As evidenced in at least a handful of the other reviews I've written, the 3D Platformer is one of my all-time favorite genres. Combining tight, reflex-intensive gameplay with sprawling, diverse levels is a recipe for excellence in my book, although in recent years the genre has somewhat fallen into neglect. There have been a handful of games in the past year that attempted to breathe some life back into it, though, with different approaches. Yooka-Laylee vied to bring back the Collectathon genre. Clustertruck is a different sort of 3D platformer, based around fast, constantly-moving autoscroller levels. Super Mario Odyssey, out in just under three weeks, looks to be a love letter to Super Mario Sunshine and 64, my two favorite 3D platformers ever.
When I Kickstarted A Hat in Time, I expected to get a game that aped Sunshine and 64, had a handful of great ideas, played well, and was a fun game in a genre that was woefully underserved, especially on PC. Instead, Hat took its lengthy development time in order to polish, expand, and perfect its core concepts, and the end result is a fantastic game that doesn't pay homage to its predecessors so much as graduates from them with flying colors.

You start the game in your novelty-shaped spaceship, on your way home from adventures unknown. You're passing by a small planet with a load of strange, unique regions, when you're hailed by a Mafia member who tells you that you need a permit, or can't fly by the planet for free, or some such nonsense. Hat Kid has no time for any of this nonsense, and attempts to break free, which results in the fuel for her spaceship, Time Pieces, being scattered all over the planet below. Now marooned, she heads to the planet's surface in order to get these hourglasses back by any means necessary.
This sets a tone that you'll see for the rest of the game: Hat Kid will help people with their issues, but her main goal is absolutely to get the heck back home. True Neutral. This encounter with the Mafia also shows you the kinds of characters you'll be encountering: goofy, bumbling grumps with writing that I expected to grow old quickly, but which kept me chuckling until the end.

The first world is Mafia Town, a bustling seaside city where bald, broken English strongmen who all look the same rule with iron fists. You quickly team up with Mustache Girl, a character with just as much spunk as you, but who is decidedly more good-aligned. She helps you get your first couple Time Pieces in levels designed to teach you many of the mechanics of A Hat in Time: the double jump, the dive, the dive cancel, and hat powers.
Almost immediately, you'll see just how much effort has been put into making every single part of this game feel exceptional. 3D Platformers have long been bemoaned for their attempts at camera control, whether they opt for an automatic camera or user-controlled. I can safely say that there was not a single time in this entire game that I felt like I was fighting the camera. In almost every scenario, the camera is smart enough to adjust automatically, letting you focus on the platforming. When you feel you need to take control, you can make minute adjustments that don't autosnap back, letting you control the camera as you run, jump, and dive your way around tricky platforming sections.
Mafia Town is an incredible vertical slice of A Hat in Time for multiple other reasons besides showing you the ropes, though. Not only does the world offer a good amount of quirky characters, both in the mafiosos and the hapless townspeople, it also has a decent amount of collectibles to find, including Yarn which allows you to knit new Hats (which grant powers that can often open up sections of prior levels to find new items, including Yarn, and so on), Relics that allow you to play a slot machine where you'll unlock cosmetic items, and one of my favorite features: Time Rifts. These small glowing orbs are unlocked after certain Acts, and show up in the world screen as photos of locations in the world. You have to study the photo and then pick an Act, then hunt down the orb. Once you touch it, you're transported to one of two level types. The first is a love letter to Super Mario Sunshine's F.L.U.D.D.-less levels, great abstract blocks in space with incredibly tight platforming that's often a lot more challenging than in the core Acts. The second are strange, memory-hunting collection levels where you must find relics and pieces of a journal in order to progress, which will let you view a short picture book at the end with the memories you collected. The former are some of my favorite levels in the game, but the latter are fun in their own way, especially as a cooldown from some of the difficult levels of the core Acts.

There's one other core Hat in Time concept that Mafia Town introduces, and that's the stunningly fun boss fights. There's a miniboss that is played on a purely horizontal plane, where you must jump over barrels and dodge them, and that core dodging mechanic carries through to every other boss fight in the game. Boss fights in A Hat in Time feel akin to Donkey Kong Country boss battles in 3D, which is not something I would have anticipated working (or being fun) but they are some of the highlight encounters in the game. Each boss has multiple phases and attack patterns, and often has in-match cutscenes and dialogue (which is skipped if you retry the boss - one more excellent Quality of Life feature). These are not your 3-hit Mario bosses or 5-hit DKC bosses, though -- often, each boss takes 20-30 hits to defeat, meaning each boss battle is a test of stamina, reflexes, and patience. I'm not usually a boss guy in platformers, because I find them to often be trite or unnecessary, but Hat's bosses shine with the same polish as everything else in the game.

The boss encounters also have some of the best music in the game, with bombastic tracks that call to mind everything from Mario to Undertale. These are far from the only standout songs, though: the entire soundtrack is a delight, with each track suited perfectly for its area. Sound design in general in this game is fantastic, whether it's the Link-style groans and oofs when you bash into something or the thousands of voice-acted, well-written lines.

I don't want to talk too much about the other three worlds in A Hat in Time, to avoid spoiling some of the best levels in what is unfortunately a pretty short game (I finished in just under six hours, with over half of the total Time Pieces, although from looking around I was on the short side), but rest assured: each world introduces new concepts, enemy types, and even entirely different gameplay mechanics. There's a murder mystery, a parade, and a sneak-and-hide horror level (which is genuinely scary!) as well as levels that are nothing but good old-fashioned platformer fun.

A Hat in Time is one of the best games I've played all year, and one of the best 3D Platformers ever. With two worlds coming as free DLC, as well as co-op in an upcoming patch, mod support, and more, it looks like this instant classic is going to stick around for some time. I hope that anyone who likes the genre, great writing, fantastic music, and genuinely perfect controls picks this up, because they will not be disappointed.

5/5

As evidenced in at least a handful of the other reviews I've written, the 3D Platformer is one of my all-time favorite genres. Combining tight, reflex-intensive gameplay with sprawling, diverse levels is a recipe for excellence in my book, although in recent years the genre has somewhat fallen into neglect. There have been a handful of games in the past year that attempted to breathe some life back into it, though, with different approaches. Yooka-Laylee vied to bring back the Collectathon genre. Clustertruck is a different sort of 3D platformer, based around fast, constantly-moving autoscroller levels. Super Mario Odyssey, out in just under three weeks, looks to be a love letter to Super Mario Sunshine and 64, my two favorite 3D platformers ever. When I Kickstarted A Hat in Time, I expected to get a game that aped Sunshine and 64, had a handful of great ideas, played well, and was a fun game in a genre that was woefully underserved, especially on PC. Instead, Hat took its lengthy development time in order to polish, expand, and perfect its core concepts, and the end result is a fantastic game that doesn't pay homage to its predecessors so much as graduates from them with flying colors. You start the game in your novelty-shaped spaceship, on your way home from adventures unknown. You're passing by a small planet with a load of strange, unique regions, when you're hailed by a Mafia member who tells you that you need a permit, or can't fly by the planet for free, or some such nonsense. Hat Kid has no time for any of this nonsense, and attempts to break free, which results in the fuel for her spaceship, Time Pieces, being scattered all over the planet below. Now marooned, she heads to the planet's surface in order to get these hourglasses back by any means necessary. This sets a tone that you'll see for the rest of the game: Hat Kid will help people with their issues, but her main goal is absolutely to get the heck back home. True Neutral. This encounter with the Mafia also shows you the kinds of characters you'll be encountering: goofy, bumbling grumps with writing that I expected to grow old quickly, but which kept me chuckling until the end. The first world is Mafia Town, a bustling seaside city where bald, broken English strongmen who all look the same rule with iron fists. You quickly team up with Mustache Girl, a character with just as much spunk as you, but who is decidedly more good-aligned. She helps you get your first couple Time Pieces in levels designed to teach you many of the mechanics of A Hat in Time: the double jump, the dive, the dive cancel, and hat powers. Almost immediately, you'll see just how much effort has been put into making every single part of this game feel exceptional. 3D Platformers have long been bemoaned for their attempts at camera control, whether they opt for an automatic camera or user-controlled. I can safely say that there was not a single time in this entire game that I felt like I was fighting the camera. In almost every scenario, the camera is smart enough to adjust automatically, letting you focus on the platforming. When you feel you need to take control, you can make minute adjustments that don't autosnap back, letting you control the camera as you run, jump, and dive your way around tricky platforming sections. Mafia Town is an incredible vertical slice of A Hat in Time for multiple other reasons besides showing you the ropes, though. Not only does the world offer a good amount of quirky characters, both in the mafiosos and the hapless townspeople, it also has a decent amount of collectibles to find, including Yarn which allows you to knit new Hats (which grant powers that can often open up sections of prior levels to find new items, including Yarn, and so on), Relics that allow you to play a slot machine where you'll unlock cosmetic items, and one of my favorite features: Time Rifts. These small glowing orbs are unlocked after certain Acts, and show up in the world screen as photos of locations in the world. You have to study the photo and then pick an Act, then hunt down the orb. Once you touch it, you're transported to one of two level types. The first is a love letter to Super Mario Sunshine's F.L.U.D.D.-less levels, great abstract blocks in space with incredibly tight platforming that's often a lot more challenging than in the core Acts. The second are strange, memory-hunting collection levels where you must find relics and pieces of a journal in order to progress, which will let you view a short picture book at the end with the memories you collected. The former are some of my favorite levels in the game, but the latter are fun in their own way, especially as a cooldown from some of the difficult levels of the core Acts. There's one other core Hat in Time concept that Mafia Town introduces, and that's the stunningly fun boss fights. There's a miniboss that is played on a purely horizontal plane, where you must jump over barrels and dodge them, and that core dodging mechanic carries through to every other boss fight in the game. Boss fights in A Hat in Time feel akin to Donkey Kong Country boss battles in 3D, which is not something I would have anticipated working (or being fun) but they are some of the highlight encounters in the game. Each boss has multiple phases and attack patterns, and often has in-match cutscenes and dialogue (which is skipped if you retry the boss - one more excellent Quality of Life feature). These are not your 3-hit Mario bosses or 5-hit DKC bosses, though -- often, each boss takes 20-30 hits to defeat, meaning each boss battle is a test of stamina, reflexes, and patience. I'm not usually a boss guy in platformers, because I find them to often be trite or unnecessary, but Hat's bosses shine with the same polish as everything else in the game. The boss encounters also have some of the best music in the game, with bombastic tracks that call to mind everything from Mario to Undertale. These are far from the only standout songs, though: the entire soundtrack is a delight, with each track suited perfectly for its area. Sound design in general in this game is fantastic, whether it's the Link-style groans and oofs when you bash into something or the thousands of voice-acted, well-written lines. I don't want to talk too much about the other three worlds in A Hat in Time, to avoid spoiling some of the best levels in what is unfortunately a pretty short game (I finished in just under six hours, with over half of the total Time Pieces, although from looking around I was on the short side), but rest assured: each world introduces new concepts, enemy types, and even entirely different gameplay mechanics. There's a murder mystery, a parade, and a sneak-and-hide horror level (which is genuinely scary!) as well as levels that are nothing but good old-fashioned platformer fun. A Hat in Time is one of the best games I've played all year, and one of the best 3D Platformers ever. With two worlds coming as free DLC, as well as co-op in an upcoming patch, mod support, and more, it looks like this instant classic is going to stick around for some time. I hope that anyone who likes the genre, great writing, fantastic music, and genuinely perfect controls picks this up, because they will not be disappointed. 5/5