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RetroActive 42: Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure

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Crimm:
This is the takback thread for our RetroActive of Henry Hatsworth. Post your comments and thoughts here and we may use them on the show.

ClexYoshi:
Real talk; I picked this one up at a half-price books about 2 or 3 years back. Iremember trying to like it and on paper it sounds wonderful. I like Panel de Pon, and I like Megaman, so... really, what was my hold up?

Well, for starters, I remember wanting to stuff cotton in my ears every time I heard the Grunt-a-logue (that's a word I'm making up for that thing that Rare games would do where they'd play a little grunt-clip of some sort on every syllable of dialogue that would get printed on the screen as text). I remember thinking the levels were stretched out way too long, and I seem to remember some sort of platforming mechanic I didn't like... I think it was a fiddly wall jump or  something of the sort? I dunno, my memories are hazy on Henry Hatsworth, in all honesty.

Sadly, I did not get my 3DS modded for capture, and I'm not about to try and play Henry hatsworth through a view-finder. unless I play it through dubious methods, I will not be able to stream gameplay sessions or capture footage this time, folks.

CDavis7M:
I've been listening to older pre-3DS episodes of RFN (~225) and there was a lot of praise for this game.  I had been eyeing it for the past few weeks on ebay and this announcement just tipped me over the edge.  Looking forward to this retroactive.

ClexYoshi:
It took me playing exactly one level to remember why I didn't play that far into Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure.

This game stylistically is grating. It honestly feels like a Gameloft game.  something about it SCREAMS that it's a super generic game trying to inject itself with personality it almost feels like a parody of a video game, like Wayforward's Catgirl Without Salad.

I love panel de pon as a standalone game, and that's.. honestly what I'd rather be playing the tiles look more satisfying, the effects when you clear tiles, and the fanfare you get for clearing tiles is so satisfying in the puzzle game this is clearly aping, but... it just feels so weird, especially since you can PAUSE THE GAME TO LOOK AT THE PUZZLE, THUS ELIMINATING ALL TENSION AND NEED TO THINK ON YOUR FEET.

I remember that Henry gets upgrades that maybe improve things? but otherwise it's a floaty platformer with button mash-y combat where you have to juggle enemies to get them to drop money to buy upgrades later. this is a weird sort of juggle-grind to have in a platformer.

the thing that really vexes me is that the game is mechanically sound and competently laid out level design wise. if you got rid of the impenetrable blandness of the British caricature characters done wrong and the GODAWFUL grating sound design in spots, you MIGHT have a game that's all right? but like, this game actively annoys me to play for any period of time beyond a few minutes. I think I was playing games at the time that were Henry Hatsworth's contemporary in the indie space that left more of an impression and didn't make me want to throw up any time the audio was on and dialogue was on screen.

AbbottUltra:
I saw a link for the Henry Hatsworth website on the back of the box (www.HenryHatsworth.com). The website seems to not exist anymore. Unfortunately, the domain is not available either. The Internet Archive only shows the front page because it requires a flash plugin. Apparently, it had the full game soundtrack there; which can now be found on Youtube. Though if they wanted us to appreciate the game's soundtrack they wouldn't have the grating noise of the characters "talking".

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