A HAT IN TIME: NYAKUZA METRO (2019)

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good lord, did they fire their writer after the initial game's launch? i bring this up because i pulled up my old review for the seal the deal dlc and found that i held the exact same sentiment, and now i'm scared that the original game is actually just as bad in that department. what on earth? why is nearly every line that comes out of every npcs' mouth some boring, self aware comment? hilarious only to time travelers from 2014 who unfortunately did not set their calculations correctly landing in this dump of a decade. when it's not meta pun haha funny, it's just... nothing. they don't say anything funny or interesting; just nothing.

"it's a 3d platformer, are you playing for the dialogue?"

of course no one's playing a collecathon for enriching writing, but then this begs the question: why is it even there at all, then? how about just have them fucking gagged? the cat models certainly look visually appealing, at least.

and they and a select few posters (and some stickers--most won't age well at all. a few have already spoiled) are the only visually appealing aspects here in this clustered mess of saturated colors mixed with black. black and grey. for as vibrant and noisy as this dlc's stage is, you'd think you'd spend a lot less time staring at black corridors and black floors and black walls. that, and trains: you look at a lot of trains.

god, it's just not fun to navigate the city, either. call it "open world" but it's no more that than any fucking super mario sunshine level--except those are actually much more fun to play around in considering you generally have a better idea of where to go and what to even do there while a hat in time is content to rely on either its press-lb-to-find-next-objective hat or--frankly--the incredibly insulting help kiosk that offers the player an assist mode under the guise of accessibility. oh blow me, you designed a sandbox with windows xp era mspaint color palletes and, like, bear traps and you have the gall to--oh, nevermind.

what else? god, the dlc loves reusing parts of itself over and over and over again. there's all these merchants scattered around selling five things that have you just sitting there waiting for the purchase animation to finish--gets real old when you're just buying food for 10 hatkid bucks. there's this long tunnel where you have to bob and weave in between trains and i swear to god i think they make you trudge through there like four different times (and two of them failed to spawn any trains at all until i was halfway through when suddenly they'd all just burst out from the woodwork as if i triggered some tripwire).

anyway, it's a dlc about jumping on trains and staring at walls. very creative. i suppose when you stop hard crutching all of your level and character designs off of established gamecube games, you dry the well faster than you realize.