Horrid Henry: Missions of Mischief

Horrid boy...

***Horrid Henry: Missions of Mischief*** is an action game developed by Aslyum Entertainment and published by SouthPeak Games for the Nintendo DS, Wii, and PC in 2009, and is the first Horrid Henry game to be made.

## Horrid Qualities

1. The graphics and overall gameplay look almost identical in all versions of the game, due them just being lazy ports of one another, such as the Wii version being an exact port of the PC version, with no changes. It also makes no sense to release the game on Wii either, given its overall quality. It should've just stayed on the DS and PC instead.
2. Speaking of BQ#1, the graphics are incredibly poor, especially for a 2009 game despite using cel-shading. Countless of games released during the same time or even before look much better than this, such as Super Mario Galaxy, showing that the console is capable of much better-looking graphics, kinda like *Imagine Party Babyz*.
3. Mediocre controls. They are far too slippery and its very easy for you to accidentally miss a platform above or below you, in addition to taking damage from enemies, such as spiders.
4. Out of place sound effects, such as when Henry runs. It sounds like he is crunching on something while he is running, and whenever you find an item and it drops, it is very loud.
5. Speaking of enemies, you cannot step on them in order to stun them for some reason. Instead, you are forced to use up your goo just so that they won't bother you while playing.
6. Repetitive soundtrack. There are only 4 songs in the entire game, and they all sound incredibly similar to one another, sharing the same melody, not to mention that the soundtrack is also bland and can be ear bleeding.
7. No animated cutscenes to show the plot, but instead rely on still images of the characters talking with some text, and no voice acting. Though this would later be improved in *The Good, The Bad, and the Bugly*, where there actually is voice acting, and instead of still images it's a slideshow.
8. The game is very short. Can simply be beaten in less than 4 hours on all versions, or even less if you want to speedrun.
9. It is far too easy, as a majority of the missions give you way too much time to find all of the items, such as 15 minutes, even though all of them can be found in less than 3 minutes.
10. The Wii and PC version, as said in BQ#1, are barely different than the DS version, meaning that they are an extremely lazy port with almost no change, even the PC port of Agent Hugo: Lemoon Twist is less lazy than these ports.
11. Horrible ending.

## Perfect Qualities

1. It is at least faithful to the Horrid Henry franchise, particularly the CITV animated series that its based on.
2. Despite its flaws, it can still be enjoyable for some. And due to how bad the other games in the franchise are, this is possibly the best game of the franchise.
3. Despite being bland and repetitive, the soundtrack is catchy.
4. Despite the controls being mediocre and far too slippery (as mentioned above in BQ#3), at least they're better than *Horrid Henry's Horrid Adventure*.
5. It's still a better game and not as bad as *Horrid Henry's Horrid Adventure*, and there is some fun to get in this game, unlike the latter.

## Reception

The DS version currently has a 3.5/5 on GameFAQs.

## References

1. ↑ https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ds/960435-horrid-henry-missions-of-mischief