as a child, 3d platformers comprised some of my most formative gaming experiences. their sprawling worlds, eccentric characters, and seemingly endless secrets were a refuge for a quiet, geeky kid like myself. now an adult loser, i was excited to play a game that attempts to recapture both the style and substance of these iconic games of my youth, but unfortunately a hat in time misses the mark on both fronts for me.

mechanically, i actually really like how it feels controlling hat kid. in particular, the 4-part jump, double jump, dash, dash cancel allows for a lot of variety while traversing and leads to some pretty exhilarating "oh shit oh shit am i going to make it" leap-of-faith style gambits. where ahit stumbles is how this toolkit interacts with the world around it. the game is plagued with odd nooks and crannies that cause the camera to get stuck at frustrating angles, geometry that arbitrarily doesn't obey the same rules as the things around it, invisible walls for any player who dares to try and open her up a bit (often requiring a reset to get unstuck), and a generally muddled sense of conveyance (find me a mario game where there are some lanterns that you can grapple and some that you can't and also they look the same). all the sharp edges sanded off by overworked japanese programmers who now have very wrought relationships with their adult children in the 3d platformers of yore are still present here and they're poking me in the eye.

the titular hat mechanic is also a bit of a letdown. none of the hats alter gameplay in as exciting a way as a mumbo transformation or a cappy capture and most boil down to a bad metroidvania's "now i can open the doors that are green". i spent the vast majority of the game with the hat that makes you move fast equipped, only switching when i came across an obstacle that required another specific hat.

(also, the title "a hat in time". it has always sounded to me like this is supposed to be a pun or something, but thinking about it now what is it a pun of? a stitch in time? a wrinkle in time? i don't get it. [docking one full star for this point])

ahit attempts to recreate the overall vibe of older 3d platformers to similarly mixed effect. the developers clearly wanted to conjure the same feeling these games gave when entering a new location or meeting a new character, but in an effort to plant their flag in entirely virgin ground have resorted to making EVERYTHING really weird. but when everything is weird, nothing is weird. the reason things like il piantissimo or cloud cuckooland stick out in my mind is because they "broke the rules" of an otherwise grounded game. ahit's world of beachside greco-russo-italian gangsters and funky penguin dj movie directors, while certainly unique, feels like a bit of a mishmash absent any more familiar landmarks of the genre (jungle level).

the game feels simultaneously too big for what the developers could handle polishing to a mirror sheen (oh you're telling me the project unexpectedly made 10x what it was asking for in its kickstarter campaign wow i didn't know that i just- you're telling me now for the first time) and too small to really evoke the same feelings as the games it attempts to mimic (only 4 real-ass full-ass levels and 40 of the main collectible [not to mention one sub collectible that becomes pointless after you collect slightly over half of them and another that unlocks purely cosmetic items and whose collection progress isn't even tracked anywhere in the UI???? {i know things with collectibles got a little out of hand towards the end of the 3d platformer's heyday, but undeniably part of the draw of these games has always been collecting a bunch of fucking schtuff. give me, like, at least 100 stuff to collect, please}])

this game makes an interesting companion to yooka-laylee. both released around the same time, had wildly successful kickstarter campaigns, and attempted to resurrect the glory days of games where one of the characters in the 6th level was a chair that had a face and was named like "chairbo" or something. they are also both not very good, but the sliders for why that is are in totally different places for each game.

Ultimately, though I wouldn't use one of A Hat in Time's shiny Time Pieces to roll back the over 10 hours I spent completing it, I find myself wondering wistfully what might have been done differently to achieve a truly tidafjkl;sdfna;sdf whatever

me, last week (naive): our struggles are many, but the uniting force of our basic humanity is the stuff of legends. working together we can do the impossible, move heaven and earth, and with our brothers and sisters the world over build a brighter and kinder future for our children and our children's children.
me, after playing palworld for 1 second: we live in a pit. a void where the light of goodness can not and will not penetrate. we crawl on the ground, our bellies dragging in the dirt, mouths filled with ash as we gaze up to the polluted sky and cry out to a god that doesn't care or doesn't exist, asking where it all went so wrong. every morning we awaken and try to move but find our bodies as if suspended in pitch, our frantic and helpless attempts to wrench free only serving to drive us deeper into the mire. our once immaculate souls, our most precious gift, have been cast onto an infernal pyre, are now charred and blackened, the detritus of an unending cosmic cyc

haters: he will never make a 50 metascore game
yuji naka: hold my sake
no one:
absolutely no one:
Tokyo Financial Instruments and Exchange Act of 2006: この法律は、企業内容等の開示の制度を整備するとともに、金融商品取引業を行う者に関し必要な事項を定め、金融商品取引所の適切な運営を確保すること等により、有価証券の発行及び金融商品等の取引等を公正にし、有価証券の流通を円滑にするほか、資本市場の機能の十全な発揮による金融商品等の公正な価格形成等を図り、もつて国民経済の健全な発展及び投資者の保護に資することを目的とする。

don't let the internet's ability to beat anything slightly novel to death cloud your judgement on this one. while the one word reviews of "cat." and "omg there's a meow button" might make this seem like a game exclusively for morons without an original thought in their head, stray actually rules. all the truly great cat staples you know and love are here. walking on keyboards. knocking stuff off of tables. jumping on people while they're sleeping. fucking up in progress board games. and all seamlessly integrated into a stunningly crafted cyberpunk world that feels lived in populated by robot characters that feel alive. some less than inspired puzzles and paint by numbers stealth sequences towards the end of the game aren't enough to get in the way of the gameplay that really matters: finding a quiet spot to curl up and watch the world go by.