Review: Mr. Sun’s Hatbox merges Metal Gear Solid 5 and Spelunky

If you have even a fleeting acquaintance Lime solid mineral 5: phantom painYou may remember his Fulton recovery system. To provide the game’s core building element with personnel and equipment, you grab these objects from the open world by attaching them to balloons, which sail off the screen to easily transport them to the headquarters of your rogue paramilitary operation. By all accounts, and especially by that of an obsessively detailed military stealth action game, it’s a pretty silly game.

It’s so silly, in fact, that it fits perfectly with the animation styles of Mr. Sun Hatbox, as if she had always belonged there. Because in this roguelike platformer developed by Kenny Sun, you also lead a rogue paramilitary operation that is not subject to government limits or laws (you are, after all, a delivery person for a company called “Amazin”). The difference is that you work from a client’s vault in order to retrieve a stolen package, and embark on missions that resemble the perilous levels of 2D platformers. Spelunky. Completing these quests helps fund your operation, providing you with an arsenal and army to draw upon with quest rewards, black market purchases, and balloons attached to any seemingly useful items and characters you might encounter along the way.

Quite the opposite metal gearYou don’t play as one character. Alternatively, you can individually control any randomly generated person(s) you’ve selected for a mission, as they may die permanently. Characters (as well as many derisive nicknames) are primarily differentiated by their individual traits, a set of traits and quirks that completely change the way the game is approached depending on the basis of each mission and each agent. These variables are further complicated by the wide range of equipment available, which includes ping pong paddles, shark hats, and bouncy flannels as well as the typical selection of firearms, explosives, and sharp objects.

Photo: Kenny Sun/Rao Fury

Especially in the early hours of the game, many character traits are undesirable, and you’re basically forced to deal with what little you have. An Operator may have the very useful “electrocution” feature of electrocuting any guard he touches. But they may also suffer from “dry eyes,” which causes the screen to darken every few seconds because they have to blink a lot.

A big part of the game involves strategizing around these quirks when possible. Upon snapping a guard’s neck, for example, the “Guilty Conscience” trait sends your character jumping into an uncontrollable panic for a few short but pivotal seconds during which you might slip into a trap or another ranger’s line of sight. To circumvent this, you can take care to kill exclusively (and perhaps more impersonally) with weapons, or you can drag each dead body to a secluded area where it’s safer for your designated employee to release any post-killing jitters.

But it’s easy to lose track of these strategies in the heat of the moment or in the pile of available units and equipment, and the chaotic chain reactions that result are what make Mr. Sun Hatbox Very special. I, for one, accidentally hit my agent with his boomerang, activating the “weak gut” trait of instant ejaculation when hit, which I then discovered brings a guard in to investigate the origin of the brand-new stink. . In another mission, I learned the hard way that the “Forget” attribute removes the indicator of the single character that you are supposed to survive.

Photo: Kenny Sun/Rao Fury

The result is all the fun is particularly out of control Spelunky session with additional wrinkles for continuous progression; Base building insidious forces you not only to keep an eye on your equipment stores but also to think about your employees and which of them you can afford to lose. Consistently choosing one specific agent for missions will level them up, giving them more health as they grow from unhelpful to more useful traits. But this agent only gets more valuable over time, to the point where it becomes difficult to justify its array of useful traits in anything but the most difficult and pivotal missions, if at all. Furthermore, mechanics such as the skill tree depend on the levels of the characters you’ve sampled to perform those tasks – a veteran level 7 operator will contribute more to the quest for the skill tree than a level 2 newcomer. expected in the field.

in treatment, Mr. Sun Hatbox It brilliantly answers the age-old question of how to get players to take risks and engage with new mechanics rather than sticking exclusively to familiar tools. By motivating you to get messy, it creates a game loop where many of the most creative and intense moments stem from hilarious failures. It’s the rare game where it’s as exciting to lose as it is to win.

Mr. Sun Hatbox It was released on April 20th on Nintendo Switch and Windows PC. Game reviewed on PC using download code provided by Raw Fury. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find Additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.

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