Reviewed by Brandy Shaul
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure is one of the most appropriately titled games I’ve come across. Not strictly one or the other, Henry Hatsworth is a clever combination of side-scrolling platformer and match-three puzzler that follows the title character on his adventures as the #1 member of the Pompous Adventurer’s Club. As any self-respecting English gentleman and pompous adventurer should be, Henry is obsessed with the good life, and surrounds himself with the finest riches money can buy, all the while searching for ways to find more.
The legend of a Magical Golden Suit piques Henry’s interest, as it is revealed that only a few chosen souls have ever been able to wear the suit, thereby granting them riches beyond their wildest imaginations. While Henry shares the goal of finding the Magical Golden Suit with a quirky and creative cast of characters, the suit itself has the final say, as it is, for the lack of a better term, “programmed” to pick the best dressed applicant to wear it (no, I’m not making this up).
But, the suit is more than just a nice set of duds, as it has the power to link the natural world with the puzzle world, where a legion of monsters reside. As such, the previous master of the suit scattered the various pieces of clothing to the four winds. After Henry finds his first piece of the suit, the Golden Hat, the two worlds are linked once more, unleashing monsters into the real world, and as such, he must race to find the missing pieces of the suit so that he may determine a way to close off the gap between the two worlds once and for all.
For gameplay that is centered on such an off-kilter and downright wacky storyline, the gameplay is surprisingly solid, combining elements from both titles like Super Mario Bros. and Bejeweled to form a 2-in-1 gameplay mechanic.
The top screen houses the Mario-esque platforming, which sees Henry jumping over gaps and scaling large platforms while defeating monsters with the help of his trusty pistol and saber, while the touch screen is home to a match-three puzzle game that is affected by your top-screen actions in real time, whether you are physically interacting with it or not, by morphing the “spirits,” if you will, of fallen enemies into blocks on the puzzle grid, or by allowing you to activate power-up blocks, like lightning bolts, that can attack enemies back on the top screen.
This is all achieved by tapping the X button, which freezes time on the top screen, or in the natural world, and allows you to focus on the happenings of the puzzle world on the bottom. As you progress on the top screen, the puzzle board at the bottom fills with more horizontal rows, slowly moving from the bottom of the screen to the top, where puzzle pieces are either lost to you forever, or, if in the form of monsters, are allowed to regenerate on the top-screen to attack Henry once more.
Removing these blocks from the puzzle board is achieved either by using the directional pad to move about the screen, or by tapping on blocks with the stylus. Your goal is to create matches of three or more like-colored blocks of either a horizontal or vertical orientation, with the real catch here being that your interaction with blocks restricted to horizontal movements.
That is, no matter how easy it might be to make a vertical match of three by moving one block down onto a stack of two blocks of the same color, your only option is instead to find a way to remove the rouge block from the equation altogether, normally by moving it onto an empty column (a column that is shorter than the original), thereby allowing the block to literally drop out of the way.
This, needless to say, creates a level of challenge that’s normally missing in match three puzzle games, with the title becoming a much more satisfying and rewarding experience because of it.
While one might be satisfied with spending forever in the puzzle world, your time there is limited by the bar on the left side of the screen, which serves as a timer that refills as you make puzzle matches, but empties for every second of inactivity.
Further linking the two worlds is the duel-layer energy bar present on the right side of the screen, that fills either by creating matches in the puzzle world, or by defeating enemies in the real world. The first layer of the energy bar represents the Golden Hat. Seeing that the hat is magical, it has the ability to transform Henry into a form that is 20 years younger than his current state, thereby granting him more health (which is represented by Zelda-like hearts in the top left corner of the screen).
Once this transformation layer is filled, concentration then switches to filling the bar a second time, allowing Henry to activate “Tea Time,” a zany summoning of a massive Robot Suit that makes Henry entirely invincible and able to shoot off giant robot fist projectiles or simply crush everything he touches for as long as the energy in the bar lasts (it slowly empties over time).
This Robot Suit comes in very handy during boss battles with other adventurers who wish to find the missing pieces of the Magical Golden Suit before Henry, or just in instances when you find yourself surrounded by enemies and your health at a minimum.
Technically speaking, the game is something to behold. As if the creative storyline didn’t already make it apparent, there is a lack of anything resembling a serious quality to the title. The graphics and character designs are flamboyant (body-building bleached blonde opera enthusiasts anyone?) and truly entertaining to say the least, with said characters also possessing one of the most interesting gibberish languages this side of Simlish.
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure is one of the cleverest offerings released on the DS, not just in recent memory, but since the system’s launch. It’s a seemingly simplistic combination of two, on their own already enjoyable genres that, when combined, becomes much more complex and strategic, and therefore entertaining and addictive, than either element could be on its own. If you own a DS, you owe it to yourself to experience this gem.
Special thanks to Katie Carrico and EA for providing a copy of this title.