Review: Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure

Rejoice platforming and puzzle game fans! A new game has come into town that successfully and creatively mashes both of the genres together into one blend of awesomeness. Before I continue I will go ahead and say that as you can imagine, I really like this game. Prior to actually sitting down and playing this gem, I had my doubts however. Now Puzzle Quest had done a mix of puzzle and RPG quite well, but going into platforming is a completely different story.

The game sets itself up by speaking of an alternate realm filled with ludicrous amounts of treasure and gold. “I mean ridiculous amounts – gobs and gobs of gold! Multi-colored gems of all varieties!” to quote the game. The key to said world is the best suit ever made…..an English gentlemen’s suit made of pure gold. “A suit so sophisticated that only one man was ever able to wear it,” to further quote the game. Mind you the person that you would think would appear on the screen is not an English gentlemen…..it is a cave man that is wearing the suit. Mind you he also took over the world because of this suit. Had to have been a BAMF to do that. After that it shows various pictures of famous leaders wearing parts of the suit and explaining that they all tried to do the same and failed.

The beginning cut scene starts and the characters of Henry and his young companion talk in mock accents, the hero in blustery mock grunts of an Englishman. After some conversation which gives you insight to the characters, the game takes off.

At first, I was met with an empty screen of no enemies and easy jumps and platforms. That was a bit disappointing. As I continued forward, I could see the first bit of treasure…..the golden hat! Picking that up caused the bottom screen to be filled with multicolored blocks and the enemies to pop up; game play time.

The game functions as such. You start out in “young mode.” When in this mode, you are dressed like a safari adventurer, khakis and machete included. The bottom screen consists of the puzzle mode (we’ll get to that here soon), the puzzle mode bar, which depicts how long you can stay in the mode, and the special meter, which allows your special attacks. You start out with five hearts of health, three being red and two being silver. When your silver hearts run out, you return to “old mode” where you lose the safari get up and return to Henry the Englishman. You don’t want this to happen, because you lose some of your attack power and half your special bar, going from yellow to blue. However, you can fill it back up by dealing damage, taking damage, matching blocks, etc. Killing enemies turn them into blocks on the bottom screen, matching them with other blocks kills them for real.

Power ups also float into the blocks. Hearts and hats give you more health and lives respectfully, lightning bolts shock enemies on the screen and destroy all the blocks of the same color, Xs give you a large attack increase and destroy rows horizontally or vertically, depending on how you matched them up, and finally hourglasses freeze the puzzle bar and freeze enemies on the screen. You also get special attacks, coming from Henry’s gun. Standard is just an energy shot, you also get a parabola shot bomb and a boomerang. All of which can be powered up by firing and then matching blocks while it is on the screen. Having a full power bar will let you activate “Tea Time.” Tea time amounts to “raping the enemies.” A screen pops up with the protagonist enjoying a nice cup of tea with other people. After which a robot mech suit is summoned, flies from outta nowhere while an energy flag of the UK streams behind it, with metal guitar riffs playing. It is so awesome that you just have to see it.

The first “world” starts out just as simple jungle that moves into a graveyard of sorts. About midway (he continues to serve as a mid-boss) is a separate Englishman that wants to get the suit for nefarious reasons, Leopold Charles Anthony Weasleby the Third. Yes that name is quite ridiculous, which is one of the points of the game. At the end you are met with one of the many unique boss characters you’ll face, Lady D. As her name and garb will imply (she looks like a female Death), she is aiming to kill the hero.

And just so you know folks, this game packs on the difficulty in a very quick fashion. At least it will happen in BS deaths that you can’t avoid (enemies hitting you while you’re jumping on a platform are frequent in the sky world). Soon it is just in the sheer amount of damage they can deal. Two hearts a hit for the big baddies? Ouch! The suit itself gives you abilities as you progress, but at the time of this review, I only have three pieces, the hat, pants that give you wall jump, and a pipe that lets you breath under water. I notice a lack of damage reduction there.

The game just gets harder from there. However I think better words are “more challenging.” It has been many a year since a platformer has posed any sort of problem aside from poor design and physics to me.

What We loved:

–Humor is very apparent in the game.

–The game is actually challenging.

–All of the animations are very smooth and flow together very well

–There is a frickin’ mech suit!

–Collecting treasure for upgrades. I’ve always liked this.

–You can replay the stages to get more treasures and different routes as you get more pieces of the suit.

What We Didn’t Love:

–I like the difficulty, but it takes some getting used to, compared to the easy platformers that developers spray out nowadays.

–The bosses get crazy hard (World Three boss.  She can go burn in a fire somewhere.)

–Upgrades are a bit hard to get in the beginning, and you’ll need them for the later stages.

–Even though it is difficult, you’ll rarely die. By World Three I’ve died a handful of times and still have 27 extra lives.

–For many players, this may become a total grind-fest of doing the same thing over and over again.

---

All in all, I love this game. I’m not going to give it a perfect score, because it isn’t perfect by any means, but it is by far one of my favorite games. It is unique and creative in many ways, provides a good change of pace and I would love to see a sequel. Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure receives four out of five and Cheats’ Stamp of Solid Win.

Score: 4/5

Tags: DS Reviews henry hatsworth Tyler R.