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By Michael Lowell
September 5, 2011
Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure
Nintendo DS
Developed: EA Tiburon
Published: Electronic Arts
Released: March 17, 2009 (North America)
Update on October 11, 2011: Paragraph edits have been made for readability.
Let’s cut straight to the bullshit: Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure is awesome. It is my favorite side-scrolling platformer of the last decade. Yet here I am, shouting obscenities and shilling with the passion of a seedy salesman who promises the miracle drug that can make all of your problems go away. As history currently judges, the most public accomplishment of Henry Hatsworth is creating more hypocrites than sales orders and exposing the video game review racket as a group of morons who can’t do their damn job.
Remember kids, I am still the only person to write an unkind word about Super Meat Boy. Or rather, I’m the only person to write a review that did not end in the words “Fuck me harder, baby, fuck me harder.” (In my defense, icycalm of Insomnia simply hasn’t taken the time to savage the game. He’ll get around to it.) That game sold over half-a-million units. Not because it was a good game, mind you. It was marketed as “indie” and “retro”. Super Meat Boy was hyped and touted as a throwback to the punishing days of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Well, game journalism scandal rags don’t vet their employees in order to make sure that they can play the games at a competent level. The scandal rags just want to make sure their employees can upload a score from one to ten onto the internet using a personal computer. No reviewer was talented enough at video games or understood enough about video games to derail the Super Meat Boy hype train. None of them could point out that the intense difficulty curve in Super Meat Boy merely created an illusion of depth. So, the game received nines and tens across the board.
Henry Hatsworth was different. Electronic Arts gave their wunderkind puzzle-platform hybrid absolutely no marketing whatsoever. That’s where video game journalism is supposed to enter stage right. Their “expert opinion” is supposed to help consumers recognize when they passed on a good video game. Henry Hatsworth received middling scores and nobody heard from the game ever again. It’s really easy to figure out what happened: Reviewers went into the Super Meat Boy Experience™ expecting a difficult platformer and they received one. But Henry Hatsworth? Fuck, man. This game’s all flying rainbows and cute colors and puzzle thingies! And with that, reviewers went into the Henry Hatsworth Experience™ expecting a children’s video game that brought the sixteen-bit era of platformers to the top screen and a redux of Panel de Pon to the bottom screen of their Nintendo DS. Instead, they received a game that absolutely kicked the shit out of them. Hatsworth did not tell these boys and girls that this was going to happen. Clearly, the blame didn’t rest on reviewers who aren’t the savants they believe they are. It was the game’s fault. Where Super Meat Boy sold over half-a-million units because it was “SUPAR RETRO!!1″, Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure was ignored because the game was too hard.
“When you reach the harder levels, you may end up dying a dozen times before you pass the first pit, and more than a hundred before you reach the end. With failure such an expected occurrence, you might think this game is frustrating. It rarely is.”
- Tom McShea, GameSpot, Super Meat Boy Review; published October 20, 2010*
“The high difficulty in the later stages can be frustrating at times, but that is the only tear in the otherwise immaculate suit Hatsworth proudly wears.”
- Tom McShea, GameSpot, Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure Review; March 26, 2009*
Thanks to video game reviewers who aren’t capable of doing their job, you missed the fuck out. I should have held this sermon about two years ago, and I now have some gospel to spread. I’m sure there’s a couple of randoms on the internet who feel the same way that I do about Henry and these randoms will vouch when I say that Henry Hatsworth is one of the most creative and challenging platformers that has ever been printed to media and sold to the public. And it came from the development studio that does the John Madden Football games! Think about that! The guys who find new and original ways to create the same football game every year fused two separate genres together and humanity was better off because of it. And no, I don’t care if this sounds like a slobber-job for Panel de Pon and the sixteen-bit era of side-scrolling platformers. I don’t really give a crap. I’m here to destroy any misconception that I’m a miser who can’t find anything to like in a video game and can’t say anything nice about a gigantic publisher. Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure is a tale of British high-class art that, as the kids in sixth-period gym class would say, is “the shit.”
It could have gone a hell of a lot differently. If the game went through its original intended development cycle (a Game Boy Advance title where the two genres played independently of each other), there’s a good chance the game falls through history and everybody ignores it. (2005′s Sigma Star Saga tried pulling it off, fusing 1994′s Illusion of Gaia and 1987′s R-Type together. In order to deal with the limitations of a single screen, the shoot ‘em up sequences were treated like enemy encounters in the Japanese Role-Playing Games of the mid-nineties, where a random battle awaits you every five footsteps. I have terrifying flashbacks of Final Fantasy Legend II just thinking about it.) Hatsworth would have been more likely to collapse under the weight of a Game Boy Advance game library that saw one or two new platformers added to the game library every week during the height of its shelf life. Instead, the game eventually saw its development cycle moved over to the Nintendo DS. At this point, somebody had a fantastic idea: “This damn portable device is marketed around two screens. Our game uses two separate genres to tell its story. Nobody is using the bottom screen on the Nintendo DS for anything but glorified inventory screens and crappy Sudoku knock-offs. How about we try to light the world on fire?”
Substandard games expect you to play one game. Henry Hatsworth is not substandard. (Credit: GameSpot*)
Contrary to the popular opinion of retro gamers and console gamers, the best games scale complexity and challenge upward as far as they possibly can. (There’s a reason that computer video games are common residents at the top of any “Best Games” list worth a damn.) Those games force the player to learn as many skills and skill sets as possible. So right from the start, it’s clear Henry Hatsworth has something going for it. What the hell isn’t there to enjoy about a game crafted with enough ambition that its participants are expected to master two games at the same time? It’s a “sum of all parts” situation. Deus Ex would not be one of the best video games ever created if it was merely about stealth, shooting, or role-playing. If Hatsworth was just a platformer, it would be a pretty good one, but it would never stand out from the vast competition in that genre. If Hatsworth was a puzzle game, then people would be calling it a Panel de Pon knock-off and leaving it for dead. When you combine these two individual genres, Hatsworth turns platforming and puzzle games into something fierce.
It’s all about integration. One second, you’re living the platformers from the early nineties, complete with colorful monsters, distinct worlds separated by individual game levels, special abilities acquired one boss after the other, and a narrative that honors the paper-thin plots from the genre’s heyday. (Remember how “the sword in the stone” could only be unearthed by the rightful king of Britain? The “Golden Suit” that controls the Puzzle Realm can only be worn by the best-dressed man in the world. Naturally, Henry Hatsworth is that man. Seriously.) In the next breath, you have to follow those monsters down into the nasty, nefarious Puzzle Realm and defeat them for a second time, each monster possessing a special puzzle ability that is influenced by their capabilities in the platforming experience. (Scrawny enemies must be cleared once to be eliminated; armored guards require two puzzle clears; bulky monsters will take the space of four regular-sized blocks and will dissolve into four smaller monster blocks when destroyed.) Disposing of the monsters in the Puzzle Realm adds energy to the player’s Puzzle Meter, which can be used for ranged ammunition and special attacks. If monsters aren’t killed before they can “escape” from the Puzzle Realm (by reaching the top of the bottom screen as the puzzle screen scrolls upward), then they will return to the main field of play. And on nearly every occasion, the new, more puzzling form of each enemy makes them a much bigger pain in the ass to deal with.
Now, EA Tiburon could have screwed this up really easily and it’s fortunate they went with the correct decision. If there is a player skill that has fallen out of favor with game designers since big companies realized they couldn’t make satisfying profit margins selling real-time and turn-based strategy games to the public, it’s multi-tasking. In the world where kids are playing video games while talking on instant messenger and watching television while working on their homework, there aren’t many video games that expect their audiences to perform multiple unrelated tasks at the same time. The Puzzle Realm always continues to scroll upward. The action can only be stalled on the top screen by activating the Puzzle Realm. And since your access to the puzzle realm is controlled by a timer that can only be refilled by making clears or leaving the Puzzle Realm, you have to be cognizant of what needs to be taken care of first. (If the clock runs out, the player is booted from the Puzzle Realm for a short period of time and has to incur the consequences.) No matter what you’re doing, the bottom screen must be dealt with.
By allowing monsters to move between the top and bottom screens, Henry Hatsworth explores mechanics that Panel de Pon simply cannot. In any other puzzle game, topping out the screen would result in death. In Henry Hatsworth, it simply makes the game more challenging and more complex. That’s the way it should work: If you’re good at the puzzle game, the platforming becomes easier, and vice versa. Although, it’s important to note that most ideal actions (using power-ups and eliminating monsters) begin or end in the Puzzle Realm. For this reason, the game will be easier for long-time puzzle game fans than it will be for platformers. If that’s the worst I can hold against the mechanics that glue together Henry Hatsworth, we’re in pretty sterling territory here. (Gee, the puzzle game fan is okay with this. I’m shocked.)
The brilliance of this system is the way it scales for players of varying skill levels. For weaker players, conquering the Puzzle Realm is a matter of survival. For the best players, the Puzzle Realm is all about resource management. “But tons of platformers have resource management!” You’d be right. Castlevania has resource management. Metroid has resource management. These games have missiles and holy water and chakrams and nuclear weapons. Using these skills in the correct situations is proper strategy. There’s a difference: Samus Aran’s power suit doesn’t begin launching missiles at itself because you have too many of them sitting in reserve. For the players who have gained sufficient mastery over the Puzzle Realm, the bottom screen is not a matter of preventing monsters from returning to the real world. The Puzzle Realm becomes a weapon. Why use item blocks as they immediately fall into the Puzzle Realm? Why voraciously clear the bottom screen when you can use those additional blocks to power up your weapons during a tense combat sequence? The variables designed to punish the player can easily be turned on opponents with a little bit of patience and foresight. While it would be downright dishonest to claim EA Tiburon has broken any new ground by adding “patience” to the list of skills required to play a puzzle game at a high level, it’s more an exception than the rule. If any other company has done this in a platformer, I’d love to hear their name.
Here’s the scary part: If “being able to play two games at once” was all that Henry Hatsworth had to offer, then it would have the same issues as Super Meat Boy. That is, “You’ve seen everything there is to see in the first hour.” Being able to play two games at once is the mere expectation. Even at the very beginning of the game, your options for warfare are surprisingly stacked. Combat in the platforming sequences is the combination of ranged and melee attacks, featuring a surprisingly large number of useful combos and even the ability to juggle enemies. If you perform well enough in the Puzzle Realm and maximize the energy in your Puzzle Meter, Henry Hatsworth can commandeer a steampunk mech machine that aptly fulfills the marketing checklist for “awesomely broken invincibility power-up”. And while the most immediate comparison is to the Mega Mushroom power-up in 2005′s New Super Mario Brothers, Hatsworth puts the thing to shame. Like the Mega Mushroom, Mecha Hatsworth (or whatever name you’d like to call him) doesn’t work very well in the general platforming segments. He’s too damn big. That’s not his purpose. Both abilities are designed to create havoc, but the Mega Mushroom was a mere masturbatory tool of destruction that is only useful in that game’s opening level. Mecha Hatsworth is a fully-functional character with half-a-dozen useful attacks. Even when you are invincible, maximizing damage output still requires significant meaningful input from the player.
Those are just the tools handed to the player during the first couple of levels. Whether you choose to acquire all of the hidden abilities or not, Henry Hatsworth will finish out the game closing in on a fantastic impression of X from the Mega Man X canon, with wall jumps and a dedicated dash button becoming mandatory game mechanics for survival. Just trust me when I say that you will need every single ability that the game throws at you. Spoken from somebody who has been regularly playing Panel de Pon and its variants for fifteen years, my robust experience with the puzzle series merely prepared me for one of the most challenging platformers that I’ve ever put fingers on.
That’s a lot of bad guys. I’m sure you can handle it. (Credit: GameSpot*)
Don’t let the action in the first few worlds fool you. Henry Hatsworth embarks on a rather dramatic difficulty spike around the fourth world, the kind of difficulty spike that punches mere mortals square in the face. (When players and critics complained about the difficulty level in the game, this is usually why they did it.) Integral to the carnage are monster closets, which normally take place once or twice in each level and throw every variety of monster at Henry Hatsworth in the name of filling the screen with pure calamity. Most players viewed these moments as points of frustration. They didn’t enjoy playing a large portion of a level for the mere privilege of getting to the monster closet. (Checkpoints aren’t handed out after every tough sequence. Apparently, that’s bad. Or something.) In a game where time is always against you and being able to destroy enemies with efficiency is a critical skill for success, monster closets represent the most entertaining portions of the game. Anybody who completed 2011′s Monster Tale (the spiritual successor to Henry Hatsworth) should know this. In that game, the monster closets (marginalized and reduced to a smattering of endgame segments) were the only portions of the game that could be considered a challenge. And consequently, they were the most entertaining portions of that game. Why the hell wouldn’t monster closets be the most entertaining moments? In what other video game genre would people complain about having too many monsters on the screen? First-person shooters? Beat ‘em ups? Shoot ‘em ups? It’s ridiculous. If the entertainment value of a game scales with complexity, then having more monsters on the screen with more projectiles and more attacks makes the game more fun to play. Period. Hatsworth is totally unapologetic about its difficulty level and that’s only a bad thing if you were expecting the game to be far less sinister than it originally appeared.
“Yeah Mikey, the game is designed for your skill set. Big fucking deal. The difficulty level isn’t balanced for everyone else.” Here’s my statement to anybody who thinks Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure is “frustrating” or “cheap”: A video game is ultimately going to be judged by how it plays as its highest levels, i.e. “the way the game was intended to be played”. (This is precisely why games should, if possible, be reviewed and judged by competent and skilled players that understand the theory behind the game; the further a player gets away from the optimal experience, the more he or she has to project on how the game plays at its intended level.) It doesn’t matter to me whether or not you’ll ever develop the skill level to defeat a final boss that ranks damn high up the list for awesome final boss fights. (Hell, you can put just about every boss fight in that category. The boss fights kick ass.) I don’t go on shoot ‘em up forums and complain that 2003′s Ketsui is too punishing for new players. I don’t go on fighting game forums and complain that 1999′s Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes is too fast for my stupid, stupid fingers. I admire those titles as some of the finest games ever created and I do it from a distance.
Yes, Henry Hatsworth has a very high learning curve because Panel de Pon has a very high learning curve. There’s thirty levels, ten of which are hidden from the player and even harder than the route required to beat the game. And if you’re skilled enough to conquer Henry Hatsworth, your reward is a special “Gentleman’s Mode” where enemies hit harder and the puzzle mode becomes even more difficult. Once you’ve taken down a tough game, it gets even harder. It becomes even more interesting. That’s what I expect from a great video game. If we’re supposed to judge our best games by whether they can hold our interest for years and require years of practice in order to master, then there’s little doubt that Henry Hatsworth stands out as one of the best platformers in recent memory, if not the history of the medium. Good show, old man. Good show, indeed.
5 out of 5
(Games rated five-out-of-five are events, amongst the best your calendar year offered. And if you can’t put aside a couple of bucks for stuff like this, give up video games. They’re never going to please you.)