Henry Hatsworth Impressions

Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure is an interesting blend of two different genres brought together. It’s basically a simple side-scroller/puzzler that brings in elements from the Mega Man series and the puzzle game Planet Puzzle League. While separately, these games might not be enough to keep people interested, but together, they provide some intriguing new concepts.

Lets get the ups out of the way first. For starters, the platforming is handled quite well, and the combat is really fun. You have a sword that serves as your primary tool for attacking but you also have a gun that can fire different ammunition. Your gun can only be fired as long as your power bar on the far right is filled; fill it up all the way and you can go through tea time. Tea time lets you take control of a mech and wreck havoc for a short amount of time. The enemies are fun to fight and it seemed to always be tossing new enemy types at you which kept things interesting. This all takes place on the top screen where the puzzle aspect takes place on the bottom.

The puzzle aspect is quite fun for starters but begins to grow stale after a bit. After an enemy is defeated, he takes over a block that you must get rid of by lining up three of the same color. They throw some new tricks at you from time to time but ultimately remains the same. Having to constantly switch between the platforming and the puzzle happens way too often. Remember in Bioshock where you were constantly having to connect pipes together to open doors; this is like that but happens a lot more, abut every 30 seconds. I wish there was a way to slow down the blocks building up because the platforming is handled really well. Another element that I wish didn’t happen is when you collect something during the platforming, you don’t actually get it until you destroy the block on the bottom screen.

Another thing that was a bad decision is actually present in a lot of side-scrollers. If you get hit by an enemy, you get tossed back a bit, and yes there are bottomless pits in this game. There seemed to be many cheap deaths that happened to me during the 3-4 hours I’ve played this game. The boss battles are your normal memorize the pattern and work around that, even though I thought it might have gotten a bit hard at times.

The game is quite fun, but I don’t think I will be playing it to completion. The puzzle part pokes itself way too often into the action. I’m not sure how the game would have been without it, I do know it would be a lot shorter. If you liked Planet Puzzle League and like action side-scrollers, give this game a shot. There are some funny moments to be had but ultimately fails at delivering anything new or exciting.

Tags: adventure DS henry hatsworth Nintendo Play puzzle Resume resumeplay side-scroller