Game Review: A Hat in Time (Xbox Series X)

How many times have we heard a game boast that it is a revival of the classic 3D platformers of old? Games like Banjo-Kazooie, Super Mario 64 and so on? How many times have we been burned? Just look at Yooka-Laylee as an example of something that couldn’t live up to the promise.

Well, here we go again. A Hat in Time promises that it is a 3D platformer for all those who grew up loving these types of games. Does it live up to it?

Developed by Gears for Breakfast and published by Humble Bundle, A Hat in Time models itself on one classic 3D platformer more than any other and that is Super Mario 64. Not a bad game to ape but it also has its own ideas and turns out to be a great experience.

Though you wouldn’t know that from the plot.

You play as Hat Kid, a young girl travelling through space in her spaceship, trying to get to her home planet. As she passes by a planet, her ship is attacked by the Mafia scattering the ‘time pieces’ that power the craft all over the planet. Stuck, with no way to continue onwards to home, she has no choice but to go to the planet and find them all.

It’s a very simple but charming story that has a beginning and ending but doesn’t really have a middle. That’s the part where you come in, traversing a hub world and completing acts to collect the time pieces. Hub worlds such as a town built into a sea wall controlled by the Mafia, a spooky forest with supernatural being that wants to own your soul and a film studio set. Each area has multiple acts that send you on different paths and into new locations.

It’s all very familiar, swap out the star or shine for a time piece.

The same goes for the 3D platforming aspects as you’ll be jumping, double jumping, wall-jumping, running, sliding, soaring and fighting with your trusty umbrella through the areas. So, what marks A Hat in Time as different? It’s the hat aspect which give you different abilities depending on what you are wearing. As you progress, you will unlock different hats that can then be worn to help you progress or backtrack to a time piece that you previously couldn’t get.

Hats like the Sprint hat and Time Stop hat should be self-explanatory. One allowing you move faster, the other allowing you to freeze time for a short period of time. The Brewing hat allows you to craft explosive potions to throw and the Dweller’s Mask allows you to materialize objects that normally appear as green holographic objects. There are 6 in total and each is invaluable to collecting everything in the game. With a quick tap of a button, you can switch between hats with ease, making gameplay quite free-flowing.

That, combined with the excellent controls, puts this on par with some of the best 3D Mario games. Add the wonderfully unique worlds, the colours and variety in acts and it becomes clear that A Hat in Time is something quite special.

So, what about the game isn’t so great? Very little but niggling things none the less. Hilariously the bane of many 3D platformers returns, bad camera controls. While it’s not as awful as some in the genre, it’s still disappointing to have a finicky camera that causes you to miss a jump.

The music, while nice and setting the tone, has nothing memorable. Think of the most iconic 3D platformers, they also had iconic music. The game also has some unexpected difficulty spikes when it comes to boss battles and a better map for finding elusive items would be nice.

Some complaints but nothing that detracts from the overall quality of this throwback. A blast of innovate levels, good controls, lovely visuals and plenty to do, makes this a game that lives up to the promise it set.