A Hat in Time Review

A Hat in Time, released in 2017 for PCs, is an Action-Adventure 3D Open World game. Essentially, it is a platformer, a genre lost in decades bygone.

That does not make it any less good however.

There’s not much to say to introduce these kind of games so I’ll just go to the Sections. Without further ado:

Storyline

Hat Kid is the protagonist of the game, and the player character. Her name is no actually Hat Kid, but we don’t know her real name.

Anyway, Hat Kid is an anthropomorphic (as in no different at all than humans) alien child traveling with her spaceship. As she passes above a planet, a baddie from the planet’s Mafia demands a toll to be paid.

Breaking the window, Hat Kid loses the source of her spaceship’s power, Hourglass looking things called Time Pieces. Time Pieces have the ability to manipulate time.

Her purpose is to traverse the weird planet and collect all the Time Pieces and return home.

That is the premise, everything that follows is HEAVY SPOILERS!

(Skip to the Gameplay Section)

On the first levels, you will meet and befriend a hooded girl blond girl with a mustache aptly named Mustache Girl. She really hates the Mafia and is obsessed with taking them down. So you go together, she helping you collect Time Pieces, and you help her by taking out the Mafia.

As you do that, she finds out the true power of the Time Pieces and declares herself your enemy when you refuse to use them to make Mafia never exist.

As you struggle to collect the rest of the Time Pieces, she makes her way to your Spaceship and steals the ones you collected, creating an apocalyptic alternate world where she alone is justice.

After the fight, the game finishes and the credits roll.

There are expansions to the game with more story and Time Pieces to collect, but these are supplementary to the main story.

Gameplay

The game is a platformer as I mentioned. This means that most of your gameplay will involve platforms, jumps and hazards, as well as some quests.

As with most platformers, the moves you can do are pretty limited. You can move around, jump and double jump, and you can crouch. Crouching while running or jumping will make you dive fast forward. You can cancel the dive by jumping again. This move is usually used to get you to far off platforms.

Besides the typical action list, you have access to (a total of 6) hats, each with a unique ability. For example, your default hat shows your points of interest. You can also equip various badges (eventually, up to 3) that must be bought, which can also give more actions to do.

All these combined make for quite an array of actions.

While the game is a platformer, and its levels free roam, that’s not always the case.

There are quite different than usual levels that make this game even more fun.

For example (spoilers), there are levels that have the feel of “stealth mission”, a race level, a horror level where have to stay low and various boss fights as well. And certainly, not every level is free roam.

In the more technical stuff, you have 4 lives, and you can find health pickups practically everywhere. Dying will result in you having to start over, which trust me, isn’t that much, to begin with.

With the Seal the Deal DLC you also unlock Death Wish. Death Wish is missions on levels you already did but come with a new twist, making them much harder. Some of them also have bonus quests making them even harder. Fortunately, you don’t have to do the bonus quest along with the main.

If you die a number of times, Peace and Tranquility is unlocked, which (for a price) makes the challenge easier. However, the general consensus is that it’s much to easy with Peace and Tranquility.

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Visuals

I’ll start this off with a quote from the game’s description: <<A Hat in Time is a cute-as-heck 3D platformer featuring a little girl who stitches hats for wicked powers.>>

I’m usually not a fan of these characterizations (i..e a cute game, a pretty game, and edgy game, etc), but boy did they hit the jackpot with this. I really was skeptical, but there’s no better way to describe it; Hat Kid is absolutely adorable.

Other than that, the graphics are what you can expect from Unreal Engine, though they can run on a decent PC so it’s certainly not AAA.

The game has TONS of cosmetics for you to unlock as well, making customizability an option in this game. The main character remains the same, however (and I wouldn’t have it any other way!)

Personal Thoughts

If you are a fan of platformers then this game is definitely for you. It is a tad expensive, but no matter, on a sale, it definitely is worth the money.

If you are a parent thinking of taking this game for your kid(s), certainly go ahead; in fact, you might find yourself enjoying the game too!

Good platformers (especially for the PC) are hard to come by these days, so we should appreciate the ones that come.

Final Verdict

Storyline: 7.0

Gameplay: 8.5

Visuals: 7.0

Personal Score: 7.5

That’s it for my review. Irregardless of the score, I certainly recommend this game to anyone who’s in to these kind of games.

Have you played the game? Are you thinking of buying it? Do you agree that it’s SUPER CUTE? Leave a comment below.

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