New Bosses, New Art Revealed For 'Henry Hatsworth' DS

EA has provided us an exclusive look at a couple of bosses and some concept art for next month's "Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure," a game I've been secretly playing for weeks. Let me try to explain what you're about to see...

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If the headline didn't give it away, everything below is a spoiler.

Throughout this post you'll see exclusive images EA provided to us for next month's "Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure."  It's a game I've been intrigued about for a while but was really unsure about how it was going to turn out.

Based on the top screen's action, you'd think the game was a side-scrolling action-adventure.  And you might imagine that formula being a good thing for fans of old-school Super-Nintendo-era stuff.

But the bottom screen is a puzzle game that plays like "Planet Puzzle League," and therefore maybe makes this game a bit more..  mom-oriented?

Having played this game on and off for several weeks, I can assure you that it's the former. This game is a throwback, a game of bottomless pits, precise jumps and hard bosses. So far, I like it. But, to be honest, sometimes I yell at it. Then try again.

Action in "Henry Hatsworth" unfolds in that top screen, but when you need a power boost, you press the DS' x-button, which pauses the side-scrolling and lets you do the puzzle. The advance of the puzzle pieces up from the bottom screen never pauses, but it's only when you're working on that bottom screen that you can do anything about it. match three or more colored squares and you clear the pieces out, the reward being some added power to use to shoot enemies or transform Hatsworth.

The wrinkle is that that enemies killed on the top screen fall to the bottom screen. When they land there, they become blocks that you need to clear, or else they advance back to the top to cause Hatsworth problems on the upper screen again. One more thing: some combos on the bottom screen activate special items and powers that you can use to get past hard parts of the action on the top screen.

So...do think of it as an old-school game, but with more strategic options available to the player ,thanks to the puzzle-based power management in the bottom screen.

Now, on to the new screenshots here:

This shot shows the boss to the game's first world. Because this game is full of send-ups to the British, the boss is, naturally Lady D. What's interesting about this fight (besides the fact that it's the first really hard part of the game that I encountered) is that Lady D can shoot spores that sprout on the lower screen as vines. As the vines grow, the blocks that they covered are fixed into position. The vines can be cleared by matching their root piece to other colored pieces.

This is the game's second boss, whose name I'm blanking on (help me, EA! UPDATE: That's be Lance Banson). This guy's a singer, hence the musical notes he's spawned on the bottom screen. I could tell you what the anchor does during this battle, but that's a gameplay spoiler.

This is the third world's boss, an old man in a wheelchair who is looking for someone named Timothy. Instead he's got Hatsworth to deal with, which might be a problem if the old man's nanny wasn't a big bruiser.

Note that the person who captured these shots was in a bit of trouble. You don't want the rising tide of colored blocks to get as high as you're seeing it here. Note the red block about to make it into the top screen again. On the positive side for whoever captures these shots is the fact that they only need to match a few more blocks in order to make the meter on the right all yellow. When that happens, Hatsworth spawns a giant robot, which essentially puts you in a god mode for a while.

Here's the nanny messing with the puzzle pieces on the lower screen again. No spoilers, ok?

And here's world four, which I'm not permitted to write about (and didn't reach yet in the game anyway...I've been enjoying this game on flights and subway rides and not been hurrying to finish it).

More level four. And even more trouble for the person playing this as the puzzle pieces have broken into the top screen. Hatsworth's in trouble.

There's a lot going on in these shots and a lot going on in this game, in general. You've got score-multipliers, money with which to buy upgrades, at least two supplemental systems for firing and leveling up Hatsworth's projectile weapons and some other stuff. Yeah, this game is definitely not for moms. No offense to my own.

EA provided me these shots because they knew I liked the game. I'd first seen a presentation on it last March, tracked it through some press events in the fall. And now, with the whole thing seemingly ready to go, it's finally on the verge of release.

"Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure" ships from EA in mid-March only on the Nintendo DS. Please tell me my explanation of this game made sense. If not, did you at least enjoy the screenshots?

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Exclusive Trailer Premiere: ‘Henry Hatsworth In The Puzzling Adventure’