OMG Nintendo

I meant to cover de Blob more before its release, I really did, but it always ended up edged out by first-party news or a hot rumor. From its earliest appearances at industry shows, de Blob consistently got high praise from journalists who saw or played it. Of course, when you see a game at a trade show, you rarely get to spend more than thirty minutes playing it, and usually it's more like ten or fifteen. For de Blob, it seems like this gap between brief experience and the more in-depth game experience players want at home may be crucial to how its review scores shake down.

Now, de Blob certainly hasn't done poorly. Right now its Metacritic average is setting at a healthy 82% average. That said, the individual review scores for de Blob are all over the map, suggesting that personal taste plays a very strong role in how gamers respond to the title. de Blob ships with a lot of options and modes, and in particular, with truly expansive optional goals to achieve. Is this game a case of there being too much "optional" content people feel obligated to play? Let's hit the reviews to find out.

The highest score game from Gameplayer, who awarded de Blob a perfect 10 out of 10, praising the storyline at very great length, the controls, and the flexible gameplay. It's not, to be honest, a great review, as its four pages devote nearly two to simply describing the story and cutscenes, and then one to description of gameplay and control, and then another to sort of unfocused general praise. Among those general paragraphs is this one, which suggests that the perfect score may perhaps be affected by a gentle bias. Gameplayers is, you see, an Australian review site...

Save for the original inspiration for the game, de Blob is a completely Aussie production. From utilising the cream of Melbournes hip music scene to Adelaides animation dynamos, not to mention innumerable local programming boffins, its completely Oi! Oi! Oi! fuelled. This may sound a touch parochial, however for a nation thats all too keen to undervalue its creative forces (maybe we should teach all our artists to swim?) this is a big two fingered salute, for de Blob proves we can craft absolutely top shelf entertainment that matches it with the very best in the world.

A more even-handed high score comes from WorthPlaying, which gives the game a 9 out of 10 score and Editor's Choice status. Reviewer Adam Pavlacka approaches the game in straightforward fashion, praising its tight controls, and its level designs for offering both depth and simplicity.

In order to progress through a level, you'll need to score points and you score points by completing challenges, painting buildings and defeating enemy forces. You also have to be on the lookout for ink hazards. While falling in water won't kill you (it'll merely wipe the color from Blob), touching ink turns you black and slowly eats away at your health. While inked, anything you touch turns back to gray, so it's a double whammy. A desperate run for the water can end up undoing a lot of your colorization work if you're not careful.

Level design is de Blob's strong point. The game starts with a nice, flat area and then gradually starts building upward. Vertical movement isn't foreign to de Blob; in fact, it's encouraged. Before you know it, those early jumps, which seemed so terrifying, quickly become old hat as Blob is zipping around at incredible heights. Helping things in this regard is the handy-dandy lock-on attack.

One of the lowest scores for de Blob came from GamePro's Emily Balistrieri, who awarded the title a mediocre 3.5 out of 5. While full of praise for the game's innovative music (which evolves as you paint, with instrumentation corresponding to colors you use), her evaluation of the gameplay made it out to be a savage bore. Interestingly, Balistrieri alleges that it is essential to get 100% completion rates before moving on from a level, since the full completion is required to gain unlockables, and upon revisiting a level you must restart from 0% anyway. This is notable because most people who begin finding de Blob grindingly repetitive are those who are forcing themselves to 100% completion on every stage.

Each level is quite long if you're going for 100% completion, which must be done at once; if you beat a level and return, everything is grey again. Unfortunately, the different areas didn't stand out very much, and the timed missions (e.g. following a marked course, painting in specific colors) get sort of old. INKT enemies grow more technologically advanced as you progress, so that adds a bit more challenge to the platforming feats. More exciting than unlocking new areas, however, was unlocking new "moods."

The most charming part of the game is how the music you hear while you play is tied directly to your art project. Each "mood" is a base groove, that starts off pretty slow and lacking in energy, but as you add color to the environment things get pretty jammin'. Plus, depending what color you are, you trigger riffs from different lead instruments (guitar, trumpet...) with each coat of paint you throw down. Multiplayer events are decent (races, who can paint the most), but I can't help wishing full-on co-op would've been possible. Aside from that, my other minor gripe is the annoying fly-by cut-scenes that point out new objectives. Even when you skip them, they still chop up the experience.

The most negative score came from Total Video Games, where the awesomely-named Chris Leyton expresses complete, total disappointment in the way the gameplay fails to develop the core painting mechanic.

By colouring rows of buildings the Graydians that lurk inside will come out and can be rolled over to turn them back into Raydians, which in turn unlocks further challenges on the stage. It's a good setup that allows various players to delve into the game as deeply as they choose; however, the problem is that de Blob begins way too easily, even for a younger audience, and fails to really develop. You're constantly left with the question "Is that all there is?". There's some depth stemming from the fact that completing rows of buildings in different colours multiplies the score bonus and chaining jumps between buildings without falling to the floor gets big points, but that's about it. The lack of any progress or development really disengages any interest and leaves the game feeling overly repetitive.