I am really conflicted on this one. A hat in time is a 3D platformer that not only has some things going for it - many of its design elements are masterfully executed, even surpassing Super Mario Odyssey at points. At the same time, a lack of refinement in other areas makes this a fundamentally flawed experience. The weird thing is, since the good and the bad parts are so tightly intertwined, my experience of actually playing A hat in time was a rollercoaster ride.
Lets start with the positives
•Creativity - It is mind-boggling how the developers ensures that the gameplay never gets stale. The four main worlds are not only distinctive in style; they have vastly different structures in ho you approach them. While Mafia Town is a classic sandbox-world à la Super Mario 64, following chapters always put a twist to the formula. The Dead bird studio instead lets you be the main star of two film studios recordings, with your results from the levels determining whom of the directors will be the final boss.
This variety is not just apparent between worlds, but in the missions INSIDE the worlds as well. In the earlier mentioned bird movie studio, a western-style train is the setpiece for both a stealthy murder mystery mission and a crazy race to diffuse a bomb. The game really excels in never getting to comfortable with one sort of level structure, which also creates some problems...
•Charm - Gears for breakfast has managed to create a distinctive new IP that bursts with personality. Character design and art direction really emphasises the happy-go-lucky tune of the game, and Hat kid herself is an instantly likeable protagonist. Playing this game nurtured me into a constant sense of joy just from the characters and atmosphere. This in turn really helps with immersion.
•An eye for details - There are so much care put into the cherries on the top here that even Nintendo could learn a thing or two. The way the music increases in speed when you're gliding with your hookshot in Alpine alps; the debt paper that appears in the movie studio when you destroy props; the fact that a passport card you take in one mission later becomes the avatar for your save profile. This is just to mention a few, but these kind of extra sparkles that makes classic games legendary (such as the rotting corpse in front of Kraid's lair in Super Metroid, or the courtroom scene in Chrono Trigger) are present everywhere. I think this is the only game I have played whereas the core design is sometimes lacking (spoiler), but the attention to details is spotless.
•Fluidity and joy - Hat kid controls incredibly. It is genuinely fun to jump around levels with her moveset. I don't remember where I heard it from, but a good indicator of whether a platform game has fun core gameplay is if it is fun just fooling around with the character's moves isolated from any obstacles. I think Gears for breakfast goes far and beyond in this regard. While the camera can be a little wonky at times, I would not say it is far from the latest 3D Mario outlets.
Unfortunately, there are some major areas of criticism that hold the experience back for me
•Creativity at the cost of cohesion
I earlier praised A hat in time for daring to dip new waters in concepts. They have levels with elements of stealth, horror, racing and even an Overcooked-style level in the DLC-world of Arctic cruiser. While this is great to a degree, I feel that it just as much holds the game back. There is rarely a real sense of progression in regard to your own abilities since the game is more interested in moving on to the next concept. Think of games such as Super Mario Galaxy, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Celeste and Rayman Legends. These are all platformers that in one way or another succeeds in achieveing gameplay variety while also step by step increasing the complexity of challenges based on certain mechanics. To take a concrete example, the wind level in Celeste manages to utilise the wind mechanic and other concepts to its max, with wind going in different directions, combining the wind with older mechanics and so forth.
Just look at the cats that steal your hats (a source of several abilities) in Alpine alps. This only happens at two places in the whole game, making it stand out as a cool moment. However, instead of making anything interesting of this mechanic, the game merely lets you find the cats and kill them to retrieve your hat. Why could this mechanic not be expanded upon by adjusting the level design to this new threat? They could have created tons of interesting gameplay moments just by using the existing concepts and combining them.
I am not saying that every single gameplay component should be managed this way, we all loved that the shoe in Super Mario Bros 3 was only used in one level. But bringing the different components together in challenges to a higher degree would not only have allowed for more interesting challenges, but also bring the game's gameplay identity together while maintaining a sense of stellar creativity.
The lack of cohesion not only butchers some of the gameplay. The whimsical narrative construction hinders the game from feeling like an experience with a clear end goal. To sum up the main story, you are a space travelling kid fueled by magical hourglasses. A mafia (?) from a nearby planet opens up your ship, in the process sucking out all the timestones and yourself form the ship through vacuum. You make acquaintance with Mustache girl, who wishes to fight the mafia. But when you refuses her request to use the timestones to stop crime, she becomes (?) the main antagonist and gains a god complex with the goal of stealing all of your hourglasses.
The problem is, Mustache girl is never hyped up as the big bad villain. Actually, you do not see her at all until the end, since all the words are completely isolated in concept and have no relation to eachother. It is worth noting that I am not asking for a deep story in a platform game. The Kirby series very easily manages to create narrative cohesion just by having a clear presentation of who the villain is and what the goal is, with even less dialogue than A hat in time. I would just love for the game to feel like a journey with some context, like the fact that you are always following in Bowser's footstep to stop the wedding in Super Mario Odyssey.
This might sound like minor complaints, but I actually lost a lot of immersion from this games unwillingness to create a firm structure narratively and as a gameplay journey.
•Varied quality of level design
Adding insult to injury, the lack of cohesion and deeper exploration of design concepts also leads in to another problem; the game has some really bad level design. The ironic part is that some missions are some of the best I have ever played in any platformer. Queen Vanessa's manor and The Windmill in particular are masterpieces, and a whole lot of other missions maintains a high quality. But there are some real stinkers; one level only requires you to jump around and find photographs to take photos of you, another one is merely to deliver some mails to nearby NPC without a time limit.
It is not only the mission structure that sometimes is lacking, but the fantastic controls and movement of hat kid rarely corresponds to interesting platform design. The time rifts are the best examples of this; these levels are very similar to the bonus levels in Super Mario Sunshine in the sense that they are purely platform-based obstacle courses. About 30% of the game consists of these levels, and they are all really bland. They could have used these special levels to actually put your skills to the tests by having advanced platforming maneuvers, or at least keeping the same difficulty but with exiting platforming twists. Instead, almost all of them feels very samey and without exciting gameplay.
Even exciting levels like the earlier mentioned train rush to the bomb or a grapple hook escape from rising water were tainted for me by irritating tightropes or too much happening at once. I feel that many of the levels in the game suffers from a lack of polish and excitement. It doesn't help that enemy design and combat is absolute trash.
In conclusion, I am in LOVE with this game while simultaneously feeling frustration and disappointment. This is a kickstarter project only made by a few people, so I am actually impressed at how they actually managed to create a in part very competent piece of platforming art. However, if they want to make a sequel, there is room for tons of improvement in stitching the experience together to a cohesive whole and making levels as interesting as some of the best ones in the original.
I hope that the team at Gears for breakfast with the accumulated experience from making A hat in time can learn from their mistakes while maintaining the brilliancy of the core concept.
