de Blob

Here I go reviewing video games again. I’m going to try to balance out my posts with more art-oriented stuff soon, but for now I’m lazy and it’s easy to just post about games I play. So let’s talk about de Blob.

de Blob is one of my favorite games on the Wii, it’s definitely in my top three (the others being Okami and Mario Galaxy.) I’ve enjoyed it even more than first party Nintendo titles, and I’m a begrudged Nintendo loyalist through and through. It’s that good. I’m hoping this one will be a sleeper title that will snowball into popularity via word of mouth, and that does seem to be happening. Sick of shovelware on the Wii? This game will more than deliver your fix.

de Blob is loosely based on a free PC game and was handed over to development team BlueTongue after game publisher THQ purchased the rights to the original. Naturally working for THQ the only games BlueTongue previously made were restrictive and bland movie and cartoon adaptations. Suddenly faced with complete creative freedom the team apparently just went completely out of their damn minds and the results are a weird and fun game just bursting at the seams with charm and attitude. The game’s basic plot could be applied as an analogy for anything, but it almost seems to be a metaphor for BlueTongue’s development experience.

The plot is thus: there are a race of colorful carefree blobish people called Raydians who live and frolic in the colorful and tropical Chroma City. However one day the I.N.K.T Corporation arrives to take over Chroma city, the Inkies (highly militaristic little… things, with camera lenses for eyes) descend and use their vile machinery to suck the color out of everything, transform art galleries and amusement parks into prisons and ink refineries, and basically convert all the Raydians into colorless worker drones.

Enter de Blob, a slightly more blobby Raydian with the ability to suck up the stolen colors (in the form of paint) and hurl himself against buildings to bring color and life back to the city. He’s aided by four friends who together with him form what they call the Underground Color Revolution.

Okay so it’s a typical good vs. evil, anti-corporate, yay-hippies story but this can be easily overlooked thanks to the overall memorable style of the game and the hilarious cutscenes that play before each level. Game’s overall tone is very funky, to say the least. As you go along you unlock music which you can select from as your “mood” for any given level, and most of it is funk and jazz with a little house and some turntables mixed in, just go to the website for a sample of the main tune. Each color (and you can mix primaries to make more colors) has different instrument associated with it that swells and blends perfectly into the level music as you slap it on a building, and when you color I.N.K.T propaganda posters they become colorful geometric graffiti-inspired art.

The controls are pretty good, you have to swing the Wii remote to make Blob jump, you control his direction with the nunchuck joystick, control the camera with the d-pad, you can target paint containers, switches, special jump pads and enemies with the Z button, and whatever paint color you currently are will automatically cover any building you touch (except for special mission structures.) There is some typical platforming frustrations which the remote swinging can make a little worse, but I think most gamers are used to falling off surfaces in these types of games. Throughout the level you can collect patterns that will randomly assort themselves on the buildings you paint and you get various missions from the members of the Color Revolution. My favorites are the ones from the Prof., an old dude in a hover chair, who has you recolor large landmarks and buildings with a certain amount of a certain color paint, and you do so by vigorously shaking both the remote and the nunchuck while yet another instrument flares into the music. Don’t worry about these friends of Blob getting annoying though, their missions are largely optional, they’re all really cute and well designed and speak in a sort of unobtrusive bubbly blob babble with accompanying written text.

Once you get enough points you can progress to the next part of the level. Each level is timed, but you almost never have to worry about running out because certain accomplishments add minutes onto your timer. However in the game’s only glaring flaw you can’t save your progressm this is a pretty big problem because some of the later levels take at least 45 minutes just to get through, nevermind if you want to paint every single building, free the captured Raydians on every block and complete every single mission. Sure the game flows better when you complete a level in one go, but there still should have been an option to save. Along the way you have to watch out for Inkies and other enemies, which get more clever and threatening as you progress. If Blob gets doused in ink he’ll quickly lose paint points, you have to get him into some clean water before you lose a life but then he’s very vunerable when he’s without any color at all. Luckily the I.N.K.T robots storing the color are plentiful.

Some people think the level designs are too similar, and sure, alot of the blocks of buildings look the same but as you progress to the later levels there are some huge and really creative places. And sure game is a little childish, but it’s a great one for small children, adults, and anyone in between. It’s definitely a good one for the kiddies as it encourages creativity, individuality, and standing up to oppression. If you’re looking for something awesome for a Wii owner who already has all the first party Nintendo titles (and Okami cough hint) or looking for something for yourself because your Wii is gathering dust and you’re fed up with minigames and shovelware this a must-have game.

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