4/1/2023 0 Comments Hat in time hookshot![]() ![]() Hat in Time doesn’t want to push me back to a checkpoint, because there are things ahead it wants to show me. The boss battles exist only to entertain me with a show. It’s the opposite of Cuphead, because it couldn’t care less how good I am at videogames. They don’t exist to challenge my reflexes or to test how well I’ve learned to time a butt stomp or to encourage me to grind more 1ups. The boss battles are like musical numbers rather than obstacles. They are not the basis for the game, but incidentals within it, calculated to entertain or amuse.įor instance, I never had to play a boss battle more than twice, if that. They’re all present and accounted for, but in small portions, very careful not to wear out their welcome. But none of these is a fundamental part of the game. It has collectibles, open-world exploration, character advancement, costumes, and boss battles. That’s not how Hat in Time works, even though it has the usual stuff. If a game keeps you busy long enough, who cares if it’s good? Here’s a blue world, here’s a red world, here’s a green world, this one has robots, this one is a desert! They throw in more stuff to keep you busy longer. They include pointless collectibles as padding, or open-worlds as filler, or character advancement as busywork, or costumes as distraction, or boss battles as speed bumps. To improve on their competitors, most platformers belch out more color and noise. The platformer is an established mode of videogaming. So the developers at Gears for Breakfast have focused on how to make a platformer exciting and surprising, which is something too few game designs struggle with. It knows your hard drive is full of open-world games clogged with filler, padding, and pointless collectibles. It knows you’ve already played Banjo-Kazooie and that you’ve got Mario Odyssey on your Switch and that you probably grew up making stubby-legged characters hop over chasms. But it also knows what you’ve been doing. It knows what you’re expecting and it will give you that. It is full of twists and gimmicks and one-offs and gags and delightful outbursts. It’s brimming with sly surprises that are far cuter than just their visuals. But it’s something else entirely once you get your hands on it. But the ragged mad glee once she gets her hands on it. Not the precious cuteness of “it’s so fluffy I’m gonna die”. It is ragged with mad glee at the fluffiness of the unicorn, now locked in her fingers. As they walk away from the smoking ruin, Agnes clutches her newly won unicorn and snarls, “It’s so fluffy!” Her voice has dropped several registers. So the Steve Carell mad scientist character has to win it for her by blowing up the booth. “It’s so fluffy I’m gonna die,” she states simply. Everyone knows the scene in Despicable Me when Agnes sees the stuffed unicorn at the carnival booth. ![]()
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