Some time ago, A Hat in Time was announced on Kickstarter, and, given the history of Kickstarter games, it seemed to just be another dream that was too good to be true... ...then forward five years, and WHAM! It's back, and it's fuckin fantastic! But it released right after Cuphead and got heavily overshadowed. I get that these days, 3D platformers are kind of a novelty item, so it's understandable it goes under the radar, but I was surprised at how non-existent this game's publicity seems to be. But I'm getting ahead of myself. A Hat in Time was made by Gears for Breakfast. If you aren't familiar with them, you may be familiar with SLAG Gaming from TF2, most relevantly known as the server chain that perma-muted me on all of their servers. *Sped up disclaimer* Where do I start, man? Story-wise, the game is simple. You're an alien child with a spaceship that uses hourglasses as fuel, but a mafia goon decimates a glass door in your spaceship, sucking out all the time pieces from your unlocked vault, forcing you to collect them by clearing through various life-threatening planets using hats is your primary form of mobility. Also, there's this mustache girl, and some talking animals, and a Grandfather from Kids Next Door. Actually, never mind. Story-wise, the game is very confusing and very weird. But it doesn't matter, all you need to know is that you want those hourglasses, no matter who stands in your way. Remember how I said hats are for mobility? Well, they're for a lot of things. Fighting, breaking objects, finding objectives, and every hat can be upgraded using badges you pin onto them to improve their abilities. There's also badges for weird things like making people mumble. Okay... By far, my favorite hat is the Sprint Cap. It's the most useful one, but not because you can sprint, rather it has the best badge in the whole game. ♪ They see me rollin', ♪ ♪ They hatin' ♪ If you told me one week ago that this game was gonna make scooters fucking cool, I would have probably believed you because I'm very impressionable, but goddamn, does this thing have tight controls! It feels like if you were running, but faster. It's fun, it's quick, it can ride on ropes... ...wait, what? I know it sounds stupid, spending so much of a video just talking about a scooter, but it really encapsulates what makes the game so fun. Environments are dyanmic and vast, but also dense and close enough that you don't feel like you're just walking between objectives. It's like 2000 platformers on acid! Literally, it's a 2000's platformer on acid. What the fuck is going on? The best part of the game is that this isn't even the best part! Boss fights? Tasty as fuck! Soundtracks? Tasty as fuck! Fresh tagliatelle? Tasty as fuck! but not relevant to the video... Areas are paced perfectly. Never too slow, never too fast. It's like Goldilocks, but with hats. The game has a good balance of world grunts, too. Enemies are placed logically and accordingly. You're very rarely like "What the fuck is he doing here?" or "I'm so fucking tired of seeing these things!" Except for maybe those egg things. Fuck those egg things. Collecting hats is straightforward. You get a string, make a hat. Every hat's unique and gets used pretty frequently. It's rare that you're like, "Man, why did I even make this thing?" Unless you don't go for side routes, then maybe, like, the Ice Hat you barely use, but other than that, every stage is different, too. Breath-taking! Terrifying! A train, which by the way was the best stage, fight me on this! Finding alternative solutions to problems is also a very rewarding feeling. Sometimes, you'll find items or areas you need a certain hat to get to, but if you're a clever player, you can use your surroundings to get there anyways. Just running around makes the game feel fun. I can't think of a better way to articulate this. Running around is just fun. It's responsive, quick, beautiful, adorable, and.... *Robotic voice* buggy-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y Alright, no angel is free of sin. Hat in Time is pretty buggy. Mostly stuff like tiny animation errors, display errors, not usually stuff that makes the game unenjoyable, but they happen a lot, and it's kind of funny to be in the middle of a planned sequence, to see the characters nope off the screen. Playing through the game on high settings went smoothly, but when I ramped everything to the maximum, I started to occasionally crash during sequences like bosses dying. Didn't happen often, but it happened. The game emphasizes a lot on your ability to play at your own pace and do what you like. Generally, it steers you in the right direction with simple indicators or paths, but if the objective finder breaks or the HUD indicators disappear, all you can do is cry, beg for forgiveness, and then suicide so the game spawns you where you're supposed to be. Also sometimes objective notifiers will function properly, but they'll send you towards objectives you've already completed. This happens on Alpine Skyline, probably because it has a free roam mode unlike the other stages in the game, and while common sense can kind of fix this, it can still be kind of confusing when mixed with the fact that there's no quest text to reference as a guide. I also have two major complaints about movement in this game. While climbing is 80% of the time working as intended and 20% of the time "what the fuck? That's not what I was trying to do!" Grappling is 90% of the time working as intended and 10% of the time... *Pinball sound effects* ...help! There are also these time portals hidden around stages which are a really fun little side quest, but some of them are really hard to locate and in places you otherwise would have never gone near. So when you're trying to track them down, you almost have nothing to work with but a single photograph. For the easy ones, this is fine, but stages can get really expansive, so without identifiable landmarks in the picture, it can get really hard to find some of these time rifts. The portals themselves lead to sectioned-off parkour stages that, when completed, end with a slot lotto prize, usually of cosmetic changes or extra content like music. Finding them is usually a hassle, but they're a pretty refreshing breather from the rest of the game, so I'd still recommend looking for them if you play it. Also, I don't really know where to put this into the video, but one level in the game involves delivering mail all around town, and I feel like it would have been an awesome idea if the level had been specifically designed around scooter use. They give you a special scooter just for the level, so why not fill it up with half pipes and ramps, Tony Hawk and Skate-style? Instead, we just get the original swamp level. They made different levels for Mafia Town, why couldn't they do it here? Most of these complaints are minor inconveniences at best, but sometimes they will affect your ability to progress, and that's where it becomes a problem. That said, most of these things I got passed pretty quickly after catching and working around it. If you haven't caught on yet, I really liked this game, but my last complaint is.... The game ends very abruptly. Depending on how you complete the areas, the game will kind of just spontaneously be like, "Hey, by the way, this is the last level!" I'll avoid spoiling too much. The level is fun, but I do think you should play it yourself and experience. But the last fight feels a little cliché, and, dare I say it, rushed from a development standpoint. I also didn't think, story-wise, it was very rewarding of an ending, but I also think that might be a bit of a polarizing opinion, so let me know if you feel different. Very rarely, do I finish a game and feel like, "Wow, dang! I really want to play that again!" But A Hat in Time really struck a chord with me and guess what, I beat it twice. It made me feel like I'm a kid playing on my GameCube all over again. Speaking of which, I really miss my GameCube, and I really regret not holding onto all of my old consoles. Everything in the game is tied together so nicely. Cute loading menu title cards, little gesture animations, dry cheeky humor, A Hat in Time looks like an appeal to nostalgia, and it is, but in a good way. It's not coat-tailing off nostalgia LIKE SOME PEOPLE! It's inspired by it, innovating off of it. The developers feel like people who grew up on Super Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker, Majora's Mask, Luigi's Mansion, you get the idea. They wanted to express their love for these games, and you know what? You did it. You did it, guys. I'm proud of you. I forgive you for perma-muting me on all your TF2 servers.
