THQ Gamers Day - DeBlob

by: Chuck - posted: 4/4/2008 8:00:00 PM

De Blob was a game I didn’t know a whole lot about going into the event. The screenshots looked cute but I didn’t have a real feel for the game play and the plot. In the game the evil INKT Corporation has stolen all the color from your city and it’s up to you to restore the color back to the world by rolling your blobby self around the town like a paintbrush.

 

De Blob is a bit like the illegitimate child of a one night tryst between Jet Set Radio and Katamari Damacy. You start off as a clear blob and have to hit the little color stealers to take their colors. Hit a yellow one and you turn yellow. Hit a blue one after you hit the yellow one and your turn green. That’s right; it is color matching fun all the way around. Once you have a color you jump up on the buildings to paint them your current color. You gain points for painting buildings and for painting entire avenues. As you roll around the world you have to avoid water which resets your color to neutral as well as the black INKT blocks which turn you black. Getting Inked means you have to reset your color back to clear and then find another color to take. 

This would be cool in and of its own but the music of the game changes based on what color you are which really adds another element to the game.

As you roll through the game you’ll uncover different challenges. The one I found was that I had to paint an entire avenue green in a certain amount of time. These are nice little additions and add to the gameplay quite a bit.

The real fun of the game is rolling around the town and painting and re-painting the buildings. There’s a certain joy to watching the denizens of the city flock back to an area of town that’s been re-painted and I’m sure with time you could have all kinds of fun painting and re-painting the town.

The controls are fairly intuitive as you use the left thumbstick on the nunchuk to move De Blob around while an upward flip of the Wii remote makes him jump. Hitting the Z button and moving the Wii remote down does a capture move which allows you to pick up new colors. It’s a basic scheme but it takes some practice to be able to time your jumps right. You can jump and stick to buildings which adds another fun element to the game. The game is a lot of fun and I think a lot of people are going to dig this game when it comes out in September.

What works:
- Great concept and art style
- Very easy to get into
 - Musical changes are a nice touch

What Doesn’t:
 - Getting the sliding down takes some getting used to