Colour. It's everywhere. Sometimes it isn't very apparent, though, looking a little drab, a bit bland, and generally miserable to look at. A bright and colourful space, if done correctly, can bring new life to the area, sparking positivity and creativity and good vibes all around.
So when an evil corporation takes over your town and saps the colourful life out of every single thing in sight, and you happen to be a watery blob capable of absorbing paint pigments and splattering them upon every surface imaginable, you know what to do, don't you?
Nintendo Wii title de Blob puts you in such a circumstance. Obviously, otherwise, this would be an absolute waste of an introduction. Let's paint the town.
Fun Times
A really rather slick looking CGI intro shows the INKT Corporation looming over and invading Chroma City, now perhaps called MonoChroma city, devoid as it now is of colour. Grey is the order of the day. Anything else is punishable by whatever method the developers could get passed Nintendo, I suppose.
There is, however, resistance in the form of a blob, or, indeed, the Blob. This guy, with his mischievous grin and intent to paint everything orange.
It really is a good video. I didn't know what to expect going into de Blob. I thought it'd be a bit too childish for me, but there's more going on here, I feel. This is polished. This is stylish. This is also being emulated, which is not the way you should play a Nintendo Wii title, but it's all I've got.
Dog-like robots slurp up all instances of colour in the city, with the last remaining colour coming from the hastily graffitied designs from members of the resistance. Reading the plot on Wikipedia actually gives a more depressing impression than the game itself does. The citizens have been placed into prison suits that literally make black ink from the inhabitants' tears. But hope is not lost. There's a Blob coming.
Bursting through the water pipe and busting open a leechbot full of red paint is us, the Blob, the saviour of Chroma City. Our task is simple and obvious, and luckily for me, the controls are much the same. All you need to do to restore life to this place is to bump into it, where you automatically splat buildings or trees with colour, scoring points and sticking it to the man.
They, as well as painting everything, will reward you with points towards liberating the area you're in. Score enough points and you'll be able to unlock the gate to the next section, where new challenges and locales await.
Finally, you've got a paint meter. You can only carry so much pigment, after all, and will need to find and smash open a leechbot to refill your reserves and carry on painting.
In one instance, it turned out that I had completed what was to be tasked of me. I don't know why I was impressed that the game then knew not to bother giving me the task, but I was. In fact, once I'd set my controls to make a little more sense (playing with a controller and a mouse isn't the norm, after all), I was impressed by the game as a whole, especially the camera.
Lack of camera controls often sets you up for a bad day, but I didn't really find myself struggling here. Yes, there were times when I caught it out, but on the whole, it did its job well and allowed me to get on with things.
As de Blob moves on, you're introduced to more and more mechanics, such as painting landmarks. Usually, just bouncing into a wall is enough to paint an entire building, but landmarks require you to find a weak point and shake the heck out of your Wiimote and Nunchuk until the job is done. A little difficult when you've set the shake controls to the spacebar, but that's my fault, isn't it?
From there, we move onto Ink and water. Ink isn't nice at all and will clog you up and hurt you until you wash it out in some water, or crack open a fire hydrant. It's something to avoid, but so is water, in its own way, as it'll wash out your paint and reset you to your default watery blob state.
Naturally, this is demonstrated by tasking you to navigate around huge puddles as you paint the street purple, which you can only get by smashing both a red and blue leechbot. You don't have to go far to find what you're looking for, at least not in this first level, though with all this time on the clock I wasn't worried anyway.
Final Word
Do I want more? Weeeeellllll... I won't say "No", but I'm not desperate to say "Yes", either. It's not a bad game at all. It looks great, plays nicely, and does offer challenges that are more involved that bump into things. There's reason to return.
But it is a tad simple, isn't it? It's like a Katamari game, only you don't pick up what you bump into. That's another game that isn't bad but doesn't inspire me much either. These are games for fans of bumping into things? Painting? I don't know really.
I'm glad I was surprised by de Blob, but even with a story of beating back a clearly evil invading force, I'm not exactly getting hyped for painting the streets in one colour, the rooftops in another, and not forgetting about the trees either. How much gameplay can you get out of painting things?
There's a chance I'll play a little more. I've not got into any combat, which the controls should be capable of dealing with, and I've not had my brain pushed to its limit, trying to bounce around an obstacle to paint a specific target a certain colour and nothing else.
de Blob is definitely worth a little look. It's got potential, certainly, and is enjoyable enough for play around in for half an hour, which is probably what I did to get to this point.
Fun Facts
The Blob began life as a little interactive game to entice the locals of Utrecht into learning about the future of their city.
de Blob, developed by Blue Tongue Entertainment, first released in 2008.
Version played: Nintendo Wii, 2008, via emulation.