Time for A Hat In ... Time - Printable Version

Time for A Hat In ... Time - Printable Version

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Time for A Hat In ... Time - Dark Jaguar - 6th October 2017

By all accounts, where Yooka Laylee was a decent game that got too much flak for being what it is, A Hat In Time is the one that shines like the sun's sun.

Time for A Hat In ... Time - A Black Falcon - 6th October 2017

Everyone? Have you missed the multiple controversies surrounding the game? Or is that sarcasm, I can't tell.

So in 2013, the game had a successful Kickstarter. It made $300,000, which is less than a tenth of what Yooka-Laylee made, but it was well over the goal. I, unfortunately in retrospect, did back the game. Then the bad stuff started coming out I would summarize it, but just read this here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=251101850&postcount=86 Leading on Wii U owners, questionable stuff about how many Grant Kirkhope songs the game would have, some bad past actions from the lead developer, etc. And on top of that, the game was delayed for years. This was enough to make me turn on the game.

Then it got worse. So, Jontron voices some characters in this game. He also was going to do a voice in Yooka-Laylee, but after he came out as a far-right racist (he said a lot of pretty bad things, if you missed all that and look it up), Playtonic removed him from that game. They got hammered for it by the right, but it was a very good move which shows their quality. The developers of A Hat in Time, however, bravely... have kept him in the game and have refused to say even one single word about the situation, despite the waves of controversy it has brought them. That's really not good. One guy who did some art for the game is pretty upset about this, as you can read here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=251102798&postcount=79

So yeah, between these two things, for reasons mostly unrelated to the game itself, though reports of quite floaty controls are a concern there at least, I've gone into this one pretty much with the opposite attitude that I played Y-L earlier this year with -- where there I was hoping to love the game, here I'm not expecting much. But because I kickstarted this thing I have a copy of the game anyway, so I tried it. I've only played for maybe an hour at most so far so I'm quite early, but my first impressions would be that the game is okay, but it has some issues. The controls are okay, but the tutorializing is slow and it doesn't feel great at first. You can get used to the controls here but they aren't as tight as they probably should be, first; it is indeed floaty. Also at least with a (xinput) gamepad controls seem to be entirely unconfigurable, oddly. You can jump, double jump, dash through the air, attack, and use a function connected to each hat. The starting hat shows you the direction you need to go in to reach the levels' objective, which is crucial.

Now, like Mario 64 or Sunshine but unlike Rare games (or Yooka-Laylee or Mario Odyseey), this game has you go into a level for a specific objective, and you leave as soon as you accomplish it; you can't just wander around and collect stuff Rare-style. Both designs work, they're just different. I think I might like the Rare style a little more. As for the level design here though, I'm too early to really say, but they seem to be going for a large and open style, maybe too much so; without that targeting function on the main hat it'd be hopeless. Y-L's levels are initially confusing also, but you don't need a map or targeting icon to navigate them. I like that design style more.

Graphically the game looks nice, but again the much smaller budget than Y-L shows, and the game is much less polished than that one is, much less the better '90s or '00s 3d platformers that this game wants to be like. Also I really dislike the dithered look of objects once the camera gets close to them, and as in many 3d platformers the camera has issues sometimes. Still, it is mostly a nice looking game with good art design.

Oh, the game is also apparently pretty easy and not too long. Still, though, it can be fun to play and it does have a decent sense of humor. It's too bad about all the bad stuff the developers have done, because otherwise this would be a decent little game maybe worth a look for genre fans... but as it is I can't recommend it. The developers' silence speaks volumes, I think.

Time for A Hat In ... Time - Dark Jaguar - 7th October 2017

Where did I use the word "everyone"? I just mean by all accounts I've seen so far.

It's interesting to see this point of view though. I knew about the Jontron controversy. I can understand why that would turn someone off from the game, but for me it wasn't enough. It certainly wouldn't hurt my feelings if they made the call to cut his voice and get someone else in there though. Frankly, he's not a very good voice actor anyway and should stick to comedy (and should probably also reconsider his stances on a lot of things, I really don't think his racist positions are as close to his heart as he pretends they are).

I had no idea about the troubled development history. I can understand why that would sour you with the game. Untold Story is an even worse case if you've never dived into that one's train wreck development history.

My experience with the controls is that they are, yes floaty, but that's not an inherently bad thing and there are cases where "floaty" is exactly what you need (Nights Into Dreams). Yooka Laylee doesn't exactly have the best controls if you ask me, with some rather questionable choices in how some mechanics work. For the platforming I've seen so far, the controls seem to work pretty well. You're right that it skews further towards Mario 64 than Banjo Kazooie though, but hey, I love Mario 64, so that's ok in my book.

Time for A Hat In ... Time - A Black Falcon - 8th October 2017

Dark Jaguar Wrote:Where did I use the word "everyone"? I just mean by all accounts I've seen so far.

There have only been a handful of reviews so far and they are mostly pretty positive, though Gamespot's 7/10 might be closer to what I'm thinking right now.

Quote:It's interesting to see this point of view though. I knew about the Jontron controversy. I can understand why that would turn someone off from the game, but for me it wasn't enough. It certainly wouldn't hurt my feelings if they made the call to cut his voice and get someone else in there though. Frankly, he's not a very good voice actor anyway and should stick to comedy (and should probably also reconsider his stances on a lot of things, I really don't think his racist positions are as close to his heart as he pretends they are).

I had no idea about the troubled development history. I can understand why that would sour you with the game. Untold Story is an even worse case if you've never dived into that one's train wreck development history.

The Jontron thing is pretty bad, but it's a lot worse because it has happened on top of all that other very questionable stuff the developer did, both before and after the kickstarter. This is one of the reasons why I'm backing far fewer kickstarters now than I was a few years ago; not only is it usually a poor value-for-money proposition, but also sometimes you end up backing things like this, by people you really would rather not support... and that is too bad because the game seems to be okay (though flawed), but it's a significant factor.

Quote:My experience with the controls is that they are, yes floaty, but that's not an inherently bad thing and there are cases where "floaty" is exactly what you need (Nights Into Dreams). Yooka Laylee doesn't exactly have the best controls if you ask me, with some rather questionable choices in how some mechanics work. For the platforming I've seen so far, the controls seem to work pretty well. You're right that it skews further towards Mario 64 than Banjo Kazooie though, but hey, I love Mario 64, so that's ok in my book.

Sure Y-L does take a little getting used to, but once you have the moves it plays really well. This game is very floaty, and it has collision problems too -- I got stuck on a box in the first level, for example, and it sounds like this is not a one-time problem. And while both games have camera issues, like most games in the genre, I'd take Y-L's camera any day over the distractingly bad black cross-hatching AHiT uses...

I know it's hard for me to separate the game from the other stuff, but I consider Yooka-Laylee as one of the best new games I've played in quite some time. It's not going to be my game of the year this year, because Starcraft Remaster exists, but it's up there. AHiT won't be on my list, certainly. I will admit though, with more time you do get more used to the controls, and there is fun to be had. I'm definitely not all negative on the game.

Time for A Hat In ... Time - A Black Falcon - 8th October 2017

Dark Jaguar Wrote:Where did I use the word "everyone"? I just mean by all accounts I've seen so far.

There have only been a handful of reviews so far and they are mostly pretty positive, though Gamespot's 7/10 might be closer to what I'm thinking right now.

Quote:It's interesting to see this point of view though. I knew about the Jontron controversy. I can understand why that would turn someone off from the game, but for me it wasn't enough. It certainly wouldn't hurt my feelings if they made the call to cut his voice and get someone else in there though. Frankly, he's not a very good voice actor anyway and should stick to comedy (and should probably also reconsider his stances on a lot of things, I really don't think his racist positions are as close to his heart as he pretends they are).

I had no idea about the troubled development history. I can understand why that would sour you with the game. Untold Story is an even worse case if you've never dived into that one's train wreck development history.

Quote:My experience with the controls is that they are, yes floaty, but that's not an inherently bad thing and there are cases where "floaty" is exactly what you need (Nights Into Dreams). Yooka Laylee doesn't exactly have the best controls if you ask me, with some rather questionable choices in how some mechanics work. For the platforming I've seen so far, the controls seem to work pretty well. You're right that it skews further towards Mario 64 than Banjo Kazooie though, but hey, I love Mario 64, so that's ok in my book.

Time for A Hat In ... Time - Dark Jaguar - 11th October 2017

Time for A Hat In ... Time - A Black Falcon - 12th October 2017

So I got to world two, and here's what I think so far.

Between Yooka-Laylee and A Hat in Time, in my opinion, it's not even close! Based on gameplay alone both games are fun, but Yooka-Laylee has significantly better graphics, better music, better controls, and better level designs. It's a fantastic game and one of my favorites of the year. That the developers did the right thing by dropping Jontron is awesome, but the game itself is fantastic.

Meanwhile A Hat in Time has a lot of issues which hold it back significantly. Jontron is the biggest one of these, but the others, including the bad past behavior by the lead developer, how they baited Wii U owners for Kickstarter money, and the questionable at best issue of why Grant Kirkhope didn't write more music for the game are all important to consider. There are a lot of reasons outside of the game to dislike A Hat in Time.

As for the game itself though, the game is charming and, once you get used to it, fun to play. It feels like a decent to good, though not amazing, 3d platformer from the early '00s, I think. The controls are too floaty, though, and the collision detection has problems -- you can get stuck behind things way more easily than you should in a commercial game. The controls are also entirely unconfigurable. The defaults are okay, but this is a PC game, support control customization! The collision detection is one way that this games' low budget shows, I think. Because of that budget I can understand why that'd happen, but still, after so many years I'd hope for better. Sure, Y-L has some control issues too, but AHiT's are worse.

The issues aren't only in the controls, though; you can get used to those eventually. Another big issue I have with the game is in the level design. Yooka-Laylee uses the Banjo style, where each level is an open world you wander around collecting stuff in. This is probably the most popular style of 3d platformer world design. A Hat in Time uses the Mario 64/Sunshine style, where you enter from the hub into a set level with a single objective, then exit back out between objectives. It makes for a different style in each game, and I like both; I don't think this makes one of these games better than the other, it's just different. Its design does mean that Y-L has larger levels, though, as each needs to cover a lot more space in order to have room for all of the stuff in it. Exploring 3d platformer levels is fun. It's also a longer and more challenging game, while AHiT is short and pretty easy. This should count for something in Y-L's favor; AHiT won't challenge you much.

I also have an issue with the level design of some parts of AHiT, such as the first level, Mafia Town. While both games have expansive levels for you to learn your way around, in AHiT the designers decided that in this level at least, they needed to have an objective indicator that you can bring up on screen. If you hit a button with the default hat it shows a marker on screen towards where the current mission's objective is. This is great, because the open levels are large enough that it would be easy to wander around lost not having any idea where you're supposed to be going for this mission, but isn't that also a problem? I've never seen an objective indicator in a 3d platformer like this before, and as much as I like games helping you figure out what to do -- and I think it is very important to do that -- somehow it feels wrong. Like, I think that with better level design, like you see in Y-L, you should have been able to guide the player without needing that indicator... but AHiT doesn't have that. (On the other hand there are times in Yooka-Laylee where I wished it had a map, but it's not essential, it'd just be kind of nice. It's not hard to learn the stages.)

The second world in AHiT is different -- these stages are much more linear. That's sort of better, but the control and challenge issues are here. Is there ever anything in this game in between 'so randomly open we needed a targeting cursor' and 'pretty much completely linear'? As I said I've never seen this genre do the former, but the latter can be great (Rayman 2!). But in general you need balance, areas that are open but which have clear goals. The Rare N64 games and Y-L do that masterfully well. They make levels that are large, but fun to navigate and full of stuff to find and do. This is not that.

Now, Yooka-Laylee does have areas in levels you can't do with your current powers and will need to come back to later, that's how it works in a Banjo-style game where you get more powers over time, but because of the open nature of the levels that's fine, once you realize that you need to return to this area later you can just do that. It never has something like this happen.

As for the graphics and sound, AHiT is a nice-looking game for the most part, they did a good job with what budget they had. However, there is a sizable gap between the two games here, the Rare experience and larger budget really show. I do have one issue with AHiT's visuals though, the black dithered outlines it uses when when you get up close to objects or characters go behind something looks bad. On a different presentation note, on the subject of story and comedy, both do that fairly well. I like the British comedy style Y-L uses more so than A Hat in TIme's jokes, but AHiT has charm as well and is amusing at times, certainly. But this is a genre that focuses on gameplay, not story, so this is a minor factor either way.

So, my first impression on the game is that A Hat in Time It's an alright game, but it's kind of average. I'm sure that my bias -- that I went into Y-L wanting to love it, while with this one all of those controversies seriously soured me on the game long before its release -- has an effect, but still, just looking at the games I do think that Y-L is a whole lot better across the board. I can't think of any major game element AHiT does better, it's a wipeout in Y-L's favor!

Normally though, I'd say that anyone who loves the genre like I do absolutely should get both games and see for yourself which you like more... but thanks to the Jontron issue, I can't recommend it for A Hat in Time, whatever the reason is for their keeping him on, people should vote with their money and not financially support that.

Time for A Hat In ... Time - Dark Jaguar - 13th October 2017

It really does seem like the controversies surrounding it have colored your view a lot more than you know. Just as a game, YL came across to me as "fun but average". I haven't had any desire to return to it like I do with Banjo Kazooie. Hat in Time? That one decided to try some new things and use the collectathon genre as a stepping stone to new ideas. To me, the controls and level design don't even come close, but in the opposite way. The moves and the stage design compliment each other so well and the moves that Hattington has are great for platforming in general. The camera also is MUCH better than YL. Collission detection? I'll have to pay a bit more attention, but for my part I didn't notice it as much as I noticed weird oddities with ramps in YL.

Time for A Hat In ... Time - A Black Falcon - 13th October 2017

AHiT has poor level designs, I don't see how there is much to even debate there...

In AHiT, levels so far are either such mediocre designs and so open that you need a targeting cursor, or linear corridors, Rayman 2-style but far less good. Levels vary widely in quality, but none so far are in any way challenging, save for one place I got stuck in the train level... but even that's as much because of poor design (because the game does not explain much of anything well at all, in this case the difference between getting hit and dying) as anything else. Mafia Town is not much fun to explore and has a forgettable look to it. It's a very generic and mediocre 3d platformer level. There's a wide gulf between that world and the first world in any great 3d platformer. The second world, the bird movie company, is better, but its first level is C-grade average linear 3d platformer stage, at best. It has some amusing mechanics, but why does this game fail to explain things just as often as it forgets to tell you vital information (the controls, how to play, etc.)? Like so many things, the stealth mechanic is unexplained, which is kind of annoying. It takes trial and error and some deaths to figure out what to do here, and a better game would explain that. The train level is good, but its its opposite on the other side, the 'walk around and get fans' level? That one's super short, challenge-free, and terrible! Yooka-Laylee has no bad worlds, in comparison. All of the worlds are pretty good designs, loaded with interesting things to find and nicely laid out obstacles, collectibles, and objectives. This game tries, but the developers' inexperience results in an okay but mediocre result.

Or how about another thing. In Y-L, you can use any move that you have unlocked. In AHiT, however, you can't, because a lot of moves are locked to a single hat. So, you need to either pause or hold a button down, switch to the hat in question, and then use that move. It fits the 'hats' theme of the game, and hats do change your moveset -- like how with the speed hat you can't double jump, making platforming pretty bad with that one since the double jump is the only thing saving the floaty jumping -- but as a gameplay mechanic it's kind of annoying.

Basically this game is somewhere in the mid tier of the genre, below games like Ty the Tasmanian Tiger or Vexx, but above, like, Gex 2 or something. It's got some things in common with the Spyro games too, thinking about it, though it's probably not quite as good -- like that game the game is fully voice acted and those voice lines sometimes go on too long (just let me play the game! 3d platformers do NOT need live-action voice acting.), the level designs are lacking in various ways, and both get more praise than I think they probably deserve.

Time for A Hat In ... Time - Dark Jaguar - 13th October 2017

The level design I'm talking about is how it's married to the moveset in a way that YL doesn't quite nail. Navigating the levels using the moves is a pleasure.

However, I see what you mean when it comes to the hats. An argument could be made that it's a weakness like Donkey Kong 64's kong switching. However, unlike that game this one does a great job of not requiring you to back track through levels over and over with different hats.

Time for A Hat In ... Time - A Black Falcon - 15th October 2017

Dark Jaguar Wrote:The level design I'm talking about is how it's married to the moveset in a way that YL doesn't quite nail. Navigating the levels using the moves is a pleasure.

I have no idea what you mean, I haven't seen anything especially great in the AHiT level designs. "Tied to the moveset"? That's things like how Y-L has slopes you need to roll to go up, or such. It successfully follows the Banjo model of designing the level around which powers allow you access to which areas. In AHiT, though, so far at least most of the time you can just use your default moves, which pretty much means just jumping and your not-great default attack. The alternate hats are occasionally needed, but not often. There are fewer moves and fewer areas that need anything beyond your basic stuff. And of course the levels are a lot smaller and not as well laid out, but I said that already.

Y-L may not have level designs quite on the level of Rare's N64 3d platformers, but it's in that ballpark and I like the larger scale of the stages than you'd see on the N64.

Quote:However, I see what you mean when it comes to the hats. An argument could be made that it's a weakness like Donkey Kong 64's kong switching. However, unlike that game this one does a great job of not requiring you to back track through levels over and over with different hats.

Yeah, because there are fewer areas that require you to use abilities period. That's not better!

Time for A Hat In ... Time - Dark Jaguar - 16th October 2017

Yes, it's shorter. It's a short game. I would rather it be longer. That doesn't ruin the game though.

As far as "tied to the moveset", I don't just mean "here's a ramp, use that ramp climbing move". I mean when seen overall, the structure of one platform to the next creates a natural "flow" that is just fun. Not one obstacle, but the next 20 obstacles when viewed as one cohesive path.

The sad truth is, even the most terrible morally reprehensible monster might paint a good painting now and then. Yes, the controversies behind the making of this game aren't good. The game itself is still great though. The people who are arguable morally worse have made a better game than the good guys, in my opinion. Not a moral judgement, but an artistic one.

Time for A Hat In ... Time - Dark Jaguar - 17th October 2017

As an example of a recent game where the moves are tied directly to level design, the Crash Bandicoot HD remakes and Super Mario All-Stars. In the Crash Bandicoot trilogy, Crash's jumping was altered. His jumps, up and down, are faster and his landing on certain things is more slippery (that's more due to changes in how the game renders level geometry, but it affects controls). As a direct result, the way levels play has to be changed. Platformers in particular are drastically affected by changes like this. Since every platform is placed with Crash's abilities in mind, a change to how Crash controls can ruin a lot of jumps and large sections loose their rhythm. The games are still playable, and beatable (testing made sure to that) but it isn't as fun and a lot of deaths feel cheap as a result. Now look at Super Mario All-Stars. With one exception, the way Mario controls remains identical to how he controlled in each of the Mario game, and I do mean each one on an individual level. He didn't control exactly the same across all 4 games, and so he doesn't control the same in the games in the remake. They kept his movement and controls identical on a per-game basis because the jumps and the flow from one obstacle to the next depended on it. There is one notable exception in SMB1, a code flaw where a number had it's sign reversed, so that when breaking a brick instead of bouncing down like in the original Mario is pulled up slightly into the brick. This breaks the flow of speed running or certain fun paths where every time you jump into a brick, the one next to it stops your forward momentum for a bit so you have to get back on track. It's not so bad it breaks the game, and the rest of the physics are spot-on, but it's notable that such a tiny change can affect the way the game feels to many high level players. I bring all this up as an example of how movement physics and level design need to compliment each other beyond the basic "this move can break this item" thinking.

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Now let's look at the quills. What are the purpose of coins, rings, notes, and bananas? Yes, getting 100 gets you an extra life (or opens a door in the case of notes), but that's not their purpose. A 1-up mushroom or key could easily substitute and the designer would only need to place 1 of those instead of 100. The real purpose of these items is to act as breadcrumbs. All of those things, when used properly, either guide the player along an intended path, or hint at possible secrets. That's their real purpose. The extra lives or door unlocks associated with them are merely to make sure the player is motivated to follow them. Way back in Super Mario Bros, level 2, you see coins on top of a large block that might just seem like decoration, but you want to see if you can get up there. Once you are up there, you notice you can break blocks above that and you are suddenly above the level along a secret path skipping everything else. The coins are what made you investigate that height in the first place. You're running along a level with some bottomless pits, but you notice a banana trail leading off the edge and seemingly going down to nowhere. You take a chance and take a leap of faith finding out that the banana trail was showing you a secret bonus barrel just below the fall. You have been following notes when you notice there are a few notes on top of a mansion way out of your reach. Their presence there makes you look around and you see a few more notes on a bush, then a few more a bit higher up on a fence, and as you keep finding them you keep going until you find yourself on top of that mansion. The notes led the way the whole time, but you end up thinking you found a secret all by yourself. In most of these platformers, you will find on reflection that the programmers often tricked you into feeling smart when they were guiding you by the nose all along. This isn't a bad thing, it's the way the games are designed. Rings in Sonic are a special case. Sometimes they were placed as breadcrumbs, but just as often they were just sort of scattered around levels as recharges so you didn't run out. Sonic Mania took a page out of Nintendo's book and made ring placement far more consistently function as breadcrumbs.

Compare this to Yooka Laylee. The quills are just scattershot throughout the level. There's no sense of using them as breadcrumbs the way notes were used in the Banjo games. They are just "there". If you ask me, there was key staff missing from the development of this game, that staff being Miyamoto and the gang, the Nintendo big wigs that guided their hand during the development of games like Donkey Kong Country. Retro has that same guidance right now, and watching staff interviews indicates just how much that mattered. Things like this are why I don't think YL is as good as the old N64 games. DK64, whatever else you might say, also used bananas properly as breadcrumbs.

Time for A Hat In ... Time - A Black Falcon - 23rd October 2017

Dark Jaguar Wrote:Yes, it's shorter. It's a short game. I would rather it be longer. That doesn't ruin the game though.

It's not only short though, it's also really easy, provided that you can figure out where to go. That is a big issue. Yooka-Laylee, in contrast, isn't as long or tough as some classic 3d platformers, but it's much more in line with what you expect from the genre.

Quote:As far as "tied to the moveset", I don't just mean "here's a ramp, use that ramp climbing move". I mean when seen overall, the structure of one platform to the next creates a natural "flow" that is just fun. Not one obstacle, but the next 20 obstacles when viewed as one cohesive path.

The levels have flow? So far at least, and I've played like seven or eight levels, it's very generic stuff. Either stages are linear and average, with a succession of challenges to face in a decently fun but not great way, or they are subpar open levels with big level-design problems. These stages feel aimless, like a large space with a bunch of stuff semi-randomly tossed in all over. It's fine, but is pretty average stuff. You'll find better level designs, and controls, in mediocre, mid-tier 3d platformers from the late '90s to early '00s.

As for Yooka-Laylee, its levels are large, detailed, so much fun to explore... there are worlds of difference between the two. Of course Y-L is not perfect, the Rextro minigames are kind of bad most obviously and I certainly agree that Nintendo's help would have made it better, like they did with the Rare games from when Rare was a part of Nintendo, but Yooka-Laylee is still pretty good. (To compare the game to some other post-Nintendo-partnership titles, Yooka-Laylee is quite a bit better than Lair (though unlike some I don't hate this game) or Nitrobike, to name a few. Or Grabbed by the Ghoulies, for that matter.)

Quote:The sad truth is, even the most terrible morally reprehensible monster might paint a good painting now and then. Yes, the controversies behind the making of this game aren't good. The game itself is still great though. The people who are arguable morally worse have made a better game than the good guys, in my opinion. Not a moral judgement, but an artistic one.

Fortunately their game isn't anywhere remotely near as good as the 'good guys' game is.

Quote: Compare this to Yooka Laylee. The quills are just scattershot throughout the level. There's no sense of using them as breadcrumbs the way notes were used in the Banjo games. They are just "there". If you ask me, there was key staff missing from the development of this game, that staff being Miyamoto and the gang, the Nintendo big wigs that guided their hand during the development of games like Donkey Kong Country. Retro has that same guidance right now, and watching staff interviews indicates just how much that mattered. Things like this are why I don't think YL is as good as the old N64 games. DK64, whatever else you might say, also used bananas properly as breadcrumbs.

I've seen people complain about this since the games' release, but I've never understood the complaint because the way Y-L puts powerups around doesn't seem very different from most other 3d platformers! There's plenty of gating, strings of quills often lead to areas with things to collect or to important areas, etc. I think they did a fine job with locating the powerups. But people complained, and in the big patch didn't they say that they improved on the issue further? So how much of this complaint even still applies to post-patch Yooka-Laylee?

As I said above I very much agree that Nintendo's influence would have made the game better, but they did a pretty good job on their own.

Also, I find it kind of ironic that you complain about this in respect to Yooka-Laylee, because to me it's AHiT which has big issues with how the base items, those green gems, are located. The gems are everywhere, but in the open levels what's the point?

Okay, so I was looking into this a bit, and here's the thing.

Mario 64 and Sunshine have gold coins and stars/shines. Gold coins mostly work as they have before, you collect 100 for an extra life. They reset each time you go into a stage, so they are always all there in the beginning. Stars or Shines are your main objectives, and there is a separate version of the stage for each one, so each Star or Shine is its own level. There are also some Stars/Shines which you can get by getting 100 coins in a level, and the game records the max number of coins you've gotten in each level and whether you've gotten that star. Unlike a Rare game there aren't exactly 100 coins in each stage, there are more, either a limited or in some cases perhaps unlimited number, but still this is nice to know.

In Banjo-Kazooie and other games in that style, however, levels are larger open spaces full of minor coin-like collectibles -- notes, gems, coins, whatever -- to collect, as well as major star-like collectibles -- jiggies, what have you. When you do an objective in an area of the map you get one of the major collectible. In most games in this style, major collectibles are a limited resource -- collecting them once collects them for good. The original Banjo-Kazooie is an exception however, as the minor collectibles reset each time you enter a level and you need to collect all 100 in one go in order to get the reward for doing so. I always really disliked this element of the game, it holds it back. I won't get into that here again now, though. Most games after B-K do better and only make you collect things once.

Yooka-Laylee follows that model, and has stuff scattered around its large levels for you to collect, both major and minor. The minor stuff only can be collected once, as you'd hope, and the game keeps track of all the stats you'd want, including how many of each you've gotten, etc. It's great and exploring the levels is a lot of fun; the level designs are really good! I could make a few minor complaints beyond the aforementioned bad Rextro minigames, such as that there are a few key items that you can't get without powers you don't have yet that aren't clearly marked as such, so I wasted time once trying to get something you have to come back later for, but this is pretty minor stuff. It's a fantastic game.

But A Hat in Time? It's kind of weird. The game has the Mario 64 design of having a separate level for every major collectible, but the Yooka-Laylee style of having to get the minor collectibles to buy powers, and the 'what the heck why would you do things that way' style of minor collectible pickup. Okay, so in this game, you need to get green gems to buy powers. Green gems are all over the levels, scattered around leading you nowhere relevant because in the open stages 95% of them have nothing to do with the mission you're actually on. So you collect them once and it keeps track of your total like in a Rare game, right?

Nope. The minor pickups all respawn every time you enter a stage, first. That could be fine, but this is nothing like Mario 64 because of the store element, rem,ember. In this game, if you re-enter a level repeatedly you can just collect the same ones over and over to add to your green gem total! So unlike a Rare game, green gems in this game are an unlimited grindable resource, not a limited resource you get with skill and exploration. Following on this, the game doesn't seem to have any kind of stat screen keeping track of how many green gems you've collected either, so what's the most you've gotten in each level? Who knows, the game doesn't keep track. This is not how any good 3d platformer does things, to say the least! So as I said, it's the 'what the heck,why would you do things that way' school of design and it is not good.

Basically, they decided to make a game mostly inspired by Mario 64, but also put in a Rare-style shop with powers you have to earn, and messed up the way you get the currency to buy the powers with. When I play a level in this kind of game, my first goal is to get the objective item, the Mario 64 Star equivalent. If I get some other stuff, coins, gems, etc., along the way that's nice, and finding stuff can be fun, but I'm not the type who must get everything. But it's hard to focus on your objective, even when the game makes it very obvious like this one does with its large on-screen 'go this way' indicators, when there are other items all over that you could go and collect if you wanted; it's kind of tempting, even though I know that most of it is, again, irrelevant to the stage at hand. This is a real problem which holds this game back, and is really distracting and kind of awful. I know this is kind of how Mario 64 and Sunshine work as well, but again the difference in what coins/gems mean in each game is significant. Also those games have way better level designs than this one does, of course, and that helps to say the least.

So, that's two major flaws with A Hat in Time's "coin" system, it badly messes up how to get coins (gems) by allowing and perhaps even implicitly suggesting grind in a game with purchasable powerups, and discourages exploration in a platformer full of stuff scattered around by not keeping track of how many "coins" you have gotten or can get in the level.

How is this anything other than the flawed, average-at-best game design that it is? And this is a fairly important element of any game in this genre, too!

In pretty much every category, the difference between Yooka-Laylee and A Hat in Time is that the former is a quality professional title (that I really love, it's one of the best games of the year), while the other is an indie effort by people who don't know the genre nearly as well, and it shows (that I kind of like anyway, if we ignore all of the non-game-related stuff which we shouldn't).