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Nintendo: Wii Reviews

Mega Man 9 ^WII

Wario Land: The Shake Dimension ^WII

Review

de Blob

92%

Format Nintendo Wii

Developer Blue Tongue

Publisher THQ

Genre Action, Puzzle

25-Sep-2008 Stand back - THQ's got the painters in

35 Comments

When it comes to our own personal entertainment through various media, we've never been one for subtext and social commentary. Yes, so we get that Animal Farm is a satirical take on Stalin's Russia and Dawn Of The Dead is a biting - ha! - commentary on America's obsession with consumerism but does any of that matter when the book/film/song in question is so good anyway? Probably not. So despite developer Blue Tongue insisting de Blob is a socio-political critique of how the world's cities are becoming increasingly faceless and homogenised, we'd rather focus on a more important issue: namely, that de Blob is an absolutely flippin' awesome videogame.

Paint The Town Red
We'd understand if you're slightly sceptical. After all, the game's relative lack of exposure up to now means de Blob is probably an unknown quantity to many of you. Thankfully though, it's not hard to grasp the exclamation mark-peppered basics. The world of Raydia is under attack! The evil INKT Corporation, led by Comrade Black, has conquered everything! Raydia's colour has been drained and its inhabitants have been turned into Graydians!
Not surprisingly, only you - playing the role of a paint-absorbing blob called, er, Blob - and the four surviving members of the Colour Revolution can save the day. Or, rather, paint the day, the buildings, the trees and indeed anything else that you press your amorphous paint-filled backside against.

If it sounds like an incredibly simple concept, that's because it is... initially, at least. Each level starts out completely bereft of colour and it's up to you to put it back by smashing coloured Paintbots to collect paint points, then rubbing up against the scenery to turn it whatever colour you happen to be at the time.
However, de Blob's main reason for being so great stems from its underlying complexities and huge amount of scope for creative freedom. In clichéd Shrek terms, you can think of the game as an onion - offering many different layers, de Blob can be approached and enjoyed in a multitude of ways depending on how obsessively compulsive you are.

The Colour And The Shape
On the surface, it's a straightforward mission-based adventure that sees you performing themed tasks from the appropriately named members of the Colour Revolution. Zip offers speed challenges, Arty has you colouring in buildings and Bif is all about destroying enemies. Complete the missions and you'll fill your colour energy bar, which in turn unlocks the gates blocking your route to the level exit... simple. And while you can certainly finish the game's ten rather huge levels this way, doing so only scratches the surface of what de Blob offers.

Look a little deeper though and you start uncovering de Blob's more sandbox-styled intentions. Admittedly, it's not the true definition of a sandbox title - it offers ten individual levels rather than one absolutely gigantic world and while you can roam as you please within the confines of each stage, you're reined back slightly both by the various gates placed in your way and the ever-decreasing time limit. But by placing these limitations on the action, the freedom granted to the player actually feels that much more defined.

You never feel overwhelmed by the scale of the landscape thanks to the way each level expands as you gradually unlock its multiple areas. Plus, while the over-arcing time limit motivates you to keep moving, it's possible to spend upwards of an hour in each level simply by collecting the time extensions awarded for completing main missions, achieving various milestones and generally returning colour to the world.

Not surprisingly, it's these two latter elements that really bring out the best in de Blob and add that much-needed layer of complexity. For starters, each level comes with ten milestones that can be completed ranging from colouring in 75% of the landscape and bringing all the trees back to life, to restoring all the landmarks, colouring the solitary blimp floating somewhere in each level and turning all the Graydians back into Raydians.

I Can Sing A Rainbow
This final milestone adds even more complexity, as you need to colour in entire avenues of buildings before clusters of Graydians appear. You could just use a single colour to blanket each area but as you're given a score multiplier based on the number of colours used to complete a section, the high-score junkies among you will want to keep your painting varied by putting Blob's colour-mixing skills to good use.

Play de Blob this way though and it becomes a real challenge. Not only do you have to keep hitting goals to get those essential time extensions, but you'll find the coloured Paintbots and water hydrants becoming as much obstacles as they are essentials as you try to put specific colours in specific places. And all that's before you even consider trying to collect the various Style icons that are dotted liberally around the levels - painting buildings applies a pattern to them based on the Style icons collected as well as a colour - or putting the game's musical synesthesia into effect.

Whiter Shade Of Pale
Of course, it would have perhaps been enough to create a hugely addictive and incredibly deep single-player experience with multiple bonus stages and a Free Paint mode where you can roam any level you've completed with no time limit or enemies. However, Blue Tongue has seen fit to offer us three multiplayer modes as well - Paint Match (a painting free-for-all), Blob Race (buildings randomly become paintable and you need to be the first to reach them) and our favourite, Blob On The Run (one Blob can paint and the others have to attack him to earn the right to paint). These modes are certainly fun in varying degrees, although there's no doubt that they work better with more people. The levels that are available to play them in are a little too big for one-on-one battles, especially since there's no radar to show where the other person is.

Still, when the only real niggles that we have with the game come from an extraneous mode that many people probably won't even play, you can see that de Blob is something really rather special. From its charming, stylish visuals and funky music, to the gameplay that's as deep or simple as you want to make it, it simply oozes magic. In fact, we don't think that we're going too far by saying that de Blob is the best Nintendo game that Nintendo never made. And that's a pretty high compliment if ever there was one.

Martin Mathers