Time for A Hat In ... Time

[A Black Falcon]

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...stcount=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...stcount=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.