The gaming industry is flooded with mediocre platformers that mostly try to replicate the greatness of N+ or Super Meatboy, or even reach the levels of success that the Super Mario Bros. games have. Battleblock Theater does not quite reach this quota, but it does have a unique brand of comedy and gameplay that most platformers just don’t have.

   The story of Battleblock Theater is an odd one, as a man by the name of Hatty Hattington and his many friends go on a cruise one day and get caught in a hurricane. Shipwrecked, Hatty apparently makes his way into this old-looking theater, and your character (one of his unspecific friends) wanders in after him. You go through a little area that is abandoned and eventually find Hatty being held against his will by two cats. The two cats put this strange top hat on Hatty and his eyes begin to leak tears infinitely, and Hatty orders the cats to take you prisoner. The top hat apparently has mind control powers of some sort, and now the player’s character is a prisoner for these odd cats and Hatty. The player is forced to go through these “scenes” or stages to progress to the next scene. It’s sort of a play-on-words, the name for a level in a videogame is a stage, and in this game the player is literally performing in front of an audience of cats to progress to the next level.  Other than that, not much else is known at the beginning of the game, but fear not as it’s actually quite an intriguing tale for a platformer and only makes the game that much more enjoyable.

   The gameplay is for Battleblock Theater is similar to other platformers of today, giving the player a lot of control of his/her character in a way that if death occurs, it is the player’s fault hands down. Plentiful and unique, the weapons range from a paper-plane bomb to a boomerang. While the combat is sort of basic and lacks any real depth to make it great, it’s still fun, chaotic, and works well with the game’s environments enough to create a fun experience. Co-op is a strongpoint in Battleblock Theater as with the Behemoth’s previous game Castle Crashers and is one of the things that makes the game: fun and enjoyable with your friends. To push the envelope a little further with co-op, the Behemoth added a level-editor that allows players to create custom-built levels in just about any way they see fit, and with the many gametypes that the game has there are many great possibilities.

   As far as platformers go, I’d say I’ve become more and more of a fan of the genre. Battleblock Theater is a worthy game to be counted amongst the good platformers out there, but probably isn’t going to be as much of a hit as Castle Crashers was or anything like Super Mario Bros. But at the end of the day, if you want an addicted yet satisfying platformer that’s extremely fun to play with friends and has replayability in it’s core, then Battleblock Theater is a game for you.

Verdict: 8/10