Though it's not apparent at first, A Hat in Time has all the best ingredients of an N64-era 3D platformer. It's cute and colorful with a wacky cast of characters; it offers a variety of collectibles to find on each level, some far easier to get than others; its worlds hide cheeky secrets and delightful details. While t he first of its four main worlds is disappointingly generic, once it opens up, A Hat in Time offers creative, charming areas that make it feel true to its beloved predecessors without getting stale.
A Hat in Time begins with you, a young girl and captain of your own spaceship, losing all the hourglass-like Time Pieces you need for fuel to get home. 40 of them cascade out your window (never mind that there's a window in a spaceship) and scatter around a mysterious planet, meaning you have to venture down there to find them. Your first stop is Mafia Town. It's a basic island level populated by identical, burly men who speak broken English, and the mafia theme is half-baked on top of that. But hopping through the seaside town, past "in cod we trust" graffitied on the walls, and using your special top hat's objective-highlighting powers to find one of the missing Time Pieces is enough to get acquainted with everything--even the over-the-top voice acting, which you'll probably mute as soon as you have a spare minute to flip through the settings.
You'd think time would be the game's core conceit, but your hat is the star of the show. In addition to Time Pieces, each world also has balls of yarn for you to collect; once you have enough, you can knit a new hat with its own unique powers, like the ability to sprint or use short-range explosives. The yarn itself provides an incentive to explore, and in turn, each hat grants you access (or easier access) to new areas. For the most part, each world is separated into chapters with a Time Piece each, but the worlds themselves are open for you to explore so long as you have the right hats. If that wasn't enough reason to look for all the secrets, you'll also collect gems as you go that can be used to buy pins for your hats. Each pin gives you an extra buff, like magnetically attracting all pickups in your immediate vicinity, and they are definitely worth having in the later, trickier areas.
Once you have all that sorted out, you'll have moved onto the next world, where A Hat in Time comes into its own. You start out in a movie studio, where an owl and a penguin are competing to win an award. The world's chapters are split between their movie sets: half on the owl's old-timey train and half in the penguin's New Orleans-esque party town. You're given a score based on the collectibles you get in each chapter, and the bird whose chapters you perform the best in is named the winner. It's absolutely adorable and unexpected, and your reward for being a completionist and returning to the world later is a clever ending to an already interesting twist.
Each of the worlds in A Hat in Time unravel like this. You explore initially to get balls of yarn for new hats and gems for pins, but if you look hard enough, you'll find more and more rewards. Sometimes it's just a cute reference in a random book or a cheeky remark from an otherwise unimportant NPC. But there are also things you'll have to work harder to find. Tricky platforming can lead to special collectibles called artifacts; you might find a crayon in one area and a box in another, and you have to arrange the full set in your spaceship. Once you combine them correctly, you unlock a special side level where you collect photographs that tell a story about the world. The complete photo albums are cute and flesh out the antagonists just a little bit, which is a treat after beating each of them in their boss fight. There are also bonus levels hidden in each area that take away all the side distractions and present you with clean platforming challenges (and beautiful, almost melancholic music).
While the platforming in A Hat in Time never gets terribly difficult, movement is smooth, and there are plenty of just-barely-made it moments that are simple but satisfying. Once you get the hookshot pin, you'll be able to transition from the ground to a jump to swinging off a hook and back down to the ground seamlessly. Getting from place to place just feels good, and the challenge levels are legitimately fun places to show off the grace in movement you've developed. They are pure and fun and blend well with the more inventive landscapes you're traversing for a 3D platforming homage that doesn't feel by the numbers.
A Hat in Time is slow to start, but it's brimming with the charm and collectible-finding joy of classic 3D platformers. Collectibles are both fun to find and help guide you to the game's best secrets, and seeing everything there is to see is its own reward. The platforming isn't particularly challenging, nor does it do anything especially new, but A Hat in Time's cleverly themed worlds and witty quips lend it a more contemporary feel that's just right for satisfying a 3D platforming craving.
When Nintendo announced a Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga remake for the 3DS, I wasn't sure I needed it. The beautiful 2D art, laugh-out-loud dialogue, and blend of action- and turn-based RPG gameplay of the Game Boy Advance original still feels every bit as vibrant and engaging today as it did when it came out 15 years ago. But after playing through Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions, I'm absolutely convinced that it is the definitive way to experience one of Nintendo's best RPGs.
The premise is the same: The evil witch Cackletta and her talkative minion Fawful have devised a scheme to conquer both the Mushroom Kingdom and the neighboring Beanbean Kingdom, starting with turning Princess Peach's voice into an explosive force. Bowser, angry that he can't abduct Peach in this state, teams up with Mario and an (unwilling) Luigi to give chase in an airship, only for the brothers to crash-land in foreign territory. Mario and Luigi must brave the strange lands of Beanbean to stop Cackletta's plan. And while that's going on, Bowser's armies are on their own quest to figure out just where the heck he vanished to.
While the core game remains the same, the already great visuals get a gorgeous update on 3DS. The art has been completely redone, from the core sprites of Mario and Luigi to the tiniest of background details, and the result is some of the most beautiful and vibrant 2D art around. Various character animations have also been touched up and expanded upon, giving the brothers and their foes a lot of extra personality through their movements. (Sit back and watch some of the duo's idle animations during combat when you have a spare moment-- – it's a real treat.) The music has also been revised and expanded, with longer melodies and higher-quality instrumentation adding an additional spring to the step of the bouncy, energetic tunes from ace composer Yoko Shimomura. The only disappointment in the audiovisual department is the complete lack of a 3D option;: we've seen how good other "2D- art- in- 3D" games look on the 3DS, and given that the game has its fair share of perspective and platform puzzles, it would have been both a big help and a great visual enhancement.
The silly story of Superstar Saga is brought to life through dialogue and events that evoke the whimsical, humorous nature of the Mario universe. Characters like the elegant Prince of the Beanbean Kingdom and the wicked Cackletta have memorable quirks that make their personas stand out. Even some of the more minor side NPCs, like the Chuckola Bros, have a notable amount of care and attention put into their speech. That still shows through after all these years--though the most memorable character, Fawful, doesn't have quite the impact he once did, coming off an era where nonsensical JRPG translations were common.
The core gameplay remains primarily the same as the original game, with a few enhancements. You explore various environments from an overhead view, using special skills to navigate and solve puzzles when necessary. When you encounter an enemy, you enter a battle sequence that blends turn-based commands with timing-based button presses to both deal extra damage to enemies and evade or counter their attacks. Some subtle improvements from later games in the Mario and Luigi series have been added, too: The pair can now perform an emergency guard during combat by pressing the X button, reducing damage from enemy attacks if you're not confident in your evasion skills. You can also retry boss fights on an easier difficulty if you get a game over. Story scenes can be sped up by holding down the R button, making some of the dialogue-heavy scenes zip by faster if you've seen them before (or if you're a speed reader). These additions help streamline the experience, but by and large, if you remember the events of the original Superstar Saga, you're going through the same motions in the remake.
Most the brand-new content is in a sub-game that opens a little over an hour into the main story. Called "Minion Quest," this is a separate adventure with no bearing on the main story that follows a gallant Goomba who wants to find and rescue his Lord Bowser. To accomplish this, he needs to find other minions from Bowser's army, convince them to band together, and fight against Fawful's brainwashed hordes.
Instead of a traditional RPG, Minion Quest plays like a simplified real-time strategy game: You assemble a small army of troops from characters you've recruited and send them to battle against other armies. It feels pretty hands-off. Most of what you do is just watch characters bop each other and press buttons when prompted, since you can't really control your army the way you would in a proper RTS (for example, you can't tell troops to fall back and guard your commander if enemies break through your lines of defense). It can also get very frustrating and grindy--some quests practically demand you use a specific character type to counter a specific opponent, requiring you to either replay previous quests until you either randomly recruit enough of that character or get your levels high enough that it doesn't matter. And sometimes even when you do bring a counter to the enemy's forces, you can lose for reasons that feel completely arcane. As cute and charming as the cutscenes depicting the power struggle among Bowser's army are, several of the fights in Minion Quest can really test your patience and willingness to continue.
Even though Minion Quest falters, it's still an optional outing that doesn't detract from what's fundamentally an excellent adventure. Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga has aged astonishingly well, and the various improvements offered in this remake only serve to make an already great game even better. Whether you're a series veteran or visiting the Beanbean Kingdom for the very first time, there's no better way to experience this classic RPG.
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