de Blob Review

When looking at the library of games out there for the Wii quality third-party games are a fairly small minority. Party games and shovelware tend to find their way straight onto the Wii. Thankfully de Blob is neither of those. Instead de Blob presents itself as platformer. Moving around levels as a blob of paint players are changing a world of black and white to one of vibrant color.

The story of de Blob revolves around I.N.K.T. a government banning color from the world. Going to each new environment de Blob works through levels in tiers. In de Blob you earn points for simply coloring the world, completing missions, and by changing specific government buildings into public art. After earning enough points new areas open up and even more missions become available.

Something I wasn’t expecting from the story of de Blob were cutscenes, the game is brought together with a genuinely funny story. On top of this the loading screens are ton as comic books giving even more backstory to a game where I wasn’t expecting any at all.

What makes de Blob more than just an average platformer is the way you go about it. Moving about the world is done by jumping and sliding on surfaces, when you hit a vertical building you slide along the length of it, this allows you to string together combos.

Controls within de Blob incorporate motion only in basic ways, which isn’t a bad thing. To jump you flick your controller either up or down. Other uses include shaking the remote to paint a special building. The camera in de Blob is controlled by the game, few problems arise from this but when they do you can easily center the camera with the C button.

The biggest issue in de Blob (which is pretty small) is that you can’t save in the middle of the game. You instead have to complete an entire world before you can save your game. Levels can range from 30 minutes to an hour depending on how you play. This becomes an annoyance as to play de Blob you have to make sure you can invest the time to finish a level before ending your game.

Sound is another strong point of de Blob, at the start of each level you pick a theme, from Jazz to “Bliss”. While in the game the music has a base tempo, however when stringing combos of color together the music changes and fits perfectly to your movement. With a large procedurally generated craze these days I guess it could be considered an instance of procedurally created music.

Graphically de Blob is one of the best looking games on the system. Depth of field as well as good draw distances gives the game a great look with enough artistic flair to differentiate itself from other games. Starting a level in all black and white and ending with a bright world makes completing a world a reward.

de Blob is proof that third party games for the Wii can be done. de Blob ties together addicting platforming, interesting music, and an enjoyable story to make a game worth your money. The few problems with de Blob cause no real detraction from the overall game. In the end de Blob is simply fun, and really why else do we play video games?

five out of five