BattleBlock Theater (Xbox 360)
You can tell the creators of BattleBlock Theater had a blast making it, and most of that comes down to the utterly ridiculous narrator featured in the game. The cutscenes of the game are entirely carried by one man explaining the events, but rather than that being a dry form of exposition, the narrator is such an energetic and goofy character that they might be the highlights of an already solid platforming experience. When it comes time for the narrator to do a scene, he explains the events almost like a child who’s too excited to tell you a story, going off on weird tangents, tripping over words, focusing on strange elements, and getting distracted by the jokes being told to the point the plot can be completely forgotten for a bit as we explore the silly new idea brought up. The narrator isn’t just there for the scenes either, popping up during gameplay to continue to deliver quirky and comedic lines in reaction to your activity as well as sometimes singing the backing music himself, and while there is an option to reduce his commentary or even turn it off, you’d be shutting out one of the game’s most enjoyable aesthetic charms.
The ridiculousness of the narrator isn’t even keeping you from much a plot either. A ship full of an abnormally high amount of mutual friends ends up on an island where some chubby cats take the people prisoner and make them perform deadly platform challenges for their amusement, all while “the best friend” of the group Hatty Hattington is corrupted by, appropriately enough, a hat to design these challenges for you. There are a few small developments as you clear the challenges, but it’s definitely not a game aiming to form a coherent strong narrative, instead happy to be goofy at every turn.
The game’s silliness certainly creates a strong style and tone, but the platforming is actually focused pretty well on providing tightly designed challenges that can become quite demanding of your skills. Each level is in essence once big box that is filled in with different environmental pieces, but despite this the areas still can have distinct structural identities, partly because the box can be bigger or smaller as need be and the platforms within can reshape it to make it feel less like you are on a stage performing for cats who just want to see you die. Your skill set is deceptively simple but ever-growing, the player having a double jump to handle the jumping with but there are many ways to interact with the environment as the game goes on. Sliding, phasing through platforms, and grabbing and moving objects aren’t exactly revolutionary ideas for a character’s capabilities, but you do have a few offensive options to handle the cats who are on stage with you trying to kill you or keep you from clearing hazards. You have some punches that can handle them, but you also get to enter levels with a weapon, some of these as simple as a thrown explosive while others may freeze enemies, blow them up with walking frogs, or dissolve them with an acid bubble. More interesting than your attack weapons though are probably the ones that can help with the platforming, such as suction cup darts you can use to make platforms or even the acid bubble serving as a potential third jump if you land on top of it rather than being dissolved by approaching it head first.
And platforming help can definitely be desired, as the levels in BattleBlock Theater can push you to be precise, quick, and rapidly go from one challenge to another while trying to avoid death, although the game will also give you some reprieve between a level’s obstacles to figure out how to go ahead. Luckily, death isn’t really penalized at all, and you can even hold down a button to kill yourself if you want to teleport to your last marked checkpoint, but this gets a bit iffy in the cooperative multiplayer mode, as where it might teleport you after a death isn’t as clear as the last checkpoint flag, the game sometimes putting you beside your partner or placing you in some strange spot between the flag and where you died with very little way to figure out where you’ll end up. Still, you are coming back from the dead with little penalty, making it easy to enjoy the many different challenges the blocks might hit you with and allowing you to mess with your partners a bit if you’re feeling silly.
Deadly lasers, gooey blocks that can slow you down or hold you in place on a wall, watery hazards, explosive blocks, hot rocks that send you flying, and many others come together to make levels essentially a sequence of distinct jumping puzzles, some requiring problem solving and others just needing you to be quick on your feet to react and move right to triumph over the current arrangement of hazards and special block types. Using the aspects of one type of block to overcome another is the simplest way to describe your actions in BattleBlock Theater, but the game keeps introducing new block types as you go to make things more complex, general movement staying simple but some stages getting surprisingly complicated in how the blocks interact, especially in the chapter ending levels where you must do everything with a clock counting down to potential failure.
Beating a level isn’t just about getting to the end though. Stages in BattleBlock Theater all contain green gems floating in the air, the player needing to collect at least three to open up the exit. The normal path through a level will usually put you in contact with at least three, but levels can contain anywhere from 5 to 9 gems with optional ones often hidden or requiring skillful platforming or puzzle-solving to reach, this being part of BattleBlock Theater’s plethora of optional content. Collecting extra gems means you can spend them to buy random ridiculous heads for your character to swap out, but stages also feature a ball of yarn each that can be used to buy the new weapon types mentioned earlier. On top of this, there are optional speed levels in every world, a ranking system to compete with, user made levels, and some levels may contain secret exits that will take you to a special stage. While beating the game through normally is already a fulfilling and challenging platforming experience, it’s certainly a game you can spend an absurd amount of time with if you wish.
To make things even more interesting, the cooperative multiplayer seamlessly adjusts the main game’s story levels to accommodate the presence of other players. Mostly what this involves is swapping out a few enemies or removing platforms to instead require cooperation with your partners, but the game also allows you to mess with your buddies if you wish, able to push them around and attack them just for kicks… although sometimes giving your partner a hearty uppercut might just launch them up onto a platform that was out of reach. Adding more players to the fun doesn’t take away from the challenge, although sometimes being able to stand on each other’s heads will let you grab an item the game might have expected you to acquire in a different way. However, that still requires cooperation and sometimes cleverness to execute, making it a bit more interesting for the potential flexibility. There are definitely moments that require you to work together to proceed, sometimes both of you needing to be incredibly competent and have a good understanding of the game, so be careful about who you’re bringing in and what level you’re picking to introduce the game to them.
For a bit more of a casual multiplayer experience though, BattleBlock Theater has quite a few modes on offer, each of them offering a surprising amount of different levels for their game type. Some are as simple as trying to kill each other the most in a time limit to win, while others include basketball in platform game levels, coloring in blocks by running around a level and touching them, trying to stand on a certain block the longest and repelling anyone who might aim to push you off, and a few other odd twists that make the competitive multiplayer surprisingly robust. Not every mode is the most interesting or as strongly designed as you might hope, a few level designs making it easy for a player to hold onto a lead as soon as they get it, but some modes like the block coloring one will have shake-ups to keep things kinetic, the coloring block one for instance at some points randomly removing the color from a bunch of the blocks the players have colored so far. The side activities definitely aren’t as expertly designed as the main game, but they still have plenty to offer even if you end up whittling it down to a few favorites.
THE VERDICT: BattleBlock Theater is one of those platform games that doesn’t have too many frills in the basic controls but it still manages to make the jumping and level navigation thrilling, especially since the blocks that make up the stages come in so many varieties that you are constantly pushed to be a better jumper and to better figure out how to make the blocks work in your favor. Challenging but not brutal on your own and a blast with a friend who can keep up, BattleBlock Theater offers smart and varied stage design, a wonderfully absurd tone, and quite a lot to do outside of the main journey.
And so, I give BattleBlock Theater for Xbox 360…
A GREAT rating. Hilarious and unafraid to indulge in weirdness that ends up giving the game its distinct charm, BattleBlock Theater is certainly a platforming experience that comes highly recommended, it’s just got a few quirks that aren’t in the presentation that keep it from being an even stronger recommendation. A few of the rarer block types are not as engaging as the consistently appearing ones and sometimes blocks aren’t arranged too well to make their clearing enjoyable, but these are just a few small moments out of a game that mostly places the blocks cleverly to make them both puzzles and platforming challenges at times. A few oddities like the checkpointing in mutliplayer also exist, but you can soldier on through the small annoyances and still face a game with a strong understanding of how to arrange its levels to offer plenty of challenging moments that it divides well to avoid fatiguing you. It’s a game you can honestly call simple in some ways but still complicated enough that it doesn’t stagnate since your interaction with the world is usually pretty clear and follows many of the same rules throughout.
BattleBlock Theater does not need its over-the-top narrator or plot to be enjoyable, but those elements certainly enhance the action by serving as your reward for overcoming already engaging platforming challenges. Developer The Behemoth is certainly excellent at taking old game genres they enjoy and adding their own personal flair to the affair, and while the platforming genre has been tread quite often throughout the history of video games, BattleBlock Theater still manages to feel distinct despite not really reinventing any of the genre trappings while doing so.