Henry Hatsworth is a mix of adventure, action, and puzzles. it is a great concept but falls short. The game is set in modern times with Henry Hatsworth and his nephew on the search for treasure, especially a magical hat that can bring anyone back into time to when Henry was a younger version of himself. At this point is when the adventure part of the game comes in and is split into two parts – the first part is the adventure and action part, this is set in classic Nintendo style, think vintage Super Mario Brothers.
As Hatsworth you go through the board where you can jump, duck, and fire a pistol which resembles a cartoon bike horn more than a gun. You also carry a sword. These are the two actions where you can attack enemies. The controls are very easy, the basic one button to jump and attack and the directional pad to move Hatsworth.
There are two enemies, one of them is a little pac-man style monster that does not attack you, it only jumps in the air but if you get hit by them you lose some life. The second is a knight with a sword that does attack you and causes you to lose more life. Both of these enemies are considerably easy to beat. As you destroy your enemy, you collect gold and silver coins which accumulate for artifacts that Hatsworths collects. You can also collect gold tea pots, which then makes the game go into tea time mode (Hatsworth becomes armed in a robot suit which gives him super strength and speed, pretty much unbeatable).
If it stayed the path of that type of gameplay I think the Henry Hatsworth would be a good game. Unfortunately like all many DS games, it tries to do too many things and usually is only good at one. The game also has a focus on puzzles, which there is only 1 and it is a pretty bad puzzle. If you can imagine the worst possible replica of Bejeweled then this is it. You can only move the colored blocks horizontal so it makes it very difficult to beat, and unfortunately beating the puzzle and fighting the enemies go hand and hand. So if you don’t solve the puzzle you are pretty much screwed.
The story is also kind of boring and it moves very slowly, so that no matter what level you are on there are tutorials throughout the whole game. If they kept the game simple then I would have lead Henry to find his magical hat, but too many puzzles got in the way and so did the slow pace which bored me too much. Henry Hatsworth for DS retails for $29.99 – save your money.
Conclusion:
The Good: Liked the retro feel of a classic Super Mario game.
The Bad: Became bored to tears after awhile and did not like the 1 puzzle that NEEDED to be played in order to go forward.
