The opening cinematic makes it abundantly clear that Winterbottom is both a cad and a bounder. Like Henry Hatsworth on the DS, another busy-headed platformer with a quirky sense of priorities, this is 1890s Britain redesigned by enthusiastic anglophile Americans even after hours of staring at the same puzzle, Winterbottom simply refuses to get old. Stars twinkle sharply, Winterbottom's own animations are a restrained series of beautiful captured waddles and pompous smacks of the umbrella, and few moments are allowed to pass without the intrusion of something delightful like a mechanical claw or the juddery lapping of cardboard waves. Levels play out across misty Victorian cityscapes built from girders, water towers, and huge, skeletal clock faces. There's far more for even a spectator to sit back and enjoy here than you can usually count on from an XBLA game. And its grainy, silent-era visuals call to mind Edward Gorey one minute and Dark City the next. Its wheezing, sinister squeezebox soundtrack exists somewhere between the Nutcracker Suite and the piano music you got when films were mostly about men in top hats lashing ladies to train tracks.
You won't mind at first, however, because it's simply so beautiful to take in.
Winterbottom is going to be one of those games that hurts your brain. Precision platforming, devious level design, and a time control mechanism with some fascinating ramifications - it's clear within seconds that The Misadventures of P.
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