![]() ![]() Making sense of it all is a humble blueberry farmer named Horatio. It brought about peace, harmony, carnage and mayhem throughout the land, which isn't helped by the fact that the space bear's green blood frequently brings out storms that actually kill people. One day, a space bear gets shot down and plummets into the World, forever changing the planet. The game was released on Early Access for the PC and Xbox One on January 2017. After all that’s done, true masochists can do it all again on Insane Mode – a difficulty that removes the generously placed mid-stage checkpoints.Pit People (previously known as Game 4) is a Turn-Based Strategy game developed by The Behemoth (the indie game team behind Alien Hominid, Castle Crashers, and BattleBlock Theater). These doodads aren’t afterthoughts, either, as most are hidden behind clever mini-puzzles or optional platforming sections. Each stage also has a gold-medal time and eight hidden collectibles, all of which are needed for the coveted A++ score. After clearing the seven- or eight-hour campaign, you still have 24 tossed-in-just-because bonus stages (three per world) to run through. This is a truly gigantic game, guaranteed to keep completionists busy for literally dozens of hours. But the platforming feels better in other games, and the puzzling is lacking a hook like Braid’s time mechanics – it’s mostly pushing blocks.īattleBlock Theater doubles down on its jack-of-all-trades nature in its sheer ridiculous size. The variety is welcome and well-executed, and does a great job of propelling you from stage to stage. Stages alternate between pure Super Meat Boy-style skill and puzzle-platforming ala Braid or Toki Tori – sometimes within a few moments of each other. No idea is used twice if an idea does repeat it’s sufficiently escalated to really put your platforming skills to the test. My favorite set of stages are all designed to force two runs – once with a (relatively) easier set of challenges, and then a second time after hitting a trigger to activate lasers, disappearing blocks, roving saw blades, or some other added bit of trickiness. Eight worlds are loosely sorted into gameplay themes, each stage building and tweaking ideas established in the previous one. It offers up some of the most clever, satisfying, and varied 2D platforming in years. Luckily, the bulk of the single-player campaign focuses on spot-on jumps and not enemy cat combat.īattleBlock Theater’s wildly inventive stage design is undoubtedly its greatest draw. With no real attack priority, combat rapidly devolves into random button-mashing. You can dispatch enemies (or fellow players in multiplayer) with simple punches, kicks, and special attacks, but it lacks the precision found in the jumping. The simple hand-to-hand combat system is more disappointing. Movement is a little stiffer, the physics a little less intuitive. But BattleBlock Theater’s moment-to-moment movement doesn’t compare favorably to recent 2D platforming greats like Super Meat Boy. Everything feels snappy and responsive, and I rarely felt like the controls betrayed me and caused my death, even in the hairiest segments. You command your customizable prisoner with standard platforming controls – jump, double-jump, wall-jump… nothing out of the ordinary. The narrator promises “sandpaper kisses” for doing well. Balls of yarn hidden in each stage can be redeemed in a prison black market for power-ups. ![]() The Behemoth fully commits to the premise and has a ton of fun with it. When your ship full of friends (BBT makes sure to point out that this is a true "friend ship," har har) crashes onto an island jail run by intelligent cat guards, your only choice is to platform through 80+ levels for their feline amusement. ![]() Between-world cutscenes in most platformers are good opportunities to get up and grab a snack. The writing mixes poop jokes with pop-culture references, punctuated by higher-brow, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it self-referential humor. Battleblock Theater brings this humor to the forefront, and it successfully permeates the entire experience – from the narrator’s manic opening monologue to the multiple songs that play over the end credits. All Behemoth games have featured laughs, usually in the form of sight-gags and others jokes lurking beneath the surface. ![]()
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