BattleBlock Theater Review

Hatty Hattington and his friends were enjoying a nice sailboat ride when suddenly their vessel became caught in the middle of a serious storm. It crashed against the shore of a nearby island, and the survivors soon found themselves imprisoned by a race of giant cats that made their prisoners battle for their lives in a dilapidated theater. Meanwhile, Hatty watched in silence, sitting in a chair with a malevolently glowing top hat resting on his head

It might look cute, but it's pretty cutthroat.

The story in BattleBlock Theater isn't especially memorable once you put aside the creepy imagery of homicidal cat people. What really sells the tale is the energetic narrator, who tears through one line after another of cheesy exposition littered with enough poop jokes to fill an adult diaper. Hopefully, you don't mind that sort of juvenile humor, or you're at least willing to look past it so that you can enjoy what is easily one of the most satisfying downloadable titles to arrive on the Xbox Live Arcade.

If you've been playing 2D action platformers for years, one of the aspects you'll appreciate most about BattleBlock Theater is its refusal to hold your hand unnecessarily. The interface and objectives are designed to communicate their purpose clearly, so a tutorial is neither needed nor provided. All that you must do to win the game is reach your friend, which you do by clearing one portion of the theater after another. As you work toward that end, you explore more than 100 carefully constructed stages that put your platforming and puzzle-solving skills to the test.

They say a picture is worth a thousand blocks.

As each stage begins, you jump out of a cage that is positioned somewhere within an arena. Your specific goal is to pass through a glowing exit gate, but first you must collect a number of emeralds that are located somewhere in the vicinity. Collecting three of them is enough to do the job, but you can also gather additional ones to use as currency at theater gift shops. An oversized ball of yarn is also stashed in each zone--usually in a fiendishly clever place--and there are sometimes bonus stages that are hidden behind portions of the landscape in out-of-the-way places. Though you don't always work against a timer, you still want to hurry because completion time and any optional items gathered both count toward the letter grade that you are awarded upon completing a stage.

You encounter new hazards and more demanding situations as you advance. Figuring everything out usually takes only a moment, and then negotiating the additional obstacles becomes second nature until you're faced with a particularly devious area and find yourself pausing to ponder the best course of action. Such moments come up quite often, since BattleBlock Theater can be quite the difficult game. By the time you're partway through the sixth chapter, you're wall jumping, dashing, sliding, and double jumping like a champion, and you still might not be able to avoid the buzzsaw blades, spike traps, and grenade-launching cats thrown your way.