There are not enough hours in the day to explore this game properly. I only had time to look at the single player, so that’s what I’m going to review. Once I find some friends, I’m gonna look at the multiplayer and give those modes their own review. For now, here’s
Battleblock Theater (single player)
First of all, have a look at their Steam announcement trailer.
Was that enough to make you want this game? Because it was for me. If that narration voice sounds familiar to you, that’s because it belongs to none other than Youtube’s favorite voice-acting madman, Will Stamper. Yes, he narrates the in the game as well. That magnificent weirdo keeps you company the whole time. That put me in a very happy place.
As for the game itself:
Here’s the overview
Battleblock Theater is the latest entry in The Behemoth’s loony dynasty of award-winning indie side-scrollers. In it you play as a nameless “friend” who was shipwrecked with a bunch of other nameless friends on an island ruled by giant sadistic cat men. Your leader, Hatty Hattington, has been brainwashed by an evil glowing top hat, and you and the rest of the friends are being forced to fight through obstacle courses, bristling with deathtraps intended for the cat-peoples’ amusement. It’s up to you to rescue all your friends and continue on your friends-only pleasure cruise.
Yep. So…
The style is something else
The Behemoth studios have perfected the art of balancing cute and crazy. Many other studios try it, but few manage to make the experience as natural and magical as they have. It’s like a drunk uncle telling the kids a bedtime story, trying very hard to keep it clean and constantly winking at the audience when things get especially absurd. It’s an unhinged romp so strange it’s hard to imagine how someone could come up with it in the first place, let alone make it also funny and charming. It somehow manages to be weird and hilarious without being pretentious about its weirdness. Cool.
But this game’s got more than just style going for it:
The gameplay is rock solid
A lot of time when you hear something called “solid” it means “reliable, but unremarkable or unimpressive”. That’s not what I mean at all. When I call the platforming in this game “solid”, I mean the controls are tight, the level design is great, the puzzles are ingenious, and the speed is just bananas. SOLID. Like a rock. Get it?
Battleblock Theater throws a ton of different traps and block types at you as the game goes on. You might start off the first few levels with instant-drown puddles. Then they add some floating black cloud monsters for laughs. Then they add buzzsaws. Then lasers. Then warp portals. Then electric switch-triggered temporal phasing blocks. Sticky goo blocks. Rails. Bounce pads. Jetpacks. Racoon bears. And on and on and on until you have giant cluster levels that use all of those things at once and more, and all in creative combinations that test both your your smarts and your skills. This game got really hard towards the end, in fair way, and there are multiple difficulties to attempt. Also, there are user-generated levels that’re probably even more impossible and less fair. This game was Mario Maker before Mario Maker was cool. Or in existence even.
And wouldn’t you know it:
Even the music was awesome
There are some kicking good tracks in this game. I was not expecting that. I only needed this game to have passable background music to go with all the exploding, screaming, and cat gibs. What I got was some near-eargasmic chiptune gems that I will listen to for fun. And guess what? Most of that was also done by the grand pervert poobah himself, Stamper. Crikey, that man’s talented. Never knew he was a composer too. And a good one, at that. Seriously, have a listen:
What I’m trying to say, guys, is that this game is great. Just writing about it is making me want to play it again. Battleblock Theater is about $3 right now, and you can get it bundled with Castle Crashers (which I did) for $5.74. The single player alone was killer. I’ll give my thoughts on the multiplayer a little later.
Check out part 2!
RSS