A Boy and His Blob

[357 Lobster]

It's becoming more and more apparent that 2D gaming is clearly not dead. Not only it is it not dead, but it has found a home on Nintendo Wii. First Muramasa, now this. The game begins simply and easily enough. A rocket crashes behind the Boy's treehouse hideout. The Boy wakes up and checks it, when out pops the Blob. They go back to the treehouse, Boy gives Blob a jellybean, Blob turns into a ladder, and off we go! The graphics are simply gorgeous in this game. Everything from the backgrounds, the characters, the lighting, the animation, everything. The soundtrack is very soft and has a very whimsical quality to it, except for the boss battles. Then the music gets pretty fast paced and kinda intense. The gameplay revolves around solving environmental puzzles by feeding the Blob various jellybeans and using the transformations to traverse the levels. For example, if you need to drop down a level, feed the blob a jellybean, he turns into a hole, drop through the whole, and there you go. In all honestly it's pretty easy to figure out what you're supposed to do. They even have big signs to show you exactly what to do sometimes. There's quite a few different forms for Blob, all have pretty specific uses. There's a parachute, ladder, a rocket, and quite a few others, though you don't always have the same arsenal for each level. There's 4 hub levels with 10 levels each and 40 challenge levels unlockable by collecting the three treasure chest scattered throughout each level. Completing challenge levels unlocks things like concept art, videos, and game modes. At the end of the tenth level in each different world you fight a boss blob. This actually where the game can get tough. The bosses attack aggresively and the boy really just doesn't move too fast. This is really one of the only things wrong with the game. The boy doesn't move very fast at all and doesn't jump very high at all. These are pretty small gripes however. The only other negative thing I can say is that it's too easy. In closing, A Boy and His Blob is fun, wonderful to look at and listen to, and is pretty creative at times to boot. The only things holding this back from true greatness are the ease in which you'll get through the main levels, and the difficulty you may have fighting bosses with such a slow moving main character. Overall, I'm giving this an 8.5, Easily worth your time as long as you don't mind that it's a bit easy.