Review: de Blob (Wii)

Thu, Oct 16, 2008

Quirky games - those that do not easily fall into the readily accepted genres like FPS or RPG - are very hit or miss. Some, like Katamari Damacy, are great successes. Others, such as Stretch Panic, fall well under the radar, and typically end up as cult favorites. Yet, these games are refreshing to play, particularly in gameplay that is just outright different from what else is out there, even if the overall game is not as good. Fortunately, de Blob, a Wii title published by THQ and developed by Blue Tongue, managed to retain its quirkiness while also being well-polished, making for a very enjoyable experience.

The game has you controlling Blob, a sentient ball of water that can absorb paint, and color anything in its path. Blob becomes recruited by an underground movement hoping to help return their Chroma City back to its former colorful self, after INKT forces drained all the color out of it and put the citizens to forced labor. To do this, Blob simply needs to find some paint, and then roll over anything he can find: buildings, cars, trees, even the citizens themselves, slowly converting the white and black world to one bursting with colors. Along the way, Blob will also face the INKT forces, which can be easily crushed when Blob is full of paint. Controls are pretty simple and don’t significantly force much Wii Remote functionality purposely; rolling around is done on the nunchuck, jumping is by wagging the Remote, and the Z button allows you to target certain enemies or objects and then jump down on top of them to smash them. Other controls help with camera movement, locating paint, water, and various objectives, and the like.

You have numerous options to approach each of the game’s ten levels. Generally, each is broken into three sections, requiring a certain score before you can enter the next section, and you can do this simply by painting as much as possible. However, you are faced against a constant countdown timer, and while you can find extra time laying about, you need to either complete whole blocks of buildings and free the citizens inside, or complete numerous challenges, testing your speed, fighting ability, or painting skills, for additional time bonuses. There’s also ten “completion” goals for each stage, including painting every tree or every building, in addition to painting all the objects on the level, completing the level in the fastest time, or collecting all the “paint styles” that are littered about the level that are randomly applied to the objects you paint. Ultimately, you need to unlock a gate at the far end of a level in order to complete it, but rushing through each level and not taking the time to get into some of the finer gameplay points can certainly leave you with a different impression of the game. Once you complete a level, you unlock the next one as well as two special timed challenges for that level, along with some artwork and other bonus features if you performed any completion goals. The final level does feature a “boss” fight, though this follows the same techniques that the game has used before.

Part of the trick of the game is learning how colors mix. Paint is only available in red, yellow, and blue, and the secondary colors (orange, green, and purple) can be made by hitting two different paintbots; brown can be made by hitting one of each type of color. If you hit a paintbot while holding a secondary color, you’ll revert back to that color. Hitting a water source clears your color, while if you get touched with ink, you’ll need to wash yourself clean before your paint supply is exhausted. The color scheme is not critically important when rolling about the level - any surface will happily take whatever color you touch it with - but when you get to the challenges and some of the color-resistant INKT forces, you need to be aware of how it works and how to quickly get the right color and right amount of paint that you need. You also need, in some of the painting challenges, the right order to paint objects in: for example, you may need to paint a tower orange, but the only place you can jump to paint the tower needs to be painted red: you’ll have to paint this launch point orange and then go back and find a way to get red paint to finish off the challenge. Another challenge may be to convert a key landmark by amassing enough paint in the right color to transform it. These challenges aren’t necessarily difficult in and of themselves, but do require a bit of thoughtful planning while a countdown timer is running down. But you can also play with color outside the challenges: finishing a block of buildings or other grouping of objects in multicolor hues will earn you a better score bonus, so it pays to be haphazardly creative to earn larger scores in the game. You also gain higher score bonuses for painting multiple objects in a row without rolling on a horizontal surface, allowing you to leapfrog between one building row to the next to build a nice long combo.

Now, while the gameplay is fun, there is something to be said about the levels being just a bit on the long side - each took me about 15-20 minutes to complete, making the whole game on the order of 8-10 hrs for a single playthrough. It is not that this length is necessarily bad, but there was a point roughly 3/4 through each level where I wondered how much more there was to the level, and started to skip the challenges just to get it done as to save progress and give my hands a rest. Having a larger number of smaller levels as to keep the same length would have really helped in this area. Fortunately, the game does have an appreciable difficulty curve; later levels feature more hazards for Blob and more difficult challenges. However, this curve doesn’t really take off until after the first few levels, so it’s a game you do have to invest a bit more time in to get the right feel to it. The game is likely aimed at younger gamers, but even the story told between levels through pre-rendered movies and the brief snippets of conversation can appeal to older gamers. Completionists will have a field day with a game like this. There’s also three 2-to-4-player modes that can be done on the same Wii, such as vying to paint more of the city in your color, or racing to paint specific landmarks first.

Graphically, the game looks great for a Wii game; each level starts as a bright, but painfully dull, white and grey world, and as you paint, it starts to spring to life; there’s a subtle hue filter that changes when you move from a painted to unpainted section, and the sky and grass become more vivid where you have returned the colors too. The Blob leaves paint trails wherever he rolls that persist on the level, making a finished city look like a preschooler ran through it - but in a good way. The citizens, once free of their shackles, sing and dance in lines as they move to rally you in the town squares. Even though its obvious there’s a bit of cookie-cutting with objects and the like, each level has its own feel to it through the layout of the city. This game would also be nowhere near as enjoyable without its awesome soundtrack, made up of several pop-jazzy tunes that are affected by the state of the city and other aspects; when you first start on the level, the song is low-key, maybe an instrument or two, but as you start painting, the track builds up to a nice piece of music. All this is accentuated by the Blob’s current color: whenever you paint an object, you’ll get a quick musical “hit” in time with the song, but the type of hit will be a function of the color - orchestra hits when Blob is red, record-scratching when brown, and muted horns when blue, for example. The music really helps to push you through each level, building up the excitement of repainting the city.

de Blob is not a game that will capture everyone’s fancy - that’s typically the trouble with quirky games. However, for those that do appreciate various forms of gameplay, you will likely find de Blob to fill a spot that has been missing since Katamari Damacy was released. The gameplay is pretty solid, and backed by a well-crafted world and excellent audio experience. While the game can get a bit long-winded, the reward with sticking through the early levels will definitely pay off at the end.