Why I Love A Hat In Time

 2017 was a pretty big year for 3D platformers. We got Yooka-Laylee, the N Sane Trilogy, Snake Pass, and both Sonic Forces and Super Mario Odyssey in the span of a month. These games range from incredible to mid, but none of them rank as my favorite 3D platformer of 2017. Instead, we need to look towards an indie sleeper hit made just a few weeks before Mario Odyssey, the immesurably charming, hecking adorable, A Hat In Time.

A Hat In Time is about a little girl named Hat Kid who pilots a time-powered spaceship, which happens to lose all of the Time Pieces fueling it. The base premise is that Hat Kid needs to go to all four major worlds and retrieve all the Time Pieces, classic collectathon stuff, but to boil it down that much does a disservice to just how entertaining A Hat In Time's story is. In terms of pure charm factor, this game has got some truly top-tier writing and characters, and the worlds Hat Kid visits are so fleshed out that they feel like entire games in themselves. It's for this reason that I can't just talk about A Hat In Time in broad strokes, I need to dig into the game's five different chapters individually, though before I can do that, I'll get the general gameplay out of the way first.

As far as the controls go, A Hat In Time is incredibly simple for a 3D platformer, some may even say to a fault. You have a lot of options for gaining height including a double jump, a dash that you can cancel whenever you want, and even a homing attack, all of which you can chain in whichever order you desire. It's not at all challenging to just completely fly over a lot of this game's obstacle courses, and movement feels so tight and precise that it almost feels harder to miss a platform. For some, this makes A Hat In Time too easy, and fair enough. For me, though, I find the movement is so polished and smooth that it still manages to feel incredibly fun and satisfying despite how easy Hat Kid is to control. It also helps with how massive most of the levels can be in this game, and it allows A Hat In Time to toss in some very complex platforming challenges filled with tiny platforms and pitfalls knowing full well that the controls are equipped to handle it. 

A Hat In Time also has a good amount of customization to give the game some extra depth. You can find yarn balls to craft a variety of hats each with their own unique abilities that you can swap between on the fly, including hats that let you spring, freeze objects, and cause invisible platforms to appear. Some of the later stages have you swapping between multiple hats in quick succession, and I've already expressed how fond I am of those types of platforming sequences. A Hat In Time even has a bunch of pins you can buy and equip to change up Hat Kid's build and make the game easier or harder, along with character skins and the like to give you even more options for customization. A Hat In Time may be easy, but it prides itself on player expression in every sense of the word.

The first world you'll visit is Mafia Town, it's the most basic world, but that's only by this game's standards. It's very much a throwback to Delfino Plaza, a vast and dense city filled with rooftops to hop across, and a fun and safe place for you to play around with the controls. The twist, as you can tell by the title, is that it's entirely populated by the mafia. This is where A Hat In Time's unique and offbeat charm comes in, because you actually get to talk to a lot of the mafiosi walking around the town, most of which are pretty amicable (and some of which punch Hat Kid in the face the moment a conversation ends). There's a lot of very silly and quotable non-sequiters for those willing to chat up the NPCs. Like all the other worlds, Mafia Town also has an interweaving plot across its main missions, as Hat Kid teams up with the mysterious Mustache Girl to take down the mafia regime from the literal top of the island. It's almost Sly Cooper-esque in how each task builds towards your eventual storming of the Mafia HQ, culminating in a literally show-stopping boss fight against the Mafia Boss. The boss fights in A Hat In Time are just plain incredible, they're these massive large scale encounters with screen-filling attacks and multiple phases, easily some of the best in a 3D platformer. And Mafia Town is easily one of my favorite first areas in a collectathon. It doesn't feel watered down in any way, it's actually pretty massive on its own, and the mafia theming helps it feel so fresh. It perfectly establishes everything you should come to expect from A Hat In Time... only for the next world to throw it all out the window and start anew.

Battle Of The Birds is my favorite world in the game, and I'm sure it's the same for many others. Unlike the other three worlds, BotB is a surprise genre shift from open collectathon to a Galaxy-esque series of linear obstacle courses. The first mission is a very fun stealth mission as you sneak into Dead Bird Studios, hopping across a variety of quirky movie sets ala Ape Escape 3. It's there that you meet the Conductor and DJ Grooves, two rival directors who drag you into performing in their films, though not without getting a passport picture taken first. If Mafia Town was charming, Dead Bird Studios brings it up to eleven. There are so many cute movie references and little touches, and the two directors and their missions are dripping with personality. DJ Grooves is the flashier of the two, and his missions involve parades, paparazzis, and a bustling city set with tall buildings to hop around. The Conductor steals the show hard, though, he's an absolutely hysterical and impeckably voice-acted Scottish director with some of the most memorable lines in the game, and the two best missions. Murder On The Owl Express is one of my favorite video game levels, period. It's a lovely throwback to TTYD's Excess Express, an incredibly fun and charming murder mystery stage with less platforming and more of that fantastic dialogue. Train Rush, on the other hand, is pure platforming, a mad dash as you escape a collapsing train, putting all your moves to the test. At the end of the chapter, you get to see whose movies did better based on your performance in their movies, and fight the loser as the chapter boss. Regardless of who you fight, it's another fantastic boss fight, but special mention goes to the sudden interlude in the middle of each fight where either Conductor or DJ Grooves bears their soul to you. It's stuff like that which gives the characters in A Hat In Time so much more personality and depth.

Subcon Forest is probably my least favorite of the four worlds, but it has the highest highs. This world is a vast spooky forest filled with so much... space. There's a ton of hidden areas and nooks here that will go completely unexplored if you're just doing the main missions. The main premise here is that Hat Kid signs a contract with the devil... I mean, The Snatcher... and has to do requests for him. Once again, the variety is pretty fantastic, between a neat Zelda homage where you discover a hookshot that you can use for the rest of the game, and an genuinely terrifying horror-themed stage that has you sneaking around a mansion avoided the creepy Queen Vanessa. Compared to all the other characters, The Snatcher is easily the one with the most baggage and hidden lore. It's very heavily implied that he has some sort of connection to Vanessa, and it's no wonder a lot of fans really latched onto him and his story. Subcon Forest culminates in my favorite boss fight in the game, the fight against The Snatcher to break Hat Kid free from his contract. It's a fast and intense fight where you need to resort to breaking the fourth wall to be able to land a hit on him, all the while one of my favorite pieces of video game music ever plays in the background, though more on that later.

Alpine Skyline is often regarded as the weakest of the four due to its lack of notable characters, lack of a boss, and its focus being purely on gameplay over the writing. It's my second favorite world behind Battle Of The Birds. Alpine Skyline once again changes the genre to pure open world by plopping you in the middle of a massive open world and asking you with ringing four bells on each of the four corners of the map. I love exploring Alpine Skyline, it's filled with so many varied islands each with their own fun and genuinely challenging platforming challenges, but that's not even getting to the bells themselves. Each of the four bells basically is its own unique platforming test, and they're all incredible. The Lava Cake has you climb up a giant layer cake made of lava, hopping across sinking platforms at a fast pace. The Birdcage puts you in a literal giant birdcage as you deal with some of the toughest combat in the game and a lot of pitfalls. The Twilight Bell teleports you to a surreal void filled with tricky puzzles involving disappearing platforms. And then there's my personal favorite, The Windmill, which has you climbing up what feels like a souped-up version of Tick Tock Clock. What elevates Alpine Skyline even further is the presentation, this world is stunningly beautiful, with blue skies, a massive sense of scale, and some truly gorgeous celtic-inspired music. Playing Alpine Skyline really feels like playing another game entirely. It feels divorced from the rest of A Hat In Time, but rather than feeling like a downgrade, it offers an entirely unique vibe that really stuck with me.

Once you complete all four chapters, you face a sudden betrayal from Mustache Girl who steals all your Time Pieces and proceeds to create a new timeline where all the "villains" you've met throughout the game face their supposedly deserved punishment. After making it through a very fun final platforming gauntlet, you confront Mustache Girl in what's easily the craziest and most fast-paced boss fight in the game, filled to the brim with multiple drastically different phases and bullet hell-esque attack patterns. The other major characters like Mafia Boss, Conductor, and Snatcher even help you out in one of the phases, which ultimately leads to one of my favorite takes of the "power of friendship" trope in media. Because every single member of this game's cast is composed of jerks at best and flat-out villains at worst, but they still band together to stop Mustache Girl's tyranny, save time itself, and get Hat Kid her time pieces back. It's at this moment that all four of A Hat In Time's disparate chapters finally align, as the game reveals itself to be a love letter to the comedic villain trope. Characters like Team Rocket, Dr Doofensmirtz, or Zangeif in Wreck It Ralph, the kinds of people who are bad guys but not bad guys, and that's just such a fun and refreshing direction for this game to go in.

Once you're done with the main campaign, though, A Hat In Time still has a lot left to offer. I already mentioned all the customization options you can unlock, but there's also side missions in all of the chapters, tough platforming-centric bonus stages inspired by the infamous voids from Super Mario Sunshine, true final chapters that expose some more lore for each of the major characters, and of course, two entire chapters and a massive challenge mode called Death Wish behind DLC. I admittedly haven't played A Hat In Time's DLC. I got them when they were free, but because I use a Mac, I'm not even sure if DLC worked for me at the time. Either way, DLC or not, A Hat In Time has all the fun and robust 100% completion you love to see from a 3D platformer, and that's not even mentioning the incredible modding community on top of all that.

I've touched on the presentation a bit, but as usual, I also wanted to talk about it in general. A Hat In Time purposefully aims for a sixth generation style, though slightly refined. In particular, A Hat In Time takes a lot of inspiration from the bright and colorful cel-shaded style of Super Mario Sunshine, even utilizing a similar filter for when the camera is behind a wall. I've always loved the way Super Mario Sunshine looked, and A Hat In Time further iterates on that aesthetic by giving the characters these adorably stylized 2D faces that add so much extra charm to the game. There's a reason other projects like Glitch's Sunset Paradise and the upcoming Billie Bust-Up seem to be heavily inspired by the A Hat In Time artstyle, it may be hearkening back to the Gamecube but it also has a vibe all its own. The soundtrack by Pascal Michael Stiefel is also just flat-out incredible, blending so many genres across the four chapters. From the charmingly militaristic Welcome To Mafia Town, to the tense synthy Dead Bird Studio, to the frenetically jazzy Train Rush, to the uplifting disco banger Picture Perfect, to the serene and spacey Clocktowers Under The Sea, to Snatcher's absolutely rocking boss theme Your Contract Has Expired. Alpine Skyline's music is easily my favorite in the game overall, though, this chapter is filled with utterly chill-inducing folk music like Alpine Skyline, The Lava Cake Peak, Alpine Skyline At Night, and especially The Windmill Peak. Oh, and I didn't even mention the guest tracks. They got Grant Kirkhope in to do the wonderfully whimsical hub theme Our Spaceship, and most of the major tracks got remixes by guest composers, with the easy highlight being Trainwreck Of Electro Swing, a track so hard-hitting it singlehandedly introduced countless people (including myself) to the electroswing genre.

Man, this was longer than my usual "Why I Love" posts. I guess A Hat In Time is just that dense of a game. It's not just a fun collectathon with fluid controls, lots of customization and expression, and lovely visuals and music, but it's also four equally fantastic games in one, each tackling distinct subgenres of the 3D platformer in unique, fun, and charming ways. There's a reason I mentioned so many influences across my review, because A Hat In Time feels like a wonderful melting pot of all the best 3D platformers, from Super Mario Sunshine to Super Mario Galaxy, from Sly Cooper to Jak & Daxter. That's why it's my favorite 3D platformer of 2017, and one of my favorite games of all time.