Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure Game by EA Reviewed by Philip Wesley Save: Battery Save - 3 Slots Released: 2009 Works with: Nintendo DS/DSi ESRB Rated: E Rating Descriptions: Comic Mischief (Excessive amounts of TEA.) Quick Opinion: Own **************************************************************************** Opening Snide Remarks: There are several kinds of genres in video games that suffer from bouts of being generic. The side scrolling platformer genre has cannibalized itself over the years because of two major problems. Those problems are Stamperism, and Mascoting. I will put a quick definition of those terms below this paragraph so you may grasp what I mean when I use the terms in this and other reviews. Stamperism: This term is named after "The Stamper Brothers" from the company Rare. This practice refers to artificially extending the play time of a game through collectible objects or (as Media Molecule has done) through a custom collection style mechanic. This refers to where you revisit the same levels or settings repeatedly to collect Puzzle Pieces, Crystal Coconuts, Level Texture Patterns, Banana Birds, et cetra. The ability to customize a level or collect a lot of items in a level is not usually bad, but many games use this gimmick to hide fundamental flaws in gameplay, play control, or design. Mascoting: This term is pretty simple to understand as it refers to the practice of slapping a well known franchise character (Sonic, Crash, Spyro, Mario, et cetra) into a horrible game in an attempt to sell units. This is also a term for slapping a lackluster license to a very good game. Think of this as a description of "Generic Jumping Animal 3D Adventure." "Generic Jumping Animal 3D Adventure" may be the second coming of "Super Metroid" or "Contra;" but no one is going to believe you when you try to tell them that they should buy "Generic Jumping Animal 3D Adventure." The most important term out of those two is "Mascoting" as that term is a description of the biggest problem with Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure. I had heard from friends that this was a good game and that I should buy it. I did not buy this title until it was $10 at the local Wal-Mart. After all, why should I care about "Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure?" There is no animated property attached to it, the game comes from no big names like Nintendo or Sega. The game has no independent superstar developers like Wayforward Technologies, Pixeljunk, or 5th Cell attached to it. In fact, the game is attached to a publisher known for milking The Sims and the Madden franchise dry. This is an original title from a team that digs up the corpse of Madden every year, sticks a ribbon on it, and ships it to stores where people devour the bloated cadaver like so many nefarious zombies. Why should you and I care about Henry Hatsworth? I am taking a knife to this thing and slicing it up like the wrist of a "Death Cab For Cutie" fan. Pass the popcorn, lean back in your chair, and let us get down to business. **************************************************************************** Gameplay Description: Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure is a platform game with a few interesting mechanics added to spice up the gameplay. The character of Henry Hatsworth is setting out to gather treasure and find the pieces of an ancient "Gold Suit" that will make him young, rich, and grant him super powers. Gameplay is pretty straight forward, you go from point A to point B in fairly restricted levels with very little variety in terms of settings. We have jungle levels, sky levels, water levels, and so forth. Some of the levels have secret paths that you can discover by going back to previously beaten levels, once you have unlocked new abilities like swimming or wall-jumping. There are a few quick jumping areas and the occasional switch to hit, target to hit, or creature chasing you. The challenge level for these is fairly light and many gamers will actually have more trouble with the combat mechanics of the title. The combat mechanics consist of the character of Henry Hatsworth hitting enemies with his machete, cane, or other projectile weapons. Almost all of the enemies require multiple hits and ways to hit them. You can charge up projectile attacks using the puzzle game mechanic for harder hits, or use the moves to juggle enemies into the air with "combos." There are a lot of enemies and when you are hit, you lose a little bit of your life meter and sometimes are pushed backwards by the hit. This will usually cause you to hit spikes, or fall to your doom. Some enemies shoot projectiles that catch your character at inopportune times and lead to a few cheap deaths. There is also an invincible "Power Suit" that you can activate by filling up a Special Attack Bar in the bottom screen. You fill up the bar by playing the puzzle game. The game also has bosses in it that require you to memorize attack patterns, and strike at weak points. You can also activate useful special attacks that may pursue enemies, do massive damage, or shield you from attacks. In each level, there are areas where you enter an "arena" in which waves of enemies attack you at once. The combat mechanics are deeply linked to the puzzle game mechanic that explains the "puzzling adventure" of the title. The bottom screen is devoted to a puzzle game where you match up colored tiles of three or more by swapping two tiles at a time. Special tiles with lightening bolts, skulls, hearts, locks, puzzle energy, and other items appear. Whenever you kill an enemy, they are banished to the bottom screen where the puzzle tiles constantly rise. If you do not keep the tiles down, they will rise into the top screen and attack you. When you attack enemies on the top screen, you build up "puzzle energy" which determines how long you can spend in the puzzle game. Enemies can send special tiles or effects to the bottom screen. These include oversized tiles, speeding up the rise of the tiles, or locking down entire sections of the puzzle game. The puzzle game is quite fun, has a low difficulty and helps you in the main gameplay. You also gain extra lives through the puzzle game and this is a very good incentive to creatively switch between the two. Sometimes, you may want to strategically save heart tiles, or electricity tiles for the rougher sections of the title. When you beat areas or certain levels, you can unlock new abilities to aid your progress. You can also buy upgrades to your existing abilities with the treasure that you have acquired. The game is also a bit story heavy as cut-scenes appear depicting dialogue between the main characters of the title. The game has about 25 levels, creative boss battles, and is fairly difficult. Once you complete the game, you are granted access to an even harder version of the game that speeds up the puzzle game, and makes enemies require more hits to vanquish. Liked: The combination of the puzzle game and platform game. The ability to upgrade your abilities is evenly priced to avoid "breaking" the games difficulty level. Hated: Levels are rather restricted. There are quite a few cheap deaths in the game, and the best way to avoid those is to revisit previous levels to gather treasure to purchase the upgrades. This (almost) feels like a case of Stamperism. **************************************************************************** Graphics Description: The graphics for this game are two-dimensional and sprite based. Henry Hatsworth himself has hundreds of harrowing, hilarious, and heroic happenings animated articulately with fantastic flourish and precious pomp. The enemies are well animated, colorful and interesting in their design. The bosses are suitably wacky as this game has an odd style in it that will be covered in the game design section. Some of the enemy projectiles are small and may be hard to see on the original Nintendo DS units. Anything above those should be fine. Attacks that connect look like they should and the locales are -mostly- rather colorful. The puzzle game tiles are vibrantly colored to avoid any confusion as to which colors are which. The tiles even have textures to make it easier to quickly identify them. The story line in the game is presented in cut-scenes that feature detailed close-ups of the characters. When you activate the "Power Suit," you are greeted with a random image of people involved in various activities taking a break for "Tea Time." This then switches to another cutscene with a blurry British flag scrolling behind a ridiculous looking "Power Suit." The levels also have multiple backgrounds and sometimes things happen in the background that will have an effect on your main area of play. The game looks really good for a Game Boy Advance game! Except that this is not on the Game Boy Advance. This game is on the Nintendo DS and it does not appear to tap into any of the extra abilities of the system. This may have just been a budget issue, but the system can put forth a decent amount of 3D polygons which could have been used to spruce up some of the attacks, or a few of the bosses and levels. Liked: Colorful, nicely animated, easy to see, and it features a terrific art style with a touch of class and sass. Hated: This game does not take advantage of the Nintendo DS graphics prowess as well as it could have. Some enemy shots blend in with the backgrounds. **************************************************************************** Sound/Music Description: The music in this game fully compliments the art style and various instances in the game. The background music is majestic and a bit over the top. A great highlight of the music work is one of the bosses that uses "singing" in his attacks. The "singing" consists of words like "staccato, allegro, et cetra" repeated in a comical manner. This is absolute nonsense, but charming and polished in its implementation. The rest of the music is appropriate, catchy, and unique. The sound effects are the bees knees in this game. Fire effects, attacks, hits, and other incidentals are appropriate sounding. The best use of the sound comes from the cut-scenes in which each character speaks with a "language" of appropriate "ahems," "chuckles," "robbles," and "guffaws." Music and sound can make a bad game tolerable or break a good game. The music in this game perfectly compliments the titles presentation and design. Liked: The music and sound effects were catchy and well done. Hated: Some of the cut-scenes noises and the afore-mentioned "Flamboyant" boss smack just a little of racist stereotypes. (Which people should just ignore.) **************************************************************************** Play Control/Game Design: The controls are responsive, make sense, and work well. If you die in this game, it is not the fault of the controls at all. Everything in the play control department has been polished up and is in working order. There are no issues here, although the Touch Screen control for the puzzle almost feels like a last minute addition as you hardly need them, except for activating the "Power Suit." This game borrows a lot of what works in other games and uses it here. The levels are restricted like they would be in a Mega Man title or a Wario Land title. I think the game is balanced just fine and there is only a few minor issues in the games combat system that need to be ironed out. I did notice the combo counter that pops up when you score multiple hits and it is possible to get that going pretty good actually. I kind of think that there should be a reward for doing a combo on your enemies. Maybe you could control a little of what they turned into when they landed in the puzzle game? Seemed like a missed opportunity to me. The game has a "jaunty" sense of humor that is distinctly British in its satire and flavor. (Or is it flavour?) The "Tea Time" animations show off a variety of British "heroes" from Robin Hood to Sherlock Holmes and then follows that with the most jingoistic British extreme with the flag and all. This is hilarious and the off beat sense of humor in the game is great. It actually reminds me of an Oscar nominated short film called "A Gentleman's Duel" by Francisco Ruiz and Sean McNally. While the CGI animated film may not be completely safe for work, it is pretty funny and worth tracking down. In fact, it can be found on iTunes. The company that put it out is Blur Studios. You may know them from their work on the cinematics in Dragon Age and Halo Wars. I am not going to say that their 2006 British in a mecha (with a Tea Time) animated comedy short influenced this 2009 game with its British guy in a mecha (with a Tea Time) in any way at all. That would be completely unfair to say that an Oscar nominated film influenced the design of this game at all. I am just not saying or implying any kind of connection at all. This is a solidly made, original (or is it?) game that is a lot of fun to play. There is a bit of frustration later on in the title as it ramps up the difficulty at a steady pace. Liked: Sense of humor, play control, challenging gameplay. Hated: Some missed opportunities which could possibly have been ironed out or implemented if they had a little more time. This may cause some players to throw their systems in later levels. **************************************************************************** Improve: While a sequel would probably never happen, this is a game that could be improved by being a little longer and just adding a bit more of a graphic flair to it. Some use of a sense of 3D would be very nice. This game could be drastically improved by adding the ability to jump between the foreground and background, and the ability to find other hidden treasures in the levels. Maybe some additional outfits for the hero, additional help creatures like a bird or a monkey. Multiple endings or game branches would be a welcome addition. The ability to store the extra weapons would be nice. RIYL: Mega Man, Wario Land, and one other game series... **************************************************************************** Final Words: I like the game and it would be worth the price at $20 to $25 dollars. The game feels a bit like another excellent side scrolling game that I absolutely loved. Which game am I talking about? Well, pull up your expensive trousers and listen to my description of it. This is a game where an elderly gentleman in a spiffy hat and suit hits generic enemies with his cane in exotic locales while searching for a treasure. This is Ducktales 3 without the Ducktales license attached to it. Ducktales bred with a Panel De Pon clone. That's the selling point right there. This game is Ducktales 3 without Scrooge McDuck and that is why you should care about it. If you fancy yourself a platforming aficionado, then idea of a Ducktales 3 should make you squeal with joy inside. If it does not, kindly turn in your "Hardcore Gamer" card and take up macrame. Go and buy this game, but do keep in mind that it gets pretty difficult. A good to average game player will get a good 6 to 10 hours of play time out of this title. **************************************************************************** Score Gameplay: ***** Graphics: *** Sound/Music: ***** Play Control/Game Design: **** Value: ***** Star Total: 22 out of 25 (66%) Personal Opinion Merit: 20 out of 25 (20%) Final Score: 86% Letter Grade: A ****************************************************************************