BattleBlock Theater Review

Fans of Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers rejoice. The Behemoth have returned and they’ve struck gaming gold again. After nailing 2D scrolling shooters and beat em’ ups they’ve turned their hands to old-school platforming. And it’s fantastic.

The bright and crisp cell-shaded 2D art style is striking, compelling throughout, and consistent with the studio’s previous games. Many of the characters have something of a cutout feel to them, hell, some of them are literally being bounced around on sticks like puppet placards, but it all works so well.

This is in large part to the bonkers story. Mr Hatty Hattington and his friends on his ‘Friend-ship’ are shipwrecked on an island run by crazy creepy cat types. The naughty kitties brainwash Hatty, and for reasons known to absolutely nobody, the rest of the crew have to perform on stage in feats of daring platforming against kitty minions and perilous traps.

The narrator of the story is clearly off his cake and fills in the gaps between chapters with further amusing gibberish. Even during the stages, he can’t help but natter away. “I can’t believe you died there of all places,” and “Do it right, don’t die,” are just some of the quips that accompany the silliness and his enthusiastic song when you discover a secret level will stay in your head long after you leave the house. The weirdness of it all is so brilliantly unlike anything else out there it will make you sad going back to reality afterwards.

With such a strong start to the game before even taking your first jump, there was every chance it may have been setting us up for a fall, but by the end of the first stage, I knew that this was something special. Even more so considering we’ve been craving a decent 2D platformer for ages.

The platforming controls are crucially responsive and not once did they lead to an unfair death. Double jumps are available and you can even do them after falling through a disintegrating platform from standing or when walking off a ledge, with the latter being handy to pick up a few tricky collectables.

You’ll encounter various blocks that may help or hinder your progress. Sinister-looking lava blocks are usually to be avoided in platformers, but here they act as springs. Hop on, burn your backside to a cinder and zoom upwards to higher areas. There are some on walls too to bounce you sideways along with climbable rails and boats to navigate the insta-death water. Timed lasers, spikes, turrets and many more things need to be avoided too. Living enemies mostly take the form of cats. Cats with guns. Cats with sunglasses.

This brings us to one of Battleblock’s weaker elements, the combat. Directional punches and a sliding move is all that you begin with. Early enemies only punch and they’ll have to knock you into a hazard to actually kill you. The controls for combat are unresponsive though. There’s no point trying to flee enemies, as most of them are quite agile and will follow you, and mess up one of your jumps.

It’s not long before you unlock weapons, which do make things better, but even these are slow to deploy. Frisbee bombs, boomerangs, grenades, fireballs, ice guns and more are available to buy. After the fantastic melee scrapping of Castle Crashers, it’s a surprise to see the devs drop the ball here. We can understand them wanting combat to feel tougher as it’s not the focus of the game, but it shouldn’t feel like a chore every time we get into a fight. Is it a deal-breaker? Absolutely not, combat plays a relatively small part compared to the platforming. To be fair, it was equally amusing and annoying being battered by two pieces of toast and struggled to escape before manning up and pushing them onto a lava brick to burn them into that great big bin in the sky for burnt toast.

The aim of each stage is to collect a minimum of three gems and make it to the exit. That’s far too easy though. Most stages have seven gems tucked away, along with a ball of yarn. It becomes a completionist’s dream trying to find everything in a stage. You’ll need to investigate far reaches of the map or even push your face into some blocks in the hope they’re fake ones that you can walk through to collect hidden items.

The campaign is great fun on your own and will last at least eight hours, many more if you’re serious about finding everything. Playing the game in local two player co-op is even better though. Stages have been tweaked to make you work together. Higher platforms need you to stand on each other’s shoulders and jump, and then use the shoulder button to lean down and give your partner a hand, bringing back some fond Mega Drive memories of World of Illusion. To jump across large gaps you run at your buddy, who holds down RT, in order to fling you across. Taking turns on pressure pads is another key element.

You’ll just have fun messing around though. Slapping each other into traps, particularly in mid-air when they’re following you, is the sort of random betrayal that isn’t cruelly punished thanks to you respawning near your partner. Instead of splitting the screen, the camera pans out to accommodate players. While sometimes things get a bit too small or you fall into a trap because the camera hadn’t given you enough room ahead, it never puts you off playing.

Competitive online options are a mixed bunch. Arena matches certainly enjoy some varied stages with lots of fiendish traps, but seeing as combat is a sticky mess, it’s hardly surprising to find that attacks and kills are a bit random. Points are awarded for damage and kills, with grenades proving a popular choice.

Other modes include king of the hill (push other players off scoring zones), racing, basketball/platforming arenas and a mode similar to ‘graffiti’ in the Tony Hawk games, where you aim to dominate a stage by colouring more clocks than your opponent. Most of these modes are available to play locally too, even in co-op against the AI.

The level editor is a breeze to use. The shoulder button allow you to swap between the different types of blocks like regular, lava launchers, sticky, spikes, treadmills, checkpoints and everything else you’d find in the regular game. The only requirement of each stage are start and finish gates and at least three strawberries (replacing gems) .

It’s easy to design your own stages, but you’re free to try ones other gamers have created. It’s such a shame that LittleBigPlanet never had decent platforming mechanics. If Media Molecule’s effort handled like this, there would be more incentive to use its level editor.

The main campaign is of a decent length, but already I’m seeing some great solo and co-op stages appearing from other players, some of them proving extremely challenging, but in an enjoyable way. If the community can keep this up, Battleblock Theater will become a favourite for months if not years.