Coo all you want, we don't trust Blob. Exhibit A: he crawled out of a meteorite. Nothing good crawls from meteorites. Exhibit B: when you hug him, his lifeless eyes wear the same disconnected gaze as Damien in The Omen. Exhibit C: when the Boy dies - be it speared, drowned or dropped - Blob stands idly by and sheds not a tear for his fallen master. Cold and calculating, Blob has boy murder in mind.
So do WayForward. Their shape-shifting puzzler harks back to a time of insta-kills. For a game with a hug button (AKA the vomit button) it has a hard heart, punishing deviation from its solutions with death. That a small boy does all this dying is creepy, more so when you unlock videos showing the devs filming one their kids for the purposes of animating the boy. Heaven knows how they captured the 'crumpled body after a long fall' look. Yikes.
Repeat cycle of shattered boy bones aside, the game is gently paced. Feed Blob beans, use his new form, call him hither - a plodding routine from the first level to the last. Only a handful of Blob's transformations revolve around urgent manoeuvres - flying rocket Blob through a maze or swooping through minefields on a Blob parachute - but they're hardly arcade thrills. Piecing together the solutions is like watching Midsomer Murders - peril in the politest way.
But it's a politeness that occasionally verges on meekness. Forgetting the cemetery's worth of boys we churned through, puzzle design often has a gutless lack of faith in the player. Signs tell you which Blob form to use. A preselected choice of beans further limits your approach.
More worryingly, the rules of what Blob can and can't do (specifically what he can and can't pass through) are kept deliberately hazy, offering sloppy workarounds to some of the game's better conundrums.
In his balloon form Blob can pass through any surface. Bizarrely, WayForward seem to have forgotten this, basing puzzles on the task of reuniting Boy and Blob. Why muck around with switches to open the door in Blob's way when he's one inflate away from your side? Put it down to the mysteries of quantum tunnelling or clumsy design - either way, it's a sloppy piece of execution.
That's a shame, as Blob's well defined forms support plenty of confident puzzling. Weights trigger switches and thunk into enemy skulls to form impromptu platforms. A car jack realigns entire levels with a couple of cranks. Feeding evil toads bowling ball Blob before reforming him in their stomachs causes a comically icky reaction (and is further proof of Blob's inherent malicious streak). And the ability to infinitely switch form is a huge improvement on the original's fastidious bean-counting.
Has bean Alas, as is the way with jelly beans, there's always a coconut/liquorice/Savlon-flavoured nugget to poison the batch. Space-hopper Blob forces a clumsy memory game of when to jump soft or hard. His most elaborate transformation, Zorb Ball, is the least fun to use.
Not only is its application limited to traversing slopes and half-pipes but it responds to horribly rigid physics, making it tough to steer (in a world of delicate frame-by-frame hand animation there's no room for the chaos of physics).
That we mainly remember the few bad moments from a meaty 40 levels of good bits is indicative of A Boy And His Blob as a whole. In the gorgeous art style, dialogue-free story and clever morphing there's lots to love, but the game's too much of a wimp to seize you by the lapel and demand you love them. We wanted a passionate embrace; we got a safe, snuggly hug.
Forget jelly beans, A Boy And His Blob is a family-sized tin of Roses: several kilos of nondescript pleasantness.
NGamer Staff
// Overview
Verdict
Lovingly crafted, sure, but for a game revolving around the rich variety of jelly beans A Boy And His Blob can be flavourless stuff.
Is it me, or does the very pleasant review not match the score/rating? - They could have rounded it off to a nice wholesome '8'.
I'm loving this resurgence in 2D platform adventures. Warioland:Shake Dimension, Boy and his Blob, Super Mario Bros Wii, Muramasa, Lost Winds 1+2, Nyx. The Wii is the console to own for them. - They almost make me feel young again!
I managed to snaffle the US version of this a month ago, having been a huge fan of the oriignal, and i have to say ignore the score, This games fantastic.
If you are old enough to remember the original you'll love this reimagining. its beautifully crafted and has a good learning curve to it. The puzzles can be taxing but are rarely ever frustrating, the opposite in fact. It's the most relaxing game i've played since flower.
Had it a couple of days now and really loving its old-school charms. Gets the old brain cells working in places yet never gets too tricky and always addictive and fun.
I do fear though that this will be another one of those little cult titles that creeps out on Wii largely unnoticed and never sees the success it deserves. - The lack of posts at the end of this review kind of indicates how much people are interested.
I'm starting to think that the real hardcore gamers play the wii.
It has a growing library of obscure little titles that a re challenging and really do cater to traditional gaming.
Most of the stuff on the PS£ and 360 although graphically impressive are incredibly easy and have more exposure than a blockbuster movie.
Take Uncharted 2, its a great game, But its way too easy. If i play something on the hard i want it to be that. It was a breeze, now playing it again on crushing and finding that its taking me even less time to go through it. Now that i'm not watching half hour long cut scenes.
I've said it before and i'll say it again, a game in which you spand half an hour watching a movie then 10mins gaming is not hardcore.
I've thought much the same for a good while, but you try telling that to your average teenage Call of Duty fanatic. They'll laugh in your face. - I doubt they've even heard of something like Muramasa.
Don't care about labels myself. - I'll take the Wii's variety, accessibility and growing library of new-retro anyday. - Not that I don't enjoy the odd blast on my DS/PC/PS3/PSP now and again.
By the way, I agree with your comments on gameplay-to-cutscene ratios. - New Super Mario Bros Wii might only take six to eight hours to complete, but you can bet your life that it's six to eight hours of prolonged gaming skill with nary a cutscene in sight. Pretty much like A Boy and his Blob.
i can tell you how long the cut scenes are in new mario bros about 30secs - 2mins a peice. And although without bothering to get any of the coins will probably take 6-8 hours. I have a feeling its going to take a hell of a lot longer to get all of them. Some are in really tough spots that require you to have various power ups in order to stand half a chance of getting to them.
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