After Alien Hominid and especially Castle Crashers, I was very excited to get my hands on BattleBlock Theater. The latest game from Behemoth, a studio I have really grown to love. As you would expect, BattleBlock Theater is a game is full of laughs, style and over the top gameplay.
How to Download BattleBlock Theater
You can download BattleBlock Theater from Steam. To begin, click on the Download button at the end of the review. If you’re into co-op games try also Don’t Starve Together.
The Game Review
BattleBlock Theater has one of the strangest stories and setups of any game I have ever played. Basically, you and your buddies are shipwrecked. If that was not bad enough the place you are shipwrecked on is ruled by technologically advanced cats and they want to you perform for them. It sounds crazy, but in the context of the game, it works.
The presentation is right at home with their other two smash hit games, Castle Crashers and Alien Hominid. It has that same 2D, cell-shaded kind of style and it is awesome. Each level has lots of little details that will make you smile and even laugh. The soundtrack is also pretty great and fist very well with the presentation of the game.
Gameplay-wise I would say that BattleBlock Theater is best described as a platformer first with a little bit of combat and puzzle-solving sprinkled on top of it. The general idea of each stage (and there is a ton of stages) is to platform your way to the end of it. One thing that I really do like is how tight the controls are.
For a 2D platformer, you have to have solid controls and I think that the platforming in BattleBlock Theater is its biggest strength. When you die (even on the more hectic stages) it is always because you messed up, not because of anything to do with the controls. That is really all you can ask for in a platform game.
On occasion, you will have to fight off your cat oppressors and the combat is rather shallow. You can punch and kick as well as use a special attack, but the combat is really just button mashing. Thankfully the combat is not overused so it did not really become an issue for me.
The game does try and put some puzzles in place on some of the slower paced levels. These can be a nice change of pace and while they are not exactly what you would call difficult puzzles (most of the time it is about moving a block) they do add some extra variety to the game.
Speaking of variety, BattleBlock Theater has a ton of it. No two levels ever feel the same and I think the way they were able to have so many different levels, spread across different worlds and not have to resort to reusing a lot of the same ideas shows how creative these people are.
You may think that BattleBlock Theater is the kind of game you will beat in a couple of sittings. This is not the case at all unless those couple of sittings are around 12 hours or so each! The campaign is a nice length, but there are plenty of extra levels for you to do, speed runs, stuff to collect, user-created levels to play and gradings for each level. In short, BattleBlock Theater is a game that is stacked with content.
There is even a multiplayer aspect to it. You can play with (or against) friends online or even in local co-op. I loved the idea of this as Castle Crashers was most certainly a better game when played with friends. BattleBlock Theater for me though is not quite as fun when playing with your buddies as I feel that it should be.
While it may not quite reach the heights of Castle Crashers. I do still think that BattleBlock Theater is a very fun game. I have been playing this on Xbox One and have a really fun time with it. It is a rather strange game, but that along with the solid platforming is what makes it so memorable.
