Board 8 > Is A Hat in Time good?

(+) Yeah! (+)

A Hat in Time was really weird on PC. Every other game I'd played on Steam needed a separate app installed to read a PS4 controller as an XBOX One controller, but A Hat in Time didn't for whatever reason. Having the app installed created an issue where I could only move at a creep, and I just thought the controller support was buggy or something. Made me put the game off for months until randomly trying again and removing the app, not even knowing the issue would be fixed that way.

tldr I am not a PC gamer

Also, I thought I posted here earliet, but fun game. I don't like it nearly as much as Odyssey, like some are saying, but it feels like solid progression from the specific types of games it was inspired by.
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A Hat in Time >>>>>>>> Odyssey

There, I said it. Odyssey had a really tough act to follow for me and, while it twice blew my socks off, the overall product wasn't as wholly inspired as Hat, which blew me away at least 8 times despite its shorter runtime. Thus, A Hat in Time gets my vote for best headgear-based platformer of 2017.

Tazzy... also my PS4 controller has worked fine with A Hat in Time for PC as a PS4 controller - I think Steam made it so you NEVER need an external app now
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Hat is programmed to use the DS4 directly, which most indie games of the last couple years do nowadays. AAA is still stuck on the 360 controller unfortunately (it's because of rumble and XInput stuff but still).
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Omg, world 4 is awful. WTF. Who thought it would be a good idea to make Thunder Bluff: The Mario 64 Level? And that last flower, I must have died on about 20 times getting hit by invisible shit. I just unlocked the rifts and I honestly don't want to go back into that level to figure out where they are...
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It's not great but it's not bad either
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I thought world 4 was pretty fun in some parts, though I also found it confusing to navigate sometimes.
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I loved Chapter 4. That and 3 were great.
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Yeah, I wasn't really the biggest fan of World 4 either. 2 is definitely by far the best for me and 3 was pretty damn great.
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I feel like 2 was the easy weak link, actually. 1 and 4 are both fine. 1 is like a typical SM64 level, whereas 4 is like a typical SMG level. 3 had all the best stuff: boss fights, levels, characters, pretty much everything.
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man i loved world 4

>_>
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I haven't completely 100%'ed the game yet, but my take:

1 - Best level. Simple, compact, open to exploration, but reuses the same content for different effects with each time piece.
2 - Okay level. Full of flavor, and I can see how people would like this, but it had two stealth levels and a stage where you have to survive jumping from wires to other wires without falling (and without stopping). The Great Parade was one of the most irritating levels in the game. Only Train Rush gets a pass here from a gameplay perspective.
3 - I would like world 3, but the barriers are too limiting and I was really not digging the controls in a couple places. Some of the time pieces here took longer than I would have liked them to because I was either stuck on how to proceed or the game just wasn't cooperating.
4 - Does precisely one thing correctly -- it lets you freely explore the world without sending you back to the hub after each one, which means the world is essentially static instead of dependent on which act you entered. Beyond that, this world is an abomination. I hated this level when Blizzard put it in World of Warcraft, and I hate it even more here when it's a legitimate platformer. I was frustrated and roadblocked constantly. I was hit by invisible enemies. I was knocked off ledges and missed tightropes. I like that it has a lot to explore...but I generally don't like the areas it offers for you explore. Even the worldbuilding sections that are neat, like the windmill, are intensely frustrating to play because I don't have a sense of depth perception to make the air jumps required. And then there was the finale, which I swear took a solid two hours to navigate this entire deathtrap, including about 40 minutes just trying to get to the final plant because the game kept nuking me from orbit regardless of my strategy or approach. Each of the acts in 4 were so long and frustrating they should have awarded multiple time pieces.

Can you tell I didn't like 4?
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azuarc posted...

1 - Best level.

ew
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MrSmartGuy posted...

I feel like 2 was the easy weak link, actually. 1 and 4 are both fine. 1 is like a typical SM64 level, whereas 4 is like a typical SMG level. 3 had all the best stuff: boss fights, levels, characters, pretty much everything.

3 has a ton of great stuff I've give you that. But the overall feel and story of World 2 just completely knocks it out of the park for me.

The variety in the levels of world 2 is completely phenomenal. You've got really cool stealth sections with excellent music (particularly the final level), and high paced action that keeps you on your toes in the Train Rush stage.

And it tops it off with probably the most fun and intense boss fight I've ever experienced, the progression of the fight is perfect.
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World 2 is a perfect example of why Hat completely trumps Odyssey for me. Its got character, its got a fun little story, it just has that feel.

Mario games in general just don't have any of that and it's why they will NEVER be top tier games for me. Sure they are fun and a good time, but in terms of the things that I actually value, they have little to nothing.
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I can see not liking 2 much because of its raw gameplay, but everything there is so god damn fresh and inspired. That's what I mean by content. Everything is technically bad, but the content is so damn good.

World 1 alone is still better than any world in Odyssey though other than New Donk (which it is on par with I think).
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It's not bad but it's certainly no Odyssey
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People claiming that a Hat in Time is better than 3D Mario games which are the best platformers of all time is just...ugh
It's just a little short forgettable indie game with 4 worlds, one of which people will absolutely hate (either 2 or 4) and one is generally considered mediocre (1)

I don't have a problem giving a indie game a lot of praise and consider it better than the video game legends that inspired it (Hollow Knight might be the best Metroidvania for all I care)
But not a Hat in Time, this is ridiculous
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People claiming that a soulless churned out AAA that is defined by bloat and grinding is better than a truly inspired fresh game that deeply values the players time is just...
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Nanis23 posted...

People claiming that a Hat in Time is better than 3D Mario games which are the best platformers of all time is just...ugh
It's just a little short forgettable indie game with 4 worlds, one of which people will absolutely hate (either 2 or 4) and one is generally considered mediocre (1)

I don't have a problem giving a indie game a lot of praise and consider it better than the video game legends that inspired it (Hollow Knight might be the best Metroidvania for all I care)
But not a Hat in Time, this is ridiculous

People value different things in games. Is that so hard to understand?
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Hard to understand people who think all Mario games are soulless, yes.
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I didnt hate any of the worlds in hat in time. Im also excited for the first free dlc world in December.
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FakeAccount3000 posted...

I didnt hate any of the worlds in hat in time. Im also excited for the first free dlc world in December.

Oh it has a release date?
I still have the game installed because I heard there was supposed to be a new dlc world

I still want to believe
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Mac Arrowny posted...

Hard to understand people who think all Mario games are soulless, yes.

Not all, but definitely Odyssey. If Odyssey 2 adds soul and keeps everything else its gonna be godlike.
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StealThisSheen posted...

It's not bad but it's certainly no Odyssey

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foolmo I am interested - what didn't you like about Odyssey but liked about the previous games?

I have yet to play it (and neither 3D World) but SM64, SMG1 and SMG2 are the best platformers ever made (and might be the best single player games ever too)
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Nanis23 posted...

what didn't you like about Odyssey but liked about the previous games

Levels worth playing

SMG2 for example, 99% of yellow stars were A+, and maybe 80% of green stars were A+. That's an insane 90% of A+ gameplay. Completely unmatched by any other platformer (although some like Super Meat Boy and Celeste do come close). The game actually becomes more fun as the difficulty increases too.

Odyssey has like 800 moons. Maybe 50 of them are good (B+ or higher) at best. There is no way to tell which moon is gonna be good or bad. I had around 300 moons when I stopped. The vast majority of that game was a boring waste of time. The controls are great but the levels don't use them well, opting for frustrating tedium to increase difficulty instead. I don't even remember any A+ moons honestly because for every good moon you go through 5 shitty moons. It is the quintessential bloated AAA game.
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Are there any 3d platformers that are just stuff like the time rift levels in this or the "secret" levels in Sunshine?

Those are always my favorites. No world building or logistics, just random platforms in space.

I started playing this game finally cause of this topic. Im done with world 1 as much as I can before moving on to 2. So far I'm a fan. Wish it had inverted X-axis camera though. Kind of strange it has so many options (even colorblind modes) but left that out.

Dels posted...

Are there any 3d platformers that are just stuff like the time rift levels in this or the "secret" levels in Sunshine?

Those are always my favorites. No world building or logistics, just random platforms in space.

You could check out Super Cloudbuilt. It's not quite the same style of game (more like a mix between Sonic and Mirror's Edge), but it's just pure gameplay the whole time with a fun focus on speed. I actually liked it even more than Hat in Time.
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Mac Arrowny posted...

Dels posted...

Are there any 3d platformers that are just stuff like the time rift levels in this or the "secret" levels in Sunshine?

Those are always my favorites. No world building or logistics, just random platforms in space.

You could check out Super Cloudbuilt. It's not quite the same style of game (more like a mix between Sonic and Mirror's Edge), but it's just pure gameplay the whole time with a fun focus on speed. I actually liked it even more than Hat in Time.

I've played Cloudbuilt! Love the concept of it, but the speedy/parkour gameplay isn't really suited to my skills, sadly.

Wait, what's Super Cloudbuilt? Is that a sequel?
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I think that the person behind the games stated that Super Cloudbuilt is like a remake and sequel of Cloudbuilt. I think that he even claimed that not a single line of code from the original exists in Super.
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It's just an enhanced port, AFAIK. Not sure how much new content is in it.
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Zigzagoon posted...

People value different things in games. Is that so hard to understand?

Nanis has never understood this and it made me put him on my ignore list once before. I'm considering it again tbqh, given how he's again saying there's only one way to look at games and refusing to accept that other people have better opinions than he does.

You are correct, though: A Hat in Time is far superior to Odyssey, simply because it has the character that Odyssey lacks. Odyssey has a void where both Galaxy games had soul - it doesn't have the same love and care put into it. The world design in Odyssey is very inconsistent - while Metro and Seaside are phenomenal, there are far too many throwaways that primarily consist of moons just strewn about. Foolmo is correct in that there's virtually no fulfillment because the moons are so common. They're like the Notes in Banjo-Kazooie when they should be more like the Jiggies. Do you get excited every time you pick up a Note? No.

A Hat in Time, meanwhile, has a depth of character to it that most modern AAA games lack. It built its world with love and care - you can just tell that the developers had passion for the genre. They wanted to restore something that had been absent from platformers after Galaxy 1: Heart. They outright stated that was their mission. While the controls in Hat aren't as smooth as they are in Odyssey, the levels use them inventively. The boss fights in Hat are actually fun, which wasn't the case for many of Odyssey's. Hat was more about the environments, the character, and the love for the genre. Odyssey was more about artificial extension of the game's length, trying to make the game constantly fulfilling but doing it to the point where it's NEVER fulfilling, and trying to make more $$$ off a popular franchise. Odyssey is thus the weakest 3D Mario. Hat is my 2017 GOTY. And frankly, I don't feel like ranking the levels. All four of the major worlds are amazing for different reasons.

It's pretty clear to me now that Nanis simply hates games that have heart, probably because he doesn't have one. And given how he's outright saying Odyssey is better despite not having played it...
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I guess it's a bad time to say that I also very much do not like the Galaxy games >_>
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Galaxy 2 is the greatest platformer ever
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Saying Odyssey doesn't have heart or soul is pretty insane to me.

Galaxy 2 vs. Odyssey comes down to level design vs. world design, and there isn't really a wrong answer. I love both but Odyssey barely edges out a victory. Admittedly this is at least partly because of the zeitgeist - Odyssey dropped at a time when I was getting super sick of (IMO) badly designed open world games and reminded me that world-focused game design doesn't need to be shitty.

Folks who say Galaxy stars are better than Odyssey moons individually are missing the point - if you want that kind of game, Galaxy is of course going to win.
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I played A Hat in Time before Odyssey and loved practically every second of it. Of course Odyssey had to compete with that - and it couldn't. At all.
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Hat's fun and cute, but it just lacks too much polish for me to ever seriously compare it to Odyssey
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Xiahou Shake posted...

Saying Odyssey doesn't have heart or soul is pretty insane to me.

What does it have that is so obviously soulful? Every level is some basic archetype except Donk and Cap. Oh great, the fire level is food based, how wacky and charming (Spyro 1 did this already no?) Not to mention the final level, which could've been so much cooler. The most charming things are nostalgia based.

Basically, it doesn't try to constantly delight the player anymore. It just gives you stuff to do.

Xiahou Shake posted...

Folks who say Galaxy stars are better than Odyssey moons individually are missing the point - if you want that kind of game, Galaxy is of course going to win.

It's a 3D Mario, what else would people want?
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Odyssey did nothing BUT delight me at every turn and was oozing with heart and soul, but different strokes for different folks I guess
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