Brutal Gamer

Henry Hatsworth In The Puzzling Adventure (DS) Review

By Mike - May 16, 2009 - 20:32 UTC

As a thinker, I love a good puzzle game.  I’m also partial to the odd platform game.  But what happens when you combine both of these worlds?   In this case, you get Henry Hatsworth, a game developed by EA that they have described as ‘indie inspired.’

You play the game as Henry Hatsworth, a well spoken, tea drinking English gentleman who is the #1 member of the Pompous Adventurers’ Club.  Your aim is to travel the world and collect pieces of a golden suit, which will make Henry the best dressed gentleman in the world, while preventing the #2 member of the club, Leopold Charles Anthony Weasleby the Third, from doing the same.

The controls are straightforward.  If you’ve played any decent platform game, you’ll pick it up quickly.  The game play is split into two sections.  The top screen is your platform game, where you run around defeating enemies and collecting gems which allow you to upgrade your abilities.  The bottom screen is the Puzzle Realm, which you will be instantly familiar with if you’ve ever played Bejewelled, as it works on the same match 3, block switching system.  You flick between each screen by hitting the X button.  The action in the platform area pauses when you go to the puzzle screen, but not the other way around.   As you defeat enemies in the platform realm, they become pieces of the puzzle realm, and their blocks are indicated by faces.  You have to eliminate them from the puzzle realm before they reach the top of the screen, otherwise they return to the platform realm and cause you all sorts of problems.

Good show!

When in the Puzzle realm, you have a time bar on the left hand side.  You can increase the time you have by defeating the enemies in the platform realm, or eliminating blocks in the puzzle realm.  Once the timer runs out, you are immediately returned to the platform realm.  There is also a bar on the right hand side of the puzzle realm.  This is the Special bar.  It fills up as you eliminate blocks from the puzzle.  It allows you  to perform special attacks in the platform realm, such as a massive laser beam that wrecks anything in it’s path.  If you get the special bar filled all the way to the top, you can activate ‘Tea Time’, at which point Hatsworth will get into a giant robotic suit and become invulnerable for a short time, with a lot of special attacks that can wipe out almost anything.  If you get stuck with the suit, you can cancel it and go back on foot.

The game is a lot of fun, and has a silly, quirky sense of humour throughout.  As well as the giant robot suit, you will come across bosses like a very manly sounding woman on top of a giant tank-like machine that looks like a big purple wedding cake.  And there’s also a old man in a wheelchair being wielded around by a large nurse.  I swear I’m not making any of this up!

You couldn't make it up! Well, except they did.

The difficulty of the game is a little erratic at times.  You can blitz through one level easily, only to be completely stumped at the next one.  But this is certainly a challenging game on the whole.  While the idea of marrying a puzzle game with a platform game with cause-and-effect gameplay is unique, the platform and puzzle sections in themselves are hardly revolutionary.  As stated before, the puzzle section is essentially Bejewelled with blocks instead of jewels.  Also, you can’t save the game in mid level, and some of the levels are rather long.  If you have to switch off in the middle of level, you’ll have to start from scratch next time.

Final Thoughts
This is a very charming game, with a quirky, unusual sense of humour.  The game is challenging and fun to play, and the ideas have been executed very well.  It takes a bit of time to get used to switching between the screens, though.  And there’s not much revolutionary about the individual parts of the game.  But if you like puzzle games and platform games, you won’t go far wrong with this.  Good show!

Find more reviews of Henry Hatsworth In The Puzzling Adventure over at TestFreaks

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