Having enjoyed doing our first co-op review as much as we—that's Amber and Matt, for those not reading the byline—did, we immediately started looking through our collections and playlists for another title to review in the same fashion. A Boy and His Blob, the lovely hand-animated platformer from WayForward and Majesco, was picked for the treatment next.
This is another review that's a little behind the times, though not as much as The Munchables was. The lateness is primarily due to the fact that Matt wasn't able to get his hands on the game when it released and as such didn't play it until after he received it for Christmas. But now, we've both had our chances to play through this delightful title, and so we begin...
Amber: Way, way back in 1989, A Boy and his Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia was released for the NES. It was an interesting action puzzle game and platformer hybrid. Our hero was the nameless Boy whose companion, a little white blob simply called Blob, could change shape depending on what flavor jellybean it was fed. By using these candy-powered transformations, Boy could then navigate through numerous environments collecting treasures and dealing with enemies. This past October, a complete re-imagining of this game was released for the Nintendo Wii. Now, before we dive into our review, I have to ask, did you ever play the original?
Matt: No. When I was a kid, I saw it in Nintendo Power, but my parents bought me precious few games back then. I did think it sounded pretty cool, though. If I hadn't already had my heart set on the one we're talking about today, I would have got the VC version just to check it out. Now that I have played this version, though, I don't think I'm interested in the original any longer. Did you play it?
Amber: Yes, actually. Back in the day, my parents owned a mom & pop video store, and my mom had put me in charge of picking out what games they'd buy for rental. It also meant I had unlimited rentals of a whole lot more games and movies than I could have ever bought for myself. I rented the original, but unfortunately, the only thing I really remember about it was how frustrating it was. These were the primitive days of gaming and frankly, I was an impatient gamer as an 11- or 12-year-old. I couldn't figure out where to go, so I didn't exactly get too deep into the game.
Thankfully, there's no such problem with the new game. It's very easy to get into, and the interface is mostly unambiguous. For example, in the original game, you had to guess what object a given jellybean flavor transformed the blob into, then experiment to understand what that object was good for. This made the original game's progression very trial-and-error. The new game limits how many types of jellybeans you have per level and shows you an image of what the candy morphs the blob into. No guesswork and better graphics certainly make the identities of any given object clear.
Matt: Right, and that plays into what I think is some really good design. Particularly early on, you have a very limited selection to guide you; there's no tutorial necessary. Then you move into later levels, and your bean repertoire expands. Finally, once you've learned what everything does and are very comfortable with Blob's abilities, they start getting restricted. I know there were several cases I was looking at an obstacle in front of me, thinking "if only I had an x!" It was pretty satisfying to figure out how to pass it using y and z instead. These guys definitely knew what they were doing.
Amber: Exactly so. That leads me to make a comparison to another puzzle-platformer that came out this year; one that, post-E3, gained a huge amount of notoriety—Scribblenauts. At the risk of horrifying fans, after buying and playing all the way through Scribblenauts, I found it to be an amazing toy but a rather dull game. In a way, Scribblenauts was dragged down as a puzzle game by its own near limitless catalog of solutions. Often, limitation is the key to creativity, and this is why A Boy and his Blob is so much the better puzzler than Scribblenauts.
By limiting the player's choices, A Boy and his Blob makes you really think about how to use your toolkit to overcome a challenge. In contrast, discovering a few items that work for most anything in Scribblenauts tended to lead to repetitious use of those few tricks just to get the level done.
Matt: Well, I reviewed Scribblenauts this past year, and I mostly agree with that assessment. Honestly, 5th Cell is an idea house that really needs to work on their implementation. It was a pretty great idea, though. I'm still glad I played it.
Amber: Whereas I'd say WayForward nailed it with A Boy and his Blob. All the same, this isn't a game for impatient players as the pace is very relaxed.
Matt: Yeah. Typically, you'll be able to see your opposition up ahead and plot out how to best get around it, be it an enemy or environmental hazard or blockage. It's a pace that really works well for this game, given Blob's wide range of abilities, and Boy's own rather limited skills—he can move fairly quickly, much like a real boy, but his jumps are very short, unlike your typical platformer hero. He takes time to do things, moving in a very realistic manner.
Praise aside, there was one thing that really irritated me about the game. I don't know if WayForward is just sort of stuck in an old NES-hard boss mentality, or what, but the majority of the boss fights were just incredibly frustrating to me. The first one left me with a smile on my face, but the next few felt just totally out of whack, as I'd have to constantly retry them because the bosses would lob an attack at me while I was either stuck in an area doing something or simply didn't have enough time to toss out the required jellybean and wait for Blob to eat it.
I felt like Boy just didn't have those aforementioned platformer superhero powers and he needed them to deal with these bosses. They became lengthy and unpleasant trial-and-error sessions. Getting past the bosses felt more like luck than skill. I never felt like I really had a chance to dodge a hit. I might have quit in complete disgust if it hadn't been for the well-placed, endless retries and the promise of more fun levels.
Amber: They were very much pattern recognition fights. Boy isn't agile enough to maneuver really. You have to learn where to move with each try then be on the spot ahead of the enemy. They were brutal, in a way. Boy can only take one hit and a wrong move meant instant death. I enjoyed these battles though and found the bosses very intimidating, which is how I like them... not to say I didn't cuss loudly at the TV after dying over and over again. I still don't count the bosses as a negative.
Matt: I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this point, though I definitely would say that you shouldn't let it dissuade you from playing the game. Absolutely not a deal-killer.
Amber: At least they looked cool. Very sharp designs: mostly just black shapes like all of the enemies but they had strong, clear silhouettes.
Matt: Yeah, there was a lot of good characterization going on even among all the various forms of tiny black blobs you'd encounter along the way, in both design an animation. Everything was memorable.
Amber: The hand-drawn storybook style of this game is incredibly beautiful. The characters as well as the environments are loaded with color and detail. This game, along with Muramasa: The Demon Blade, make me hope for a 2-D renaissance on console systems. The animation deserves its own accolades. Great animation brings shapes to life. The boy and his little round companion really did live in this game. I especially like the personal touches, the way Blob transformed, making the boy scold or hug the blob.
Matt: You know, that really got driven home for me near the end. I'm man enough to say I almost cried at that one sequence... you probably know the one I'm talking about.
Amber: Ahh yes. A very well done scene.
Matt: I've known I wanted to check this game out for several months now, but I didn't realize just how good it was until I got it under the tree this Christmas. It really turned out fantastically well; just kept getting better as I played more and more. I know my list of Wii essentials is getting kind of long, but I'm going to stick this one on there as well.
Amber: I picked this one up shortly after launch but it sat in my backlog for about a month. It was one of those games I was only somewhat familiar with pre-release and bought based on good word of mouth and charming visuals. It's one purchase i certainly don't regret. It's really a surprising game. It looks kind of short at first but the unlockable levels double the game's size, and it seems easy at first but picks up to a satisfying level of challenge after the first handful of stages. It could get frustrating at points, and steering the blob in rocket form through a maze of mines could cause Buddha to swear, but in the end it was worth it. A great game.
Matt: Absolutely. You know, after talking about all these warm feelings I have for this game, I... I think I need a hug now.
Yep, that'll do.
This is another review that's a little behind the times, though not as much as The Munchables was. The lateness is primarily due to the fact that Matt wasn't able to get his hands on the game when it released and as such didn't play it until after he received it for Christmas. But now, we've both had our chances to play through this delightful title, and so we begin...
Amber: Way, way back in 1989, A Boy and his Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia was released for the NES. It was an interesting action puzzle game and platformer hybrid. Our hero was the nameless Boy whose companion, a little white blob simply called Blob, could change shape depending on what flavor jellybean it was fed. By using these candy-powered transformations, Boy could then navigate through numerous environments collecting treasures and dealing with enemies. This past October, a complete re-imagining of this game was released for the Nintendo Wii. Now, before we dive into our review, I have to ask, did you ever play the original?
Matt: No. When I was a kid, I saw it in Nintendo Power, but my parents bought me precious few games back then. I did think it sounded pretty cool, though. If I hadn't already had my heart set on the one we're talking about today, I would have got the VC version just to check it out. Now that I have played this version, though, I don't think I'm interested in the original any longer. Did you play it?
Amber: Yes, actually. Back in the day, my parents owned a mom & pop video store, and my mom had put me in charge of picking out what games they'd buy for rental. It also meant I had unlimited rentals of a whole lot more games and movies than I could have ever bought for myself. I rented the original, but unfortunately, the only thing I really remember about it was how frustrating it was. These were the primitive days of gaming and frankly, I was an impatient gamer as an 11- or 12-year-old. I couldn't figure out where to go, so I didn't exactly get too deep into the game.
Thankfully, there's no such problem with the new game. It's very easy to get into, and the interface is mostly unambiguous. For example, in the original game, you had to guess what object a given jellybean flavor transformed the blob into, then experiment to understand what that object was good for. This made the original game's progression very trial-and-error. The new game limits how many types of jellybeans you have per level and shows you an image of what the candy morphs the blob into. No guesswork and better graphics certainly make the identities of any given object clear.
Matt: Right, and that plays into what I think is some really good design. Particularly early on, you have a very limited selection to guide you; there's no tutorial necessary. Then you move into later levels, and your bean repertoire expands. Finally, once you've learned what everything does and are very comfortable with Blob's abilities, they start getting restricted. I know there were several cases I was looking at an obstacle in front of me, thinking "if only I had an x!" It was pretty satisfying to figure out how to pass it using y and z instead. These guys definitely knew what they were doing.
Amber: Exactly so. That leads me to make a comparison to another puzzle-platformer that came out this year; one that, post-E3, gained a huge amount of notoriety—Scribblenauts. At the risk of horrifying fans, after buying and playing all the way through Scribblenauts, I found it to be an amazing toy but a rather dull game. In a way, Scribblenauts was dragged down as a puzzle game by its own near limitless catalog of solutions. Often, limitation is the key to creativity, and this is why A Boy and his Blob is so much the better puzzler than Scribblenauts.
By limiting the player's choices, A Boy and his Blob makes you really think about how to use your toolkit to overcome a challenge. In contrast, discovering a few items that work for most anything in Scribblenauts tended to lead to repetitious use of those few tricks just to get the level done.
Matt: Well, I reviewed Scribblenauts this past year, and I mostly agree with that assessment. Honestly, 5th Cell is an idea house that really needs to work on their implementation. It was a pretty great idea, though. I'm still glad I played it.
Amber: Whereas I'd say WayForward nailed it with A Boy and his Blob. All the same, this isn't a game for impatient players as the pace is very relaxed.
Matt: Yeah. Typically, you'll be able to see your opposition up ahead and plot out how to best get around it, be it an enemy or environmental hazard or blockage. It's a pace that really works well for this game, given Blob's wide range of abilities, and Boy's own rather limited skills—he can move fairly quickly, much like a real boy, but his jumps are very short, unlike your typical platformer hero. He takes time to do things, moving in a very realistic manner.
Praise aside, there was one thing that really irritated me about the game. I don't know if WayForward is just sort of stuck in an old NES-hard boss mentality, or what, but the majority of the boss fights were just incredibly frustrating to me. The first one left me with a smile on my face, but the next few felt just totally out of whack, as I'd have to constantly retry them because the bosses would lob an attack at me while I was either stuck in an area doing something or simply didn't have enough time to toss out the required jellybean and wait for Blob to eat it.
I felt like Boy just didn't have those aforementioned platformer superhero powers and he needed them to deal with these bosses. They became lengthy and unpleasant trial-and-error sessions. Getting past the bosses felt more like luck than skill. I never felt like I really had a chance to dodge a hit. I might have quit in complete disgust if it hadn't been for the well-placed, endless retries and the promise of more fun levels.
Amber: They were very much pattern recognition fights. Boy isn't agile enough to maneuver really. You have to learn where to move with each try then be on the spot ahead of the enemy. They were brutal, in a way. Boy can only take one hit and a wrong move meant instant death. I enjoyed these battles though and found the bosses very intimidating, which is how I like them... not to say I didn't cuss loudly at the TV after dying over and over again. I still don't count the bosses as a negative.
Matt: I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this point, though I definitely would say that you shouldn't let it dissuade you from playing the game. Absolutely not a deal-killer.
Amber: At least they looked cool. Very sharp designs: mostly just black shapes like all of the enemies but they had strong, clear silhouettes.
Matt: Yeah, there was a lot of good characterization going on even among all the various forms of tiny black blobs you'd encounter along the way, in both design an animation. Everything was memorable.
Amber: The hand-drawn storybook style of this game is incredibly beautiful. The characters as well as the environments are loaded with color and detail. This game, along with Muramasa: The Demon Blade, make me hope for a 2-D renaissance on console systems. The animation deserves its own accolades. Great animation brings shapes to life. The boy and his little round companion really did live in this game. I especially like the personal touches, the way Blob transformed, making the boy scold or hug the blob.
Matt: You know, that really got driven home for me near the end. I'm man enough to say I almost cried at that one sequence... you probably know the one I'm talking about.
Amber: Ahh yes. A very well done scene.
Matt: I've known I wanted to check this game out for several months now, but I didn't realize just how good it was until I got it under the tree this Christmas. It really turned out fantastically well; just kept getting better as I played more and more. I know my list of Wii essentials is getting kind of long, but I'm going to stick this one on there as well.
Amber: I picked this one up shortly after launch but it sat in my backlog for about a month. It was one of those games I was only somewhat familiar with pre-release and bought based on good word of mouth and charming visuals. It's one purchase i certainly don't regret. It's really a surprising game. It looks kind of short at first but the unlockable levels double the game's size, and it seems easy at first but picks up to a satisfying level of challenge after the first handful of stages. It could get frustrating at points, and steering the blob in rocket form through a maze of mines could cause Buddha to swear, but in the end it was worth it. A great game.
Matt: Absolutely. You know, after talking about all these warm feelings I have for this game, I... I think I need a hug now.
Yep, that'll do.