Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure (DS)

Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure
Electronic Arts

Review by Anthony

So, Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure arrives to the DS thanks to EA Games of all companies, and takes the media world by storm... even to the point of IGN basically asking people to buy it. Well okay, I like 2-D platformers and I like puzzle games, so I should like a 2-D platformer/puzzle game, nay? Well... even after having played it, I’m not entirely sure.

When I think about the game, I have to boil down the mess of ideas and gameplay elements until I get the rich stew of confusing and contradicting feelings. The conclusion I end up with is that this is an ambitious game with solid gameplay and unique elements, both of which are mired in some bad elements.

What’s good:
- Playing as an English gentleman and watching cute cutscenes of characters grunting their lines with the occasional accented “guvnah!”, finishing a level with him shouting “Good Show!” and activating his super ability “Tea Time” to a chorus of cheers and claps as he zooms in his robot past his native flag... the charm is undeniable.
- The music is surprisingly good for a platformer, containing many silly tunes that match the tone of the worlds and events very well.
- The shop for buying power-ups from gems acquired during levels, with the option to always replay levels for more was a good touch. Players can really have a pretty decent say on which aspect they feel ol’ Henry needs improving first.
- The bosses were appropriately hard – many took me several tries to beat, but with enough practice and pattern recognition, I was able to give them a jolly good thrashing. It was the right level of difficulty, and I know that’s not easy to pull off.
- When not dealing with platforming or puzzling, Henry can pull off some pretty awesome combos of attacks and special attacks that are fun to play around with.

What’s neutral:
- The graphics were nice and colorful for the most part, but many enemies had a palette swap and few were enjoyable to look at. Bosses became a nice change of pace from the same hordes of enemies.
- The “puzzle realm” as it was called... hrm. In a nutshell, enemies killed in the main game get shoved down to the bottom-screen’s puzzle game, and if not removed there, can manifest as evil blocks attacking the main screen. And while you’re down there, you can get power-ups, restore health, and fill up your super meter. It worked, but not without issue... because of the long levels, often too much time had to be wasted in there, which adds a lot of time to trying to progress the levels. And weird elements exist, like restoring your health and powering up is best done only when you’re killing off hordes of enemies... so technically the best time to restore health is when you’re in the most danger?
- I’d say the controls worked well and jumping through stages was mild fun, but there were some definite issues with hit detection. It took a bit to get used to the rhythm of movement and attacks, but it responded well. However, with enemies perched precariously on the edges of cliffs, slow attacks, a crouch attack that juts you forward enough to be injured by enemies in front of you, and attacks/one-hit-kill crushes hitting you that seemingly shouldn’t, there were concerns... especially for a game that could kill you easily and have you lose 10 minutes of progress.

What’s bad:
- The levels were excruciatingly long. EA apparently forgot that with handheld games, players want to be able to pick up and put down a game at will. Many levels in this game, even ones giving me absolutely no trouble, could take over 20 minutes to play through. On some of the overly difficult bonus levels, my wife could hear me 35 minutes into starting the game up... “remember that level I was having trouble with? Still on it!”
- Not only were the levels too long, but the sectioned portions of the levels were also too long. Every zone would be a checkpoint to restart from if you had the lives to do so, but the individual sections could contain another 10 minutes of very precarious platforming, fighting, and trap dodging, that could mean your last 9 minutes of collecting gems, dodging traps, making difficult jumps, fighting enemies, and taking trips into the puzzle realm repeatedly... could all be wiped clean if you got clipped with a bullet and fell helplessly into a pit. Ouch.
- Embarassingly short ending for this day and age, and should you collect everything in your playthrough, you’ll find a nice “98%” number of completion staring at you. To get that extra 2%? Well, you have to erase your current save and replace it with a new 0% file to replay the whole game in “Gentleman’s Mode,” or as you might know it, Hard Mode. Why would they force you to erase all of your progress to start again just for 2% completion (which according to users, unlocks no rewards)?

What a strange game. I got to play as an English, monocle-wearing gentleman, politely thrashing enemies with his cane, shooting lasers out of his giant robot, using different power-ups to defeat enemies and juggle their corpses, and had a brutish woman boss throwing an old man at me. It should be the greatest game ever! But the inexcusably long levels and more chore-like element of the puzzle realm, however cleverly implemented, took away much from the experience. A nice ending or reward for completion could’ve really gone a long way to giving me a nice final impression, but that came up quite short as well.