Hannah Reviews

Hannah is a 3D platformer which follows its eponymous protagonist as she reviews her childhood by going through a world with twisted versions of the most important moments, places and people from that time. Both she and the player will face three kinds of obstacles in this journey: 1) Enemies The game’s levels are populated by hostile creatures able to insta-kill poor Hannah with any of their attacks. However, while that may sound like a big challenge, it’s anything but: as long as players remember to pause before going on vacation and keep their controller’s charger less than a marathon away, there is no reason they should ever die against these opponents. This makes them little more than a touch of flavor rarely with enough juice to be worth the squeeze. 2) Platforming Traversal through Hannah’s world seems designed to be more scenic than anything else, a grain of salt which ideally would enhance all other ingredients (the meticulously crafted environments, beautiful music and so on). But instead, it overpowers them. Issues with controls, exacerbated by a questionable camera, will sadly make you feel less like Hannah and more like her parent, unsuccessfully trying to steer a rambunctious child away from danger: “Sweetie, please, don’t step into the electrified puddle of water”. “Hey, let’s grab the rope this time, okay?”. “Hannah, don’t you dare jump into the void again!”. While a nearly instant respawn follows each death, that only makes the problems bearable instead of outright game-ruining, and everything else this experience offers is still soured by them. Players can’t enjoy the views if they’ve punched a hole in their screens. 3) Puzzles Hannah’s cornerstone and its unquestionable highlight. Most of them aren’t particularly difficult, the exception being a precious few which in all likelihood ended up more opaque than intended, but they always feel both engaging and fun. Moreover, new ideas are constantly introduced while earlier ones build off one another, keeping things fresh at all times. This level of quality makes puzzles have the opposite effect to platforming: as one combs through the game’s levels in search of a way forward, it’s hard to miss the craftmanship on display in such beautiful environments; players thinking about their next move might lean back and enjoy the lovely background music; in addition, since most of Hannah’s tale is walled behind optional puzzles, even those uninterested by it are liable to find themselves thirsting for new plot developments. After all, more story means more fun. To elaborate on this final point, said story’s main delivery method is through videotapes found in small side areas of the game. If one looks for these recordings, then after every level adult Hannah can watch a short scene from her early years. Extra puzzles are the carrot dangled in front of players so that they engage with this system, but gameplay-wise there is no stick forcing them to do so if it doesn’t catch their eye. Plot-wise, however, the consequences are huge. No one single vignette can give a complete picture of Hannah’s youth, which means that passing judgment on it without the full context will lead one to really misguided conclusions. In a way, this game’s story is the series of moments when you decide to search or not to search an area for cassettes. How difficult obtaining those cassettes proves will consequently hold narrative significance: tapes become harder to procure as their contents grow more and more painful, just like it becomes harder for Hannah to relive such increasingly traumatic memories, so both her and the player might feel that some of them aren’t worth digging up. But no harm, no foul, right? They more or less know what happened, it should be easy enough to fill in the blanks. Furthermore, certain design issues can make this whole endeavor somewhat frustrating at times. Unclear endpoints for sections one can’t go back to, an absence of any “Restart checkpoint/level” option, and some poorly executed puzzles are the biggest offenders. All these factors, whether intentional or accidental, produce friction. That negative force is opposed by a positive one, namely player desire to experience more of both Hannahs, the game (i.e., play through its optional puzzles) and the character (i.e., learn about her life). When said forces clash, they generate dramatic conflict: will you engage with everything this title offers, or will that be too much of a hassle? Will its best aspects shine, or will the worst ones overshadow them? And will Hannah remember any warm, happy moments from when she was a child, or will trauma blind her to those memories? Such a story doesn’t just conclude once the last recording is over. Instead, all of us —Hannah included— finish it when we look at our reflections in the black screen we’re facing and pass judgment on this whole journey. Was it good or was it bad? Probably a mix of both; most things are that way. But, does the good wash out the bad? Does the bad negate the good? Are pain and joy equivalent, currency of the same value? Me, I’m an Ending D type of guy: Hannah’s memories can sometimes be hard to go through, but there is a lot to love in them as well. Hopefully you and she both agree.

My opinion about this game is split. On the positive side, it has an engaging, emotional story told in an original manner, with amazing graphics, diverse levels and puzzles that keep things fresh—you won’t hit a point where you’ll feel bored. However, you'll get frustrated pretty fast and too often because the controls are, frankly, terrible, and I can't say it in a nicer way. You'll die and you'll die, and that's what you'll do for half of the gameplay (maybe some levels of difficulty would have helped), but at least the respawn is instant and close to the point where you died. One of the biggest issues (at least for me) is the perspective of the camera: when it changes, so does the character’s movement, and since you can’t control it, you often end up falling off the map—sometimes after 20 failed attempts in a row, which can get maddening! Beyond that, the games runs smoothie but I encountered some bugs, like jumping through a closed door and getting stuck, falling through textures, or being launched into space by a monster. I got really engaged in the story but it's a shame you can miss parts of it just because you failed to collect all the cassettes. Overall it was an interesting experience and I recommend the game. Here's the full, final gameplay: https://youtu.be/vR_Y19T6k2s