Review: de Blob

Made by Bluetongue and released back in 2008 was a charming and colourful game called de Blob on the Wii and the Apple App Store. It’s been a while,  so is it worth a pick up? (Please note this review is of the Wii version)

Story:

In de Blob you play as de Blob. Kind of simple there. The colourfulworld around you, Chroma City, is being taken other by the monchromatic INKT corporation, who are removing all the colour in the world and making it too monochromatic. As de Blob has the ability to absorb paint and spread it on anything he touches, he joins up with the Colour Underground, a team of rebels, to liberate the world from the INKT corporation.

Gameplay:

de Blob is set across a collection of large levels, which has you going across a vasy range of environments in your quest to liberate Chroma City. During each level you will be given various missions to complete as you head towards that levels landmark which you need to bring back to colourful and vibrant life. There are a lot of puzzles to complete during the levels and quite a few of them a timed. But with all the puzzles and missions pushed into the levels, the later levels especiall do tend to drag on for an hour or two. In a game which has no mid level save points, this can make actually finding the time to complete this game rather hard. But if after completing the levels you want to head back to that level to just look around and have fun, bluetongue have included a Free Paint mode. Kind of like the Free skate in Tony Hawks games, Free Paint lets you just go and do what you want in the levels. Sadly eventhough de Blob has got multiplayer, neither the Story or Free Paint modes have it included. So no co-op or multiplayer messing around. The only Multiplayer features in de Blob are of the competitive variety. In which you have to battle each other to own the most area or race around a map.

Controls:

The controls for de Blob are pretty simple and intuitive. Providing you have no interference from souces such as direct sunlight, they respond fairly well also. You actually feel like your telling de Blob what to do, which may not please most gamers, or fit into most games, with de Blob it works surprisingly well.

Graphics and Sound:

de Blob has a really clear graphic quality unseen in alot of Wii games. Bluetongue really used what the Wii is capable of doing graphically to full advantage. Now I’m not a Jazz fan, but even I can appreciate the soundtrack that accompanies de Blob which is a lovely score of Jazz and funk music. Bluetongue also added the function to be able to choose the tone of the music in the level, although you have to unlock most of them, you can have the music to be anything from energetic to slow.

Pros:

• Beautiful looking game with a brilliant soundtrack.
• Clear and easy to use controls.
• With extra missions, there is plenty of replayability.

Cons:

• Long levels which have no save points.
• Mission styles are repeated a lot.
• Lack of co-op modes or multiplayer in the Free Paint mode.

Verdict: Try!

A visually and musically pleasing game, de Blob is a bit long winded and probably not for those gamers who just like to play for half an hour here and there.