Poppycock!

I was dusting off my DSi, which I hadn’t used in ages, and I came across this game again: Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure. I did remember liking the game when I played it initially.

HHaPA follows the adventures of the old but still young-blooded English gentleman by the name of Henry Hatsworth. Traveling from location to location in search of the perfect gentlemen’s suit, made of gold and turning you into a man of pure awesome! Along the way you shall fight strange creatures from puzzleland who just happen to be frolicking around in the world and also dark forces from the adventurer’s guild who seek to claim the golden suit for their own nefarious purposes.

Henry Hatsworth is a game that occupies the well known genre of Platformers. But, it also adds the element of a puzzle game (like bejeweled, puzzle quest and the sort).

Sights: The game is a veritable treasure of colours, and impressively so. It is a good break from the larger console version of gritty brown, gritty gray and, gritty black. No two levels are alike, at least from what I have seen so far. Enemies come in all shapes, forms, sizes and, colours and the characters' art is well detailed. This all along with pretty background art makes for a very soothing sight.

Sounds: The music is simple and catchy. Quite a bit so because I have had one of the soundtracks’ stuck in my head since Saturday… But overall the music is very fitting to the levels that you are in and the upbeat tunes lend to the lighthearted theme of the game. Overall the musical choices are very well done by the composer(s).

Gameplay: There are two aspects to this game; one is the platforming part done on the top screen, while the bottom screen in your puzzle part. As you kill enemies they will be transported to the bottom part of a rolling block puzzle which you will have to switch to, from time to time, to completely eliminate the enemies.
The platforming part follows the general scheme of all other platformers out there. Run; Jump; Slash; Shoot; etc; etc… Press the attack button enough times and Henry performs a combo. Press the “shoot” button a few times and launch a line of bullets at the enemy/enemies in front of you; or you can press up and the shoot button to unleash a Super Fireball attack on your enemies (useful in certain situations). But all and all pretty standard gameplay.
The other (possibly more interesting part of this game) is the puzzle part on the bottom screen. Every time you off one of the denizens of puzzleland on the top screen, they are immediately transported to the bottom screen, which is basically an upwards rolling block puzzle. Here you will have to align three or more blocks of the same colour to get rid of the blockified enemies or just regular old block. Leave an enemy in here for too long that it actually rolls into the upper screen… and you shall soon find why this is a bad idea. If any enemy block transports itself to the top screen it will basically rain down on Henry a few times (hurting the character), while you were busy dealing with the other enemies on the upper screen.
There is a timer meter on the left side which shows you how much time you have left to fiddle around in the puzzle section. This meter also has a tendency to run out quickly (early on at least). On the right is your SUPER! Meter… once full this lets you transform into a giant golden suit robot for a limited time during which you are invulnerable to damage. Also any shots you fire will use a little bit of the super meter.
Another use of the Puzzle mode is to make you shots bigger. When you fire a shot, but before it makes contact with the enemy; you can switch to the puzzle screen and fire away a few combos to see that your shot suddenly grows massively in size and does a lot more damage.
This all seems like fun… But… that’s just the first level…
During the first level the amount of enemies that you have to fight is very small compared to the later levels… so having a short time bar on the puzzle mode doesn’t seem like much of a problem until you hit the brick wall of difficulty in the second level.
While in the first level it is fairly easy to keep up with the enemies that are being sent at you… on later levels it starts to ramp up with the speed of an exponential equation reaching its limit… More often than not you may find yourself trying fight of hordes of enemies on the top screen while also trying to be rid of them on the bottom puzzle screen (which at times that the game hates you and will not give you a way out) and then have to deal with the blocks that escape to the top screen as well. The other problem that I found was that while the level design is in fact quite pleasing, the levels seem entirely too long… and certain parts of them seem to require split second timing to get past. All of this combined does make for a very discouraging combination.

Overall, the game is fun and innovative… but only for a short period (although it still remains innvoative). Gameplay is definitely not something I can recommend the game on, but the story is quirky enough to keep my attention, so I end using AR to cheat through the game to at least see it to its conclusion. Then again I might be better off reading an FAQ with the spoilers. It’d probably be easier… much easier.