Tuesday, January 10, 2012

de Blob 2


OK finally we're back on to gaming as a topic and boy am I long overdue for this one. de Blob 2, annoyingly spelt without the capitol letter, actually came out a little under a year ago and the sad part is I actually intended to throw up a review within a few weeks of release. But oh well.

de De Blob 2 is very much an "aimed at younger audiences" type game but is one that anyone can and will be able to enjoy. In what I can only assume is a jab at the HD greys and browns that plague current gen games, de Blob 2 see's you controlling a round, blobby character called Blob who is tasked with rubbing paint all over his naked body and jumping around atop buildings in order to restore life to a drab, enslaved world by making it colourful. I can't help but be reminded of the graffiti "street art" vs. the authorities "it's vandalism" battle that is being forever waged. In fact if you look into it too much the message of the game seems to be like that of a Public Enemy or Rage Against the Machine song; it is encouraging us to challenge "the man" in a soft-core military fashion. But instead of homemade explosives we have paint, colour and vibrancy.

Which brings me to another interesting gameplay/story point. Primarily the game is an action platformer with more than a slight hint of a sandbox in the levels. Throughout a level your allies, the Colour Underground, will give you a mission such as "clear out all the enemies from the area" or "free the population from their empty mindless existance." But more often than not they'll ask you to paint buildings, quite often a specific colour. Now hang on just a moment here. The whole game we're being told that making everything grey is boring and soul destroying and dictatorships are wrong and creativity is cool and all that shit. So then why is it that the game is stiffling my creativity and allowing me to only paint certain things a certain colour? Ok so maybe the colour underground aren't enslaving a city but surely I'm not the only one who detects a certain dictatorial hypocricy in the game.



But of course I'm being a bit dramatic about all this. At the heart of de Blob 2 is a core principal, "let's just chill-out and have some fun." And this is exactly what the game lets you do. It's cathartic to get home from a boring day at the office or school or whatever and lay down in a bean bag, flick on your lava lamp and play through an hour or 2 of de Blob 2. Saying that I don't recommend it for long sessions. This is not Skyrim and you will not enjoy playing it all day and night. It's an unwind game to be enjoyed in small managable bites with plenty of chewing between each mouthful. A level a day keeps the stress away. Because really if you do any more than a level in one sitting you'll become frustrated with the repitition. I mentioned a few missions above and really there's not a lot else the game will throw at you aside from the collectibles hidden in the levels. Of course the game manages to keep you engaged with the level and enemy designs and as you progress there will always be something new to see. Although I made light of the "paint everything" central game mechanic it is actually quite satisfying and well executed. The game has a dynamic soundtrack that will change slightly in style depending on what colour you're using and it actually does a lot to help you feel like you're changing and livening up the lifeless world at a relaxed pace.

There are unfortunately a number of frustrations in de Blob 2 though. Firstly, although the controls are mostly pretty good the jump can sometimes feel a little sticky and awkward and timing landings can be a nightmare at times. Although there is a definite aim at a younger audience in terms of humour and design (both of which are very much reminiscent of a Disney Pixar film) the difficulty is definately adequate enough to keep adults engaged. Probably the most fructrating aspect of de Blob 2 is its' odd choice of save system. In levels it uses the somewhat dated method of tracking checkpoints throughout a level that you return to when you die. When you lose all your lives it's game over and the level must be started over from scratch. As mentioned before this type of save system feels very dated and gets frustrating when youcruise through the beginning of a level over and over again just for the opportunity to try the bit you're stuck on again. But perhaps the weirdest design choice of all is this, you can revisit levels in order to find more collectibles etc but you will also have to redo the level. Everything you worked for, all the painting you did, it will all be undone. Which is an odd choice for a sandbox game that in would in general encourage the player to go back for the aforementioned collectibles. I can see why they did it, obviously there are some people who would like the opportunity to replay levels they've already finished, but why couldn't they have offered both options?

But at the end of the day de Blob 2 is fun and satisfying and it's unfortunate that Bluetongue, the Australian studio that developed it, was shut down a few months later. I've heard people complain about the time-limits in each level before but I never found that an issue as long as you're always moving it's easy to rack up heaps of extra time. Plus once all the main missions in the level are done you're given free reighn to explore before deciding to finally finish up. So I don't feel like that complaint is valid. So to wrap things up I'll close by saying that de Blob 2 is good and as it is multiplatform and can be easily bought at a bargain bin price it is well worth checking out.

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