A Hat in Time, College

A Hat in Time Review (Potential spoilers):
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I started and finished A Hat in Time this weekend! (Huge thanks once again to Go1den for the code, and for hanging out this weekend :D) It was a very solid game, the platforming felt fresh throughout, the music and atmosphere of each world were great, it was filled with vibrant colors, and there was plenty of stuff to grab, which is kind of what you'd expect. It was a short, cute, and in some places decently challenging example of most everything right with 3D platformers in my opinion. The movement (in most cases) felt tight, and each new mechanic introduced never stayed for so long that it got stale. The blue rift stages were pure platforming, which was a fantastic addition to the otherwise exploring/platforming combination of the worlds. In addition to generally fun gameplay, each world had a short story told throughout its essential acts, and had additional insight to the story which could be found on the flip books in each of the pink rift stages. While the stories were nothing outstanding, it motivated what was going on in each chapter and set the theme for the atmosphere to follow up on.

A few negatives really quick, just a heads up these complaints are either A) personal problems with the game that aren't really the game's fault, or B) minor.

- The cat enemies are the worst idea in the game. Making a rift based around them was the second worst idea in the game. Even if you see them coming, there is nothing you can do to prevent them from stealing your stuff and knocking you around, except maybe jump to a new platform instantly. However, if you did jump and they caught you mid air, you probably got knocked into the abyss. Overall the first encounter with them was cool, but after that it was just frustrating and not fun to deal with. If they stand on top of you when they reappear (which happened to me A LOT), your melee attacks will miss, and you get hit when you knew they were there and knew they were about to attack.
- The homing attack felt very unresponsive in most situations. Because you had to be a certain height above the enemy you were targeting, the attack would sometimes be unavailable in what felt like an arbitrary fashion, which sucked because there were some cool ideas in the game using it as a platforming mechanic.
- Along the same vein as the homing attack, the hookshot just sometimes refused to work. In part it was due to the fact that you couldn't adjust where you were facing without using your second jump. What this resulted in multiple times for me was using the second jump but holding away from the hookshot target because I didn't want to be directly under it, but then not being able to latch on to it because I was facing the wrong way. I think an easy solution would have been either allow turning in the air or make the hootshot target based on where the camera is aiming, not the character.
- OK this one is maybe a spoiler just a heads up.
World 4's finale was a huge let down and I don't honestly understand the decision at all. World 4 in general had a huge lack of story, but I kind of liked how after each hourglass something would happen and I had no idea what it meant until I had them all. However, just backtracking to 3 of the 4 main areas, going to a tiny new island in them, killing a plant that had never been seen before in the chapter, then backtracking to the town in the middle in order to get the next one was just... not good. At all. That being said, the atmosphere of that act was maybe the best in the game. Just a shame the gameplay dropped the ball so hard.

Favorites!
- Character: Snatcher (Ghost dude from Chapter 3)
- Act: World 3 Act 4 I think it was technically? The mansion one. To be fair, this is probably only the case because my brother and I reached it at the same time, and it was insanely fun.
- Hat: Brewing Hat. Its cute dude. Scooter is a close second
- Boss: World 3. Intense fight, good opponent, amazing music (all the boss fights were amazing though)
- Color Scheme: I rocked the red/black one most of the game after I got it

Overall, while it was a little short, this game was amazing. Would 100% recommend playing it if cute platformers are your thing.

Ok that went on for way longer than I thought it would, I really like doing "reviews" of games in some capacity. Getting to talk about what I think makes a game good is fun.

College stuff:
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I have to apply for my major soon. I'm doing Computer Engineering, and the chances I get in are good, but I'm still pretty nervous. It makes it sound so concrete that that is what I'm going to do with my life and I still have no idea what it entails, it's kinda messed up. That being said, I'm enjoying a few of my classes, especially the coding courses. The more I code, the more interested I become in it. The sense of accomplishment from finishing projects is awesome too, even if it's literally just "I did this to turn in as an assignment and no actually practical reason."

One of my friends has switched planned majors twice so far, and I think its really cool that he's actually looking for something that he likes doing, as opposed to taking my approach which is to just drift along and hope you like the result.¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Alright, that's it for me, thanks for reading however much you read, and have a nice week