within the game.

Being able to gear up your party is the most important part of the game.  Unfortunately, there is no inventory stash of any kind to keep items. As you move on from dungeon to dungeon, you'll almost certainly have to re-gear your party from scratch with either found loot or items and spells purchased in town between dungeons. It’s really frustrating when you have to discard a weapon or some sort of equipment because you know it won’t be of any use during the next dungeon, only to need it at the following dungeon after that.  Some kind of a stash at towns between dungeons or something would have been great.

The controls in Pixel Heroes are very simple and straight-forward, which you would expect in this type of game.  However, while the UI is pretty basic, I found it to be very hard to navigate and understand what I was doing.  The game features no instructions on how to use the UI and it took me awhile to get a basic understanding on how to equip and unequip items, as well as what these items do. It also took me awhile to figure out how to get rid of items and which items I need and didn’t need.  Since you're not allowed to advance to the next room in a dungeon if you're overburdened, this took some time to figure out.  While the controls are simple, not all of the buttons are used.  It would have been nice if there were buttons to do the simple tasks, such as throwing away items or equipping.  A tutorial or built-in instructions would have been helpful as well.  

The combat in Pixel Heroes is pretty good.  During each battle your three heroes go up against three enemies. Only one hero and one enemy may act each turn. After each turn, the hero/enemy must then rest the next turn. This makes for a nice, tactical experience. Each hero is limited to two attack actions and two special skills that have cooldowns that can last for multiple battles. While this may seem like a downside to some, it makes preparation for each dungeon even more important.  When a hero dies in battle, their ghost follows along with the team for the remainder of the dungeon. If you complete the dungeon and get back to town, you will have the option to resurrect your fallen heroes. If all of your heroes die in a dungeon, your adventure ends, and your heroes get buried in the Graveyard, which you're able to visit from the main menu.

Overall, Pixel Heroes is a successful blending of that classic, turn-based RPG gameplay with a modern, rogue-like twist. The UI, lack of a "stash" feature, and lack of general instruction are my biggest gripes, but the combat system and deep replayability make up for those gripes.

3/5

Toby: The Secret Mine Review (Xbox One)

In Toby: The Secret Mine, developed by Lukas Navratil and published by Headup Games, players control Toby, who races through levels and solves puzzles in an attempt to save his friends that have been held captive by a mysterious species. Unfortunately, players will do little more over the course of this 2D puzzle-platformer than solve puzzles and execute simple platforming segments.

The gameplay in Toby: The Secret Mine is very straight-forward and simple. Anyone that has ever played a platformer should be able to pick up this game and play it.  Controls are very simple and that is not a criticism against the game. I usually don’t complain about a game being too simple as long as it doesn’t get too repetitive. This is where Toby lacks. After getting about half way through the games 21 levels, which you can complete in a day or less if you try, I began getting bored and tired of the same types of puzzles and levels. As stated above, you must save as many of your friends, whom are trapped in cages throughout the levels.  Unfortunately, there is no indication on how many of these friends are in each level or how many you have left to find, so it can be hard to find them all.

The graphics in Toby: The Secret Mine are by far the game’s biggest strength. The Limbo-esque visuals are amazing and change enough between levels to help keep the game fresh and interesting, at least for awhile. Backgrounds look amazing and the use of effects and lighting are honestly some of the best I’ve seen in platform games.  

Overall, Toby: The Secret Mine is a short, decent platformer. It is available on the Xbox Store for $9.99. I’m not sure I would spend the $10 on this game, unless you are really wanting a short platformer to play through. The puzzles are way too easy and repetitive and there is no real storyline to keep players engaged. There are plenty of other similar platformers out there that are better.

2/5

Rise and Shine Review (Xbox One)

Rise and Shine is a side-scrolling platformer/action game, published by Adult Swim Games, with a comic book art style and (sometimes) brutal gameplay.  Players play as Rise, a little guy who’s thrown into a war between humans and aliens on his home planet of Gamearth. After a brief encounter with a giant robot, you wake up in a mall filled with chaos and destruction. There you meet a guy who gives you a gun named Shine. Shine is no ordinary gun, Shine is a revolver that has special abilities such as a homing system, and a range of different types of bullets. After getting out of the mall, you embark on a constant mix of firing Shine, manipulating his bullets and contemplating your next move.

The control system is fairly basic, but can be a little wonky at times. Players move with the left stick, jump with A, hide behind cover with B, very simple controls.  Shooting is done by bringing up the aiming reticle by holding the left trigger, using the right stick to aim and pressing the right trigger to shoot.  The left bumper is used to change gun enhancements and the right bumper is used to change bullet types.  These enhancements and bullet types have different uses throughout the game.

Gameplay-wise, Rise and Shine is really difficult at many points, but it is fun enough to keep players engaged and wanting to get through the tough parts.  One of the main things that makes the game so difficult is that, for the most part, it takes only one enemy bullet or strike to kill you.  Thankfully, you restart at the closest checkpoint, which are abundant enough to keep you from having to go back too far in a level.

Rise and Shine incorporates a lot of puzzle mechanics in its campaign, which really helps keep the game entertaining.  For example, you’ll come up against a door that won’t open, but by selecting the homing bullet, you can use it to move through tight gaps and past unsuspecting gun turrets to blow up the generator.

The artwork in Rise and Shine is very, very  good. There’s a rich palette of color, plenty of variety in each scene, and a real attention to detail. From the beginning of a stage to the end, nothing seems to repeat itself.  There is a lot of over the top violence and gore, especially for the comic-book style artwork.  There is lots of blood, as well as heads and other body parts rolling around.  This caught me off-guard at first, but is actually pretty cool.  

Overall, Rise and Shine is a really fun game.  It is very fast paced and keeps you on your toes and thinking both at the same time.  The puzzles really help save the game from being a boring side-scroller.  

3/5

Spareware Review (Xbox One)

Spareware on Xbox One, developed by Rusto Games, is a twin-stick shooter with light RPG mechanics with player leveling, skill trees and a unique cell management system.  At first glance you might assume you just try to survive as long as possible against hordes of enemies. While you wouldn’t be completely wrong, you’d be overlooking the surprising amount of depth to the game.  With 4 player local multiplayer, it becomes even more fun, just try to avoid shooting your fellow comrades.

The story of Spareware is pretty simple; It’s the year 2186.  The environment has turned destructive and humans now live in protective city domes. Robots are rebelling against humans and that’s about it. Gain new abilities and destroy any human that stands in your way. Nothing special, but it does the job.

Before playing each level, the player can equip new gear in five categories: head, torso, left arm, right arm, and feet. At the beginning of the game you won’t have many options, as most of the gear is locked. You can collect new gear throughout the game, but if you die, you will lose everything. You can unlock gear permanently by earning achievements, a decision by the developers that I found interesting.  For most players, it will become a priority to earn these achievements to unlock gear permanently. Each piece of gear will increase your stats in some way, whether it be speed, strength, magazine capacity, etc.

Every level has objectives, such as: collect an item, destroy an electric barrier, or reach the level exit. Standing in your path are hordes of human enemies wielding guns, bats and riot shields that would love to turn you into scrap metal. Leveling up earns ability points that you can use to upgrade your robot. There are passive abilities such as extra health and faster movement; or you can spend on active abilities such as mines, invincibility, or even saw-drones that circle the player and slice enemies into scrap human.

Players also need to collect cells in each level. In some ways this is more important than anything else. All of the gear you collect requires cells to equip, with typically the better gear and weapons requiring more cells. Cells are earned by destroying cars and picking up the blue cells that drop. You also are credited the cell value of any gear not destroyed at the end of the level. As you take damage you will slowly break down, piece by piece starting with the head. If your guns happen to be destroyed, you can pick up new ones laying around the level.

The graphics, sound and music are all fairly generic. Like most twin stick shooters, you play from a top-down perspective. The graphics are cel-shaded graphics that are not very detailed. Pretty much every stage takes place in the same city environment, which is a big disappointment.  The music is as very plain and generic soundtrack, and it tends to repeat itself quite a bit. The sound effects are nothing spectacular but they get the job done.

I found the controls to be quite responsive and well laid out. You control your character with the left stick and aim with the right stick. Shooting is done with the left and right triggers.  Manual reloading is performed with the left and right bumpers respectively as well. Active perks such as bombs or drones can be mapped to the X, Y or B buttons. There is also a transparent map that can be called up and kept on screen using the D-pad.

While I can deal with most of the issues in the game, there is one that bothers me most, friendly fire. Yes, that is right, friendly fire.  As if there is not enough going on with 4 players and tons of enemies, throw avoiding friendly fire in as another thing to accomplish.   You might think, well I will just disable friendly fire.  Good idea, but there’s no way to turn off friendly fire.  At least you can revive fallen enemies, but the option to turn friendly fire off would be nice.

Overall, Spareware is a decent twin stick shooter that is fun with buddies, just don’t shoot each other, unless they deserve it.  It is available on Xbox One via the Microsoft Store for $9.99.

2/5

The Gamers Lounge Reactions and Thoughts on Microsoft E3 Conference

Microsoft had many great announcements and features at their E3 conference this morning.  Many new games were shown, features were announced, and one demonstration that stole the show for a lot of onlookers.  

Gameplay footage of Halo 5 Guardians was shown.  The game was said to be built from the ground up with epic worlds and battles at an epic scale.  The footage shown was a team of 4 spartans hunting for Master Chief.  It appeared that players are able to give commands to team members to help get through battles.  Josh Holmes of 343 Industries also mentioned that Halo 5 features drop in/out multiplayer and the maps are 4 times the size of any other maps from other Halo games.  He also presented a new “Warzone” multiplayer mode.  In this mode it is the player vs. everything; other players and AI enemies.  The graphics in Halo 5 Guardians looked great and I look forward to the game getting closer to launch.

The World Premier of a new Xbox One exclusive franchise called Recore was shown.  The trailer showed a woman and her robotic pet walking through a desert.  Based on the footage, it looks like this could be an interesting game to follow in the coming months.

Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox, made the announcement that Xbox One backwards compatibility is coming.  The backwards compatibility will work with Xbox 360 games that developers allow to be made backwards compatible.  This will work with both physical and digital games and will be available this holiday season.

The Xbox One Elite Wireless Controller was announced.  It features swappable components, button and paddle remapping, sensitivity adjustments and more.  The controller will be released this fall.  No specific date or price was given.

Fallout 4 was shown.  It will feature full character customization and can be played in both 1st and 3rd person views.  An announcement was also made that mods made on the PC version of Fallout 4 can be played on the Xbox One version as well.

Peter Moore of EA made a couple of announcements.  He announced that EA Access will be free this week to all Xbox Live Gold members.  He also announced a couple new games that will be added to the Vault, Titanfall, which will be added this week and Dragon Age: Inquisition, which will be added this fall.  Members of EA Access will now be able to begin playing games before their street dates, such as Madden 16 on August 20th.  He also showed a trailer for Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2.  The game features new characters, worlds and modes and will be released in the Spring of 2016.

A Forza 6 trailer and footage was presented.  The game features 26 destinations, 450 cars, 24 player multiplayer and runs at 60 fps at 1080p resolution.  The game will be released on September 15th and looks amazing.

A World Premier trailer for Dark Souls 3 was shown.  Not much was shown, except an early 2016 release date, but it was pretty exciting none-the-less.

Tom Clancy’s The Division was shown with gameplay footage.  It looks like it is going to be a great Action RPG set in New York.  It was announced that Xbox One players will get the first Beta in December.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege was also shown.  It was also announced that Rainbow Six Vegas and Rainbow Six Vegas 2 will come free with Rainbow Six Siege on Xbox One.

Many indie titles were shown, including Beyond Eyes, an adventure game where the main character is blind and Cuphead, a 16-bit style platformer that features 1930’s cartoon style graphics.  It looks like a bright future ahead for indie games on Xbox One.

RARE announced RARE Replay which will feature 30 classic RARE games, such as Perfect Dark, Banjo Kazooie, R.C. Pro Am and Battletoads.  RARE Replay will be released on August 4th for $30.

RARE also revealed their newest Adventure game, Sea of Thieves.  The trailer showed lots of explosive battles on ships and some on land adventuring.  It looks like a game I will be keeping my eyes on as it develops further.

Fable Legends was shown and will be free-to-play on Xbox One and Windows 10.  It was announced that players on both platforms will be able to play together.

Xbox Game Preview was announced, which is a program that allows players to buy and play titles while they are still in development, similar to Steam Early-access titles.  Every game in the program will have a free demo for players to try before committing to buying.  The program starts today.

Gameplay of Rise of the Tomb Raider was shown.  The graphics and lighting in the game looked amazing and the gameplay was very intense.  It is set to be released this Holiday season.

Gears of War Ultimate Edition was announced.  It is a remake of the original Gears of War and will be released on August 25th.  A public beta for the game starts today.

A teaser trailer for Gears of War 4 was also shown with a release date of Holiday 2016.

A demonstration of Minecraft being played using the Microsoft Hololens was shown.  They were able to use a special camera that showed everyone what it looked like through the Hololens.  First, the man using the Hololens put a “screen” on the wall of the stage and played your everyday Minecraft using a controller.  Another player joined his game and the game looked and played just as it would on a PC or console.  The player then turned off the screen on the wall and walked over to a table on stage.  Using a voice command, he turned the table into a 3D view of the Minecraft game.  He was able to walk around and look at the world from all angles.  He was also able to “lift” the Minecraft world up and look below ground to help the other player find materials underground.  He was able to use commands to help guide her to the right spot.  There were many voice commands he used to do different things in the game, such as saying “lightning strike” did just that, sent a bolt of lightning to the world.  This demonstration was amazing and makes you wonder just what else you will be able to do when development is complete and what games other than Minecraft will be like.  This demonstration was the moment of the conference for me, as I’m sure it was for many others.

Make sure you stay tuned at The Gamer’s Lounge for more E3 updates and news!

Funk of Titans (Xbox One) Review

Funk of Titans is a fast-paced, side-scrolling platformer developed and published by the indie group A Crowd of Monsters.  In Funk of Titans, you take control of Perseus, son of Zeus, and try to protect the Funk.  You will venture through 3 different "worlds", Pop, Rap and Rock, each with its own unique level style and Titans (bosses). 

Funk of Titans is a very fun and simple game, but can be very addicting.  The concept is simple, run through the many levels, pick up as many "vinyls" as you can, try to find the hidden Pegasus and make it to the finish.  I will explain what the vinyls and the Pegasus are used for later in this review.

The controls for this game are very simple.  You do not control the direction in which Perseus runs.  He runs all on his own, so there is no going back to grab any vinyls that you might have missed or to look for the Pegasus.  The A button is used to jump and B, Y or X can be used to attack.  It doesn't matter which attack button you use as every enemy takes only one attack to defeat it.  

Speaking of enemies, there are only a couple main types of enemies.  Enemies that wear white helmets can be attacked or jumped on for a boost.  At certain parts in almost every level, jumping on one of these enemies helps you get more vinyls or access certain parts of the level you cannot reach any other way.  There are also enemies with red, spiky helmets on.  These enemies must be attacked and cannot be jumped on.  Certain doors or barricades must be attacked to open and there are also spikes, fire and other obstacles that you must jump over in order to not take damage.  

When it comes to damage, there is no life meter or anything like that.  You can only take 2 hits of damage from any enemy or obstacle before you "die" and must start the level over.  After you take one hit of damage, you will become "naked".  Perseus loses his costume and continues running through the level. If there are any more hits from enemies or obstacles, you lose.  

The vinyls you save up from each level can be used in the "Shop". The Shop contains many different weapons and consumes you can use in the game.  Since it only takes one attack to defeat any enemies in levels, the different weapons don't make any difference when it comes to attacks.  In certain levels, you are required to have certain weapons equipped in order to break down doors that have Pegasus behind them.  This is about the only use the different weapons have. When it comes to costumes, they are mostly used for looks, not much else, except when wearing a certain costume for a set number of levels in a requirement in order to level up.

During the game you level Perseus up, which unlocks more weapons and costumes that become available in the Store.  In order to level up, you will be given 3 tasks that you must complete.  These tasks range from defeating a certain number of enemies to jumping at least a certain number of times in one level.  I found that there was a good variety of requirements to level up, which kept the game interesting.  

Whenever you find a Pegasus in a level, you get to play the Pegasus Bonus Round.  This mini-game is a "Flappy Bird" type game.  You hold down the A button to make Pegasus fly higher and let go to fly lower.  It is fast-paced and you have to try to fly as long as you can while picking up vinyls.  If you die during the level that you found the Pegasus, you have to get it again in order to play the bonus game.  I found the bonus game to be pretty fun and give the game as a whole some variety.  Finding all of the Pegasus' in the levels can be tough too.  

The "Worlds" in general remind me a lot of the Mario games.  Each world has a boss in the middle of the world and a Titan boss at the end, just like the Mario games that had the castles in the middle of the world and the big castle at the end.  In Funk of Titans, the boss battle in the middle of the world happens in a boxing ring.  The battle consists of a pretty easy quick-finger mini-game.  Once the battle starts, random buttons will appear on the screen and you have to press that button faster than the computer does.  The Titan boss levels are dance-offs.  When you enter the battle, the computer will do a dance and receive a score.  After that, it is your turn.  Buttons will randomly appear on the screen and once again you must press them before it's too late.  The Titan boss levels are a little harder than the middle, but I found both to be very easy.  I had no problem getting perfect scores on either of the mini-game boss battles.  

Most of the levels are pretty short.  You can pass most levels in 1-2 minutes.  I was able to complete the game in around 4 hours, but am going back through to perfect each level.  You can get up to 3 "awards" after each level.  One for completing the level without taking any damage, one for collecting at least 100 vinyls in the level and another for finding the Pegasus.  If you don't complete all 3, it will turn green and let you move on the the next level, but if you do the level will turn yellow.  Trying to "perfect" each level will keep you coming back for more. 

If you enjoy side-scrolling platformers and are looking for something different, try out Funk of Titans.  It can get a little repetitive at times, but the variety between levels is enough to keep it interesting.  It is definitely worth the $12.49 on the Xbox Live Store.  

I give the game 3.5/5

Funk of Titans Gameplay on Xbox One. Indie developer A Crowd of Monsters gave The Gamers Lounge a pre-release copy of Funk of Titans for review. Here is some gameplay from one of my play sessions. Sorry for the change in commentary volume. Will get that fixed in my next video.