Mr. Sun’s Hatbox Review – Tactical Hatspionge Action

Mr. Sun’s Hatbox is probably the strangest, least expected homage to the Metal Gear Solid series I have ever seen. Specifically, MSH pays direct tribute and parody to Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, with everything from visual references to straight-up sharing some of the same gameplay mechanics.

Mr. Sun’s Hatbox follows the story of Mr. Sun, who runs a shop called Mr. Sun’s Hat Box. One day, a delivery of some new hats from the Amazin company gets hijacked by a group of hooligans that I’m pretty sure includes a mischievous banana. They take Mr. Sun’s box and flee to a conveniently placed medieval castle down the street.

The game is then immediately no longer about Mr. Sun, and instead follows the minimum wage Amazin employee who is driven by company policy to get the package back. Using his highly trained skills as an infiltration expert, the Amazin employee infiltrates the castle, but can’t quite keep on the toes of the fleeing thieves.

Failing to retrieve the package, the Amazin employee then sets up a covert operations base beneath Mr. Sun’s shop. From here, enemy agents are converted, equipped with captured equipment, and sent on countless international special warfare operations conducted with the hopes of eventually getting Mr. Sun’s package back.

Mr. Sun’s Hatbox plays with mechanics that close parody Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. That isn’t to say at all that Mr. Sun’s Hatbox is an unoriginal game. On the contrary, I think the loving parody of the gritty, war-torn Metal Gear series is part of what makes Hatbox stand out as its own thing.

FIrst thing first, and this doesn’t really tie to the Metal Gear connection, Mr. Sun’s Hatbox is a platforming game. You need to use your skills as a platform to sneak past and outmaneuver your enemies, getting in kill range or, if you don’t have a weapon, dropping down on them for a Super Mario style takedown.

Sneaking up on an enemy (or, rather, jumping on top of them) knocks them out, which gives you one of two options for how to deal with the downed foe. Either you choose to kill the enemy, playing out a surprisingly gruesome kill animation, or you send them back to base using, and I’m 100% serious here, a Fulton recovery balloon.

The game is that blatant about the parody and I love it.

Once they’re at your base (which you must upgrade over time with new attached rooms such as an R&D department, equipment storage, etc) you can send these new allies out on missions to gain capital and items. They have a chance to fail on these missions, and if they do they will be lost forever.

You can increase your agent’s chance of success by equipping them with weapons, which you also recover in the field.

Agents also come with either positive or negative traits that can affect their usefulness on a mission. Agent collecting almost becomes like a game of Pokemon, where you go out of your way to find and collect agents with the best combination of traits and add them to your collection for future tactical hat action.

Hats are also a huge deal in Mr. Sun’s Hatbox. You can find hats in the field and collect them, and I don’t think there’s a limit on the amount you can wear at once — At least now one that I’ve found. Hats are some more of your roguelike perks, and some provide incredibly useful benefits. Some are utterly useless.

The gameplay being a combination of stealth, roguelike levels, and base building is pretty unique, but it definitely feels like what Mr. Sun’s Hatbox really wants to sell you on is the absurdist humor intrinsically tied to its premise. For some, this is going to be the game’s greatest strength. For others, its biggest weakness.

I won’t sugarcoat it, there are people who are just not going to like the humor in Mr. Sun’s Hatbox. It’s not bad, by any stretch of the word, but it is a very specific kind of comedy that not everyone is going to appreciate, at least not the entire way through.

While Mr. Sun’s Hatbox contains some solid gameplay, I didn’t personally find it to be enough to keep me tied to the title once my love for the concept started to wear off. This is definitely not an issue every player is going to have, but if you’re looking at the game and not feeling anything for the visual silliness, it might not sell you on gameplay alone.

Really, what Mr. Sun’s Hatbox made me want to do the most was go play Metal Gear Solid V.

I’m not saying that Hatbox is a bad game, because it isn’t. I’m not saying it isn’t going to draw in die-hard fans, because it will. What I am saying is that the game isn’t for everyone. It’s appeal is tied too closely to the comedy, which is perhaps the most subjective thing there is.

If I could summarize my feelings on Mr. Sun’s Hatbox in not so many words, I’d say that is is a fun game with clever humor and is a surprisingly solid parody of the Metal Gear franchise. The game’s mechanics are fun, and blend a few genres you wouldn’t expect to see. However, I think the game gets pretty repetitive, and expects to keep you on its absurdism and humor. If it can’t, you won’t stay for long.

Try Hard Guides was provided with a PC review copy of this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website! Mr. Sun’s Hatbox is available on Steam and Nintendo Switch.