The short review, for people that are not into reading:
If you liked games like Super Mario 64/Sunshine and Donkey Kong 64, you will definitely enjoy this amazing game as well!
And now for the review!
A hat in time is a charming little game that shows that Kickstarter stories don't always end in failure. It matches its own description of being a "cute-as-heck 3D platformer" and still manages to pull ahead an possibly become one of my favorite 3D platformers of all time. As a longtime fan of games such as Super Mario 64/Sunshine and Donkey Kong 64; I can say for certain that A Hat In Time (AHiT) manages to encapsulate the essence of those games while still remaining unique on its own rights.
The game does a fantastic job of creating large open-ended mission-based levels which engulfs you into those worlds and makes you want to wander off the beaten path and search through every nook and cranny for whatever secrets may be in the world. Either in the form of a collectible or a sly quip from one of the many characters that fill the large worlds of AHiT or simply to go off and jump and dive around the various areas of the worlds, AHiT's levels always seem to be briming with content and character.
As an aside, this doesn't mean the game isn't without flaws. One of the most jarring things to me personally is the voice acting. Not even that it is bad in general, just that there are some bad voice actors, especially in the beginning of the game from a certain mustachioed character. The rest of the voice actors do some fine work and as always the game has plenty of ways to ignore that either through simply disabling dialogue from the audio settings to buying the mumble badge that gives all the characters a Banjo-Kazooie-esque mumble sound. This game did do the mumbles very well mind you, unlike Yooka-Laylee's forced mumble that to be fair was quite horrid.
Another negative thing about the game would probably be the graphical fidelity of the game in terms of the character models. Some just don't look too good in and of themselves. The Mafia is a model that I may find in an older PlayStation 2 game or a very early Xbox 360 game which looks jarring in comparison to the decent models on almost everything else. Thankfully the game's aesthetic does make up for its shortcomings graphics wise thanks to the almost The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker artstyle that makes the game feel very stylistically sound and makes it a real beauty to look at.
Keep in mind, these "flaws" are not breaking the game in any way. The game is still one of the greatest platformers I have played in recent years, and I'm highly recommending people to try it out!
Overall I would have to give this game a 9/10.
I deeply enjoy most of the game. I adore the characters, I love the platforming and the levels for me are wonderfully constructed and I feel as if they had a lot of love put into them. The game does have some flaws and I do feel like they stop me from giving it another half a point or more.
And that's it for A Hat in Time!
I really enjoyed making this review, and I have put a lot of work into this, so...!
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Have a nice day, and I will hopefully see you in the future.
Best regards
FreddyFish
