BattleBlock Theater

The Behemoth's follow-up to Castle Crashers has been well worth the wait. [Issue#98, p.79]

Another great game from The Behemoth: a brilliant platform game with bright humor, great art and a very addictive gameplay. The easy and intuitive level editor is just icing on the cake.

A clever, great looking and very genuine experience that belongs among the very best downloadable games ever created.

It’s a fascinatingly engaging game, drawing you in with humour and charm, then keeping you hooked with its intelligent level design that guides you to the hidden treasures subtly, making you feel like you’ve achieved something without ever forcing you into frustration.

Fun, humorous and challenging. Battleblock is an excellent platforming game by The Behemoth team.

An excellent platform puzzle by The Behemoth team and one of the best Live Arcade offerings of 2013. Lots of fun with multiplayer modes. If you like the genre, don't miss this game.

It took me a while to get into it but by the end of the review I can easily say this is the most action packed, intense, and mind stretching platformer I've played in many a year.

Anybody who loved anything The Behemoth has done before will dig this, as will platforming fans who were raised on Super Mario Bros. and enjoy a challenging game of Super Meat Boy from time to time.

Don’t be fooled by BattleBlock Theater’s downloadable format and low $15 price tag; this is a massive game filled with opportunities for exploration, collection, and fun.

As a platformer with beat-em-up tendencies, Battleblock Theater is a rousing good time, alone or accompanied, and it weaves a charming tale throughout every challenge.

BattleBlock Theater is like an HD version of the best Saturday-morning cartoon you can remember: hilarious, amazing in terms of visuals and also has one of the great co-op modes we've seen on Xbox Live Arcade. In short: Rayman Legends on acid, 'indie style'.

There are moments of glorious frustration, as there are in any great platformer, but the sting of such hurdles is always soothed by the sweetness of victory when you overcome them.

The Behemoth’s best game yet and a hilarious mix of co-op platforming and absurdly entertaining multiplayer madness.

Generous almost to excess, Battleblock Theater is one of Xbox Live Arcade's masterworks, and a reminder that genuine, bona fide imagination is possible even in the twilight of a console generation.

Between taking in the hysterical story, trying your hand at level creation, or just blowing up some buddies in versus mode, most every gamer will find something to love about BattleBlock Theater. Whether played alone or with friends, The Behemoth’s latest is an absolute blast that’s well worth the price of admission.

Content wise, this game is bursting at the seams. With cross-game promotion add-ons, tons of heads to unlock (that you can trade with other players), new weapons, replayable online and offline game modes, bonus levels, encore story levels, collectibles to capture, A+ grades to earn for every level, and the level editor with community challenges, you'll be at BattleBlock for quite a while.

BattleBlock Theater is filled with absurdity, fart jokes, and curious characters that will easily suck you into a colorful world. Its stages are creative and get more complex as you get used to its mechanics and controls and offer enough challenge and funny dialogue to keep you amused. Play it alone and you’ll laugh; play it with a friend (and push him off a ledge) and you’ll laugh even more.

Between the remarkably replayable eight-hour campaign and competitive multiplayer, BattleBlock Theater already offers an exceptional value for your $15. But the cherry on top is a level editor that allows anyone to create, decorate, and upload their own collections of linked levels, complete with secret areas.

For those seeking an extra challenge there’s the Insane mode, which removes the level checkpoints. It’s a shame that the game doesn’t explain itself better, but it’s a lot of fun, and constantly had me saying “just one more level”.

Fun and funny, the spirit of Castle Crashers lives on in this mischievous co-op treat. [June 2013, p.75]

Chaotic, frenzied platform action with loads of entertaining online modes: This is a dream come true for sociable jump&run fans.

If you have a friend that really wants to have fun playing a co-op game with you, just turn on your Xbox 360, boot this game and enjoy!

If you enjoy platformers, cats or fun and laughter, then pick up this game and you won’t regret it.

Playing an $18 game like BattleBlock Theater leaves a fellow feeling like he’s been hosed on nearly every $60 game he’s ever bought.

This is one of the gems we randomly find on the Marketplace. Simple but fun, BattleBlock Theater offers a great platformer, it's surprising and very addictive.

BattleBlock Theater amazes thanks to a captivating art direction, a tantalizing plot and gameplay embellished with an always stimulating level design.

Hatty Hattington and his friends may be living through an absolute nightmare, but you're bound to be so thoroughly entertained that you won't have time to empathize.

Brilliant fun in both campaign and multiplayer modes, there's something here for those who want to push their platforming skills and those who want an accessible online smack-'em-up.

With so many different gameplay options, and the ability to make your own levels to put your friends through your own custom hell, BattleBlock Theater was worth the wait.

Taking an elaborate collection of blocks and engineered something special with it, The Behemoth has created a player experience far more sophisticated than the goofy theme belies.

BattleBlock Theater is a fine little game, and though it has charm and pizazz, it also comes of feeling a bit of a sideshow, just something to pull out on a rainy day for a fast fifteen to buy a new head, play a quick match, or toy around with a level idea. You’ll get your mileage, and scratch that itch to run, jump, and punch with wild abandon, which for fifteen bucks is A-OK.

The surprisingly lengthy co-op mode does not experience this fatigue, and coupled with the replayability of the other multiplayer options means there's a lot of fun to be had. [Issue#135, p.117]

This game comes from the maker of Castle Crashers. It brings again a really funny game with cats in all levels. Battleblock Theater is so cool to play.

Games have been around long enough to poke fun at themselves and their cinematic predecessors, and while other titles like Viewtiful Joe and Saints Row: The Third have both got their fair share of jollies from doing this, it's arguable that no game until now as done so with such vigour as Battleblock Theater.

The cuddly charm of BattleBlock Theater tells only half the story – the game boasts a horde of smartly designed puzzle platforming stages as well as a multiplayer suite goofy enough to raise some pure and honest laughter. Whether on your own or with and against some friends, there’s plenty worth chewing through here.

Refined, mad and really rich in contents, BattleBlock Theater is a well developed platform game which may satisfy both players looking for a solitary experience and others willing to apply for entertaining multiplayer sessions.

There's a good four years of development time on display in Battleblock Theater and even though the light-hearted but mischievous brand of carnage tries its best to ensure you that you are only partaking in a boatload of puerile nonsense, you really notice every hour The Behemoth has put into this. The fighting might not be up to scratch, but the measured level design shows a degree of polish worthy of this genre's masters. So, it's up to you to decide, if the style and its over-sugared, over-caffeinated Saturday morning cartoon sensibilities float your boat. What you can't do anything about, though, is the fact that The Behemoth has mastered three different genres with only three games.

A refreshingly upbeat platformer that puts silliness and fun above all else. The gameplay is easy to grasp for platforming veterans, while the massive amount of content and alternate game modes ensure you'll be entertained for hours. You also may never look at your cat quite the same way again.

Fun, humorous, fresh and challenging: BattleBlock Theater is much more of a “game” than several modern “triple-A” productions, and definitely a worthy purchase for the puzzle/platform enthusiasts.

Full of color, craziness and a great co-op mode. We like.

BattleBlock Theater is without a doubt the strongest XBLA game in months and well worth the four-year wait. Deep platforming mechanics hold up in short bursts, but marathoning the game ends up robbing the activity of some joy. Find a friend and fight for your new Cat masters.

Bright, colourful and mostly dismissive of current trends, it’s clear The Behemoth wants to delight players with every moment of its latest performance. That it succeeds in only most of those moments is still a remarkable achievement.

To my mind, BattleBlock Theater is (a crude) Adventure Time to Super Meat Boy's Ren And Stimpy: just as crazy, but more forgiving.

With an extensive single player campaign, hundreds of items to collect, numerous multiplayer modes, and community created-uploaded levels, BattleBlock Theater gives you a lot of bang for your buck making this pretty much a no brainer purchase.

BattleBlock Theater has charm, style, humor and works great as a party game. When playing alone it can still be creative and challenging, but is never really anything special. The multiplayer is a party though, and collecting new heads will have you come back to it again and again. The show must go on, after all.

BattleBlock Theater’s lack of focus keeps it from being a true XBLA great, but this platformer still kept a smile on my face from beginning to end.

A pleasant and hard (in a fair way) platformer, but I think authors should have left out the enemies and the means to fight them, because they introduce unwanted chaos and the sense of losing full control over the character. [CD-Action 06/2013, p.78]

Technically solid and charming arcade fun. We can’t help but wish that Behemoth will be a little more ambitious with their next game.

When playing the single player, Battleblock Theater is nothing more than a fun 2D platformer that’s challenging enough, but doesn’t do anything exceptionally well. It isn’t until playing the multiplayer that the game really comes into its own and becomes a absurd and very entertaining party game. The controls leave something to be desired and its pace could be quicker from time to time, but thanks to the excellent level editor and a few brilliant mini-games, it takes a while before Battleblock becomes a bore.