Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure

Let the record show that on July 13, 2009, I gave up on Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure. And I don’t even have a DS right now.

I bought Henry Hatsworth as soon as it came out despite the fact that I was in the middle of a big push to go back and clear out some of the backlog I had on my DS, including Final Fantasy Tactics A2 which is a game that I’m pretty sure I could easily spend 100+ hours on alone. I had heard about Henry Hatsworth a while ago and the preview sounded like my dream game. When John Davison talked about it on his website What They Play just before it came out, I knew that the game was going to deliver on its promise and so I tossed aside my promise to myself and bought a new game.

It’s a fun game. It’s essentially a direct combination of the Mega Man Zero games and Tetris Attack (Planet Puzzle League, for those who haven’t been playing games for more than a console generation or two) and it totally works. The presentation is charming, with beautiful 2D graphics, great music, and hilarious sound effects. What’s not to love? I even found myself dashing through the first world or two, building up extra lives like no one’s business, and I was confident that this was going to be a short experience (but still enjoyable).

I think it was around the end of World 3 that I started to die. And die. And die. The stages in general aren’t too bad, but you occasionally get locked in “kill rooms” where the screen locks its sideways scrolling and the game throws mobs of different enemies at you on that single enclosed platform. These are really frustrating, and the mid-stage checkpoints are generally positioned immediately after these, so if you die, you have to waste time traveling back through the stage again. The mini-bosses are generally harder than the real bosses, but these encounters with the game’s main antagonist in a variety of giant machines are reminiscent of the fights with Dr. Robotnik’s inventions in the Sonic series. The boss fights are still creative and interesting, but their patterns are easier to understand and they seem to be more forgiving than the machine fights.

I slowly plowed through more levels, discarding lives like used teacups, but am at a complete impasse in World 4. I have tried many times to get past the level on which I’m stuck, but to no avail. I also noticed that on the DSi I had purchased this spring, a small collection of dead pixels had formed, so I sent it in to Nintendo for repairs and have been without the DS for a week now. And tonight, while checking the tracking number for my repair, I decided that I’m done with that game. It’s fun. It’s exceedingly well put together in terms of the game’s mechanics. The difficulty curve, though, is just too much for me. I have other hobbies to pursue and even within this hobby other games to play. With that, I’m waving the white flag on this game.