Reviewed on Nintendo Wii
De Blob is without doubt the most original game I’ve played in a very long time. Originality on its doesn’t necessarily mean a good game, but fortunately De Blob also has simple yet addictive gameplay and provides a rich sensory experience. The result is a true classic.
The storyline of De Blob is surreal: Chroma City has been taken over by the evil INKT Corporation who, led by Comrade Black, have enslaved the happy Raydians and banned all colour from the city. You play.. well, a blob… and your objective is return colour to Chroma City and liberate the Raydians (who have been turned into miserable Graydians). I can’t help suspecting that the plot is probably an after the fact justification for some development group brainstorming on the term “paint the town red”.
As de Blob you roll round the city picking up paint cans which increase your size and change your colour to match. The cans come in red, yellow and blue which can combine to produce secondary colours or all three for brown. Once coloured up you then roll, bounce and leap around the city painting buildings, trees and billboards. One touch of an object or building is enough to paint it all, not just with a plain block of colour but in one of the various street-art styles you can collect throughout the game.
Eventually you score enough points to open the gate to the next segment of the level. Levels do have a time limit but fortunately there are so many ways of getting bonus time that this is rarely a problem.
As well as the generic “paint everything” goal there are also numerous challenges on each level, usually taking the form of “travel this route” or “paint these buildings in this colour”. Challenges have a short time limit and can be very difficult but fortunately most of them are optional. Wanting to come back and finish all of these is one of the things that gives the game longevity.
Of course it isn’t all plain painting, the Graydians are out to stop you. Their black ink robs you of your colour and - unless washed off in time - your life.
Controls are simple and quickly become instinctive - the nunchuk is required to play this game. There are ten large levels, each with two short bonus challenges that can be unlocked. The levels use the same basic architecture but gradually introduce more variations and challenges to keep the interest level up. One complaint is that the game doesn’t save often enough and you can go a long time between saving if you’re not hurrying.
What you get out of the game depends on how you play it. Most of the gameplay videos on YouTube seem to be from people trying to race through stages as quickly as possible. That’s fine, but I prefer to take a more leisurely approach and enjoy the ride.
Restoring colour to the city is an addictive and surprisingly satisfying experience. The satisfaction comes partly from the game’s socio-political subtext, but mainly from the simple childish pleasure of splattering paint everywhere!
Unlike most games De Blob actually has a soundtrack worth listening to. This changes dynamically depending on the status of the game and sounds a bit like improvised jazz. The whole package has been really well put together complete with little touches such as your cursor leaving an inky trail on the menu screens.
De Blob won’t be for everyone. There are no fiendish puzzles to solve or zombies to mash. It’s essentially one part platform jumper, nine parts digital doodler. And I love it.
Best Points
- Unique
- Intuitive gameplay
- Addictive
- Attractive
Worst Points
|
|
Scores
| Gameplay
| 9 |
x 4 = |
36 |
| Immersion
| 10 |
x 3 = |
30 |
| Longevity
| 8 |
x 2 = |
16 |
| Presentation
| 9 |
x 1 = |
9 |
| Total
| |
|
91 |
|
February 20th, 2009
Reviews, Wii |
no comments
Reviewed on Playstation 3
The Sonic the Hedgehog franchise has had a long and not altogether successful life. The first Sonic game I played, on the Megadrive, was - and remains - an absolute classic. Very simple gameplay yet with a variety of options for experts to discover and an emphasis on pure adrenaline pumping speed. Since then there have been many Sonic games that take advantage of both the processing and graphic improvements of each generation of consoles. Unfortunately the developers of these new games rarely saw fit to leave a successful formula alone. They tried to “improve” Sonic by adding new characters and different styles of gameplay. In doing so they made things worse not better by diluting the essence of the franchise: speed.
Sonic Unleashed takes the same well-beaten path to failure.
The plot, such as it is, involves Eggman unleashing some ancient force from a poor, helpless planet. In doing so he manages to give our spikey haired hero a dose of lycanthropy: during the night Sonic turns from his usual skinny, blue self into the Werehog: a large, furry creature with elasticated arms. In this form he meets Chip, an irritatingly cute companion that you’ll soon want to strangle.
The werehog concept pretty much defines the way the game will go. We have two styles of play, traditional Sonic for the day and werehog for the night. One is light and fast, one dark and tedious. Between the different stages we have a dull FRP-wannabe section with overly long cutscenes.
Let’s do the good stuff first. The traditional Sonic stages are superb. We have speed, bouncers, corkscrews, speed, rails, rings, alternative pathways and speed. Oh, and did I mention the speed? These stages are fast and furious, just the way Sonic should be. Controls are responsive and the whole thing just works. There are also lots of extras to be found, enticing you to play the stages again.
Then night falls, the Werehog comes out and the game collapses. The werehog stages have no place in a Sonic game. There’s no speed, instead you wander around thumping stuff and doing combos. If I wanted to play a button mashing combat game I’d buy a button mashing combat game, not Sonic. Still at least these stages are easy enough to get through - or so it seems at first. Then the game throws in some dreadful platform-style sections where you need to time your button pressing exactly right or plummet to your doom. As if all that wasn’t bad enough these werehog stages go on and on and on and on…
If only the developers had spent their time building more of the speed stages rather than spoiling everything with the werehog then Sonic Unleashed would have been a classic. As it is the game is a curate’s egg; it’s good in parts but those parts make up only a small amount of play time. Taken as a whole Sonic Unleashed stinks.
Best Points
- Superb “classic” stages
- Alternative routes to explore
Worst Points
- Dull werehog stages
- Overlong cutscenes
|
|
Scores
| Gameplay
| 4 |
x 4 = |
16 |
| Immersion
| 3 |
x 3 = |
9 |
| Longevity
| 5 |
x 2 = |
10 |
| Presentation
| 8 |
x 1 = |
8 |
| Total
| |
|
43 |
|
February 14th, 2009
PS3, Reviews |
no comments
Reviewed on XBox 360
If you’ve played CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder, then you know what to expect from CSI: Hard Evidence. The original was an interesting puzzle game let down by an awful interface. The new game has the same puzzle structure and a slightly improved interface.
The concept of the game is simple: you’re a forensic scientist with Las Vegas Crime Lab attempting to solve cases by collecting & analysing evidence and questioning suspects. There are nods to the TV show if you care about such things, but you don’t need to have seen the programme. Since this is a forensic lab the cases tend to be rather unpleasant - this is definitely a game for adults only.
The basic mechanism of CSI is pretty much point-and-click adventure game. You move your cursor over the crime scene - and other locations as you open them up - in order to locate evidence such as blood stains, cigarette butts, fingerprints etc. These you then collect and take back to the CSI Lab where they can be analysed and matched with other samples previously collected or the police databases. You can also question suspects and the more you discover the more options open up until eventually you have enough information to solve the crime.
Like all point-and-clicks the game can get frustrating when you miss a certain piece of evidence simply because you didn’t realise a particular blob of pixels was meant to be significant. There are options you can select to make things easier - such as highlighting the cursor when over an area of interest - but even with these switched on there are likely to be times when you’re moving the cursor across the screen clicking randomly. Fortunately there’s a “hint” system which reveal as much or as little as you want.
The interface is also annoying in other ways. It’s clearly been ported straight from a PC with mouse control assumed. There are frequent situations where using more of the controller buttons would make things much easier.
As to the gameplay, well it’s pretty simple. Most pieces of evidence have only one thing to be done with them and it doesn’t matter if you try the wrong thing. When you question suspects you eventually want to ask all the questions and it doesn’t matter which order you choose. The cases are essentially linear and there’s no way to mess up. You get an evaluation at the end based on things like how many hints you used, but that’s it. For those who care about such things the “Achievement” scores are awarded simply for solving the case, regardless of your rating.
All that probably makes CSI: Hard Evidence sound like a frustrating and pointless experience. Which it is. Yet it’s also surprisingly compelling. Maybe you have to be the sort of person who watches crime shows on TV trying constantly to work out what’s going on - I am. The fun in CSI Hard Evidence comes not from the gameplay but from the story and from trying to mentally stay one step ahead of the game. It’s essentially a Whodunnit with a degree of immersion. The perps tend to confess far too easily, but that’s par for the genre!
Then, just when you’re getting really into it, it’s over. There are only five cases in Hard Evidence, nowhere near enough. Given the lack of graphics quantity or quality there’s no reason for not including at least twice as many, even in a budget game. There’s also no significant replay potential. I suppose you could try and play each case again to try and avoid using any hints, but what would be the point?
Despite all the gripes above I found playing CSI: Hard Evidence an enjoyable experience. However I’m glad that I rented it rather than buying it.
Best Points
- Interesting cases
- Compelling “whodunnit” feel
Worst Points
- Too short
- Frustrating interface
|
|
Scores
| Gameplay
| 3 |
x 4 = |
12 |
| Immersion
| 8 |
x 3 = |
24 |
| Longevity
| 1 |
x 2 = |
2 |
| Presentation
| 3 |
x 1 = |
3 |
| Total
| |
|
41 |
|
February 5th, 2009
Reviews, XBox 360 |
no comments
I really can’t understand the slagging this game has got in some places. Yes it has its problems but in terms of table design it’s the best non-PC game I’ve played. It’s the only pinball game in my collection I return to regularly and it repays taking time to learn the tables.
Read my full review over at The Silver Ball
January 11th, 2009
Pinball, Reviews, Wii |
no comments
