Overall 8.2 Graphics 9 Sound 9 Addictive 6 Story 6.5 Depth 6 Difficulty 6
7.8
De Blob: The Dealeo Nincompoco
Splatoon splatoon splatoon splattplattysplat kidsquidkids splaaaaaaattttI haven't really jumped on board the splatoon train yet, but this game, as simple as it seems, has had quite the hype. Before release there was hype, after release there's all kinds of fan art song remixes and even mods for the Binding of Isaac. Yes... I said that. From what I understand... you run around painting everything. Walls, the floor, EVERYTHING. There's also an adventure mode with gloomy octopus (NOT SQUIDS, SQUID=GUD) people removing all the color in the world and you have to paint them in... submission... I'm surprised to say this isn't the first time I've done this. If I remember correctly... Nintendo was beaten to the punch by the company Blue Tongue (not to be confused with Blue Tooth, Blue Moon, Blue Nose, etc.) by a game known as De Blob, followed by a Mexican guitar strum.Yep, I remember this being among the first games for my wii, back was I was 10 and thought everything was awesome. That seems to be a problem with kids under 11, just look at the early days of the Sonic Boom franchise ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)Yes I just Lenny'd, deal with it.De Blob was one of those games I kept coming back to. Play De Blob, go to another game, back to De Blob, repeat. Looking back, I can see how this game can be charming to kids. Like I said, it draws similar connections to Splatoon.1. A game where you are placed into a colorless world and have to paint it all back.2. The evil ink related bad guys who hate fun.3. An old guy trying to form a rebellion against them.4. Very upbeat atmosphere and freeflowing gameplay where you have one mindset, paint paint paint.We start our story with the planet Raydia, a colorful paradise of fun, music, and happiness. Then one day the Inkt Corporation comes down from space sucking away all of color in Raydia's capital, Chroma city, and militarizing the area. Coming from the nearby jungle is our unexplained hero, simply referred to as "Blob". He's a blob of paint, before you thought squids with paint hoses were cool, in this game you play as the PAINT. That's true inception. I never understood why he has an arrow following him, it can spin around him as a compass, leaves a trail for where he's been, but why though? In fact why does he even exist? The world may never know. Anyways this paint blob has the ability to absorb more paint to change colors and grow in size, drain himself in water, and jump like a flea if he wants to. So he explores the city to find the source of this trouble and on the way saves a group of refugees, forming a group called the color underground to stop these Inkies and... restore... all... colllooooor... WAIT.Didn't Drawn to Life have the same thing? Especially the sequel? Paint and shadow goop. And I also checked Epic Mickey, where you use PAINT to fight shadowy INK blots! AND IN DEWY'S ADVENTURE YOU COLLECT COLORFUL FRUITS TO FIGHT POLLUTION DEAR GOD! Have I uncovered a cult of shadowy ink beings who hate color which transcends time AND SPACE!?No I'm just crazy.Anywho, the gameplay is simple...ish. For the most part you need to generate color energy to progress to the end of the level, and to gain that you need to paint buildings and various landmarks, as well as coloring the local Radians who are trapped in anti-color suits. However it's not so simple as you touch everything and you win, the game is pretty puzzle based, and as you advance you need to do things in a more complex manner. You also have to worry about a time limit, starting at 10 minutes, you can gain more time if you perform tasks efficiently. Various members of the color underground can get you extra energy and time if you complete missions for them. These include painting things in a certain order and color, racing through an area fast enough, or wiping out a wave of enemies. Did I mention later on the inky's try and kill you? Cause later on the inky's try and kill you.There are plenty of things that can kill you actually, most prominently pools of ink. If you touch ink you instantly absorb it, becoming black and toxic. In this state, not only will you slowly lose paint points as you shrink down into nothing, but you start working in reverse, de-colorizing (that's a term right?) anything with your paint and even KILLING RADIANS. Yes, you can kill the people you saved prior. ;-; Ironically there's no penalty to this, but it always got to me that Blob was a murderer. To get rid of ink you need a source of water to wash off in, but ironically water is also among the biggest problems to you. When you so much as touch water, your color is washed away and you become clear, and the longer you stay in a body of water the smaller you get. Now the upside is that enemies won't notice you and as mentioned before you wash off ink too, but many of the more annoying missions involve getting a certain color all the way over to an isolated place with lots of water you need to avoid. You may need to take a parkour path where you jump from building to building or pole to pole, or take a slow ride from an air bus, boringly waiting, wasting time. These are some of the downsides of the game, now it's natural that a game needs risks, challenges that you are motivated to overcome, but these types of challenges are more annoying than rewarding. Now the next traps are spikes, hot plates, and electric pads. Spikes are essentially rapid water, shrinking you down quickly as you touch them. Hot plates give you a burnt status similar to being inked, meaning you need to find water and all that stuff, but you don't remove the color of other things. Electric pads literally, in a gaming sense, shock the life out of you. You are given 10 lives to respawn with per level, and while this hazard doesn't kill you outright it knocks out one of your lives as a pickup that you need to chase after to regain.Now I get to talk about the enemies. First is our standard Inky soldier. He runs at you to try and ink you. Not very effective, the main way you kill enemies is by jumping and then slamming on top of them by swinging up the wii remote and swinging it back down. Yeah... motion controls, but rather simple ones. You need to have paint points to spend though. There are leech bots whose sole objectives are to suck up color away. You usually see them as full paint bots to use as a paint source, but the empty ones will try and latch onto you and suck you up. There are sprayer enemies which shoot out a flamethrower... BUT WITH INK. >:O Seriously though it's a black flamethrower. There are cannons which will fire ink blasts at you, ink motorcycles which ram into you, somehow inking you, and elite inky's, who embrace the fact that they need color power for their ultimate goal. The suits that they wear are immune to all damage, and they can only be harmed if you have the same color as them. Then there's the biggest daddy of them all, the tanks. They'll take 100 paint points to destroy, that's the biggest you can be and it may take a couple rounds of slamming it and getting more paint to beat. They also spawn out of tank depots... so that's lame.Now probably the most appealing thing, without a doubt, is the atmosphere this game gives off. Now as I mentioned, some things can get monotonous and repetitive, maybe even boring, but the game has it's own special method to keep you engaged. When you start each level, the world is dull, gloomy, dirty, and eye-numbingly gray. But as you start your mission by slamming a paint bot, you color your first building, but it still looks gloomy. Then you free trapped Radians, they dance and sing around, and the music begins a small tune itself. Then you have access to all the buildings in a neighborhood, you go on a coloring spree, painting the town nothing but red and orange. :P That's when missions start to diversify buildings you already colored, you find style pickups that add patterns to buildings you paint. There's a small parade of people celebrating as their homes are restored, and the music gets happier and more upbeat. As you unlock a transform engine, you completely restore a small park and the music goes full swing. The skies are bright and vibrant blue, the trees and wildlife all over, the town like a giant land of popsicles or something. Then the next area is opened, and as you approach it the skies dim and the music fades again. Time to start the party again.So that's the gist of this game, paint, smash, play. It can really keep kids engaged, but older audiences may see past the enticing images and look into the gameplay itself. Who knows, maybe splatoon is similar in this regard, from what I've seen that game has quite a bit of charm on it too. Now besides the main levels in De Blob, there's also playground mode after completing a level, allowing you to paint freely without time or enemies, spending as much time to perfect your canvas as you wish, in other words this is kiddy ride mode, and there's also a 2-player versus mode that I really wouldn't bother with much. That's all I can say, this game looks appealing, can make you engaged, and has the same style of Katamari where you can just pick up and enjoy yourself, have a good time. ML out for now, I need to... well, there might be MORE games involving color v.s blackness... can't be too careful when an uprising could begin soon >_>
Graphics 8 Sound 8 Addictive 5 Story 5 Depth 4 Difficulty 5
Review Rating: 3.5/5
Submitted: 07-17-15
Review Replies: 2
8.5
Putting color back into the world FaithFighter
Well, this definitely was not one of my favorite games, since it really did not have enough action to make me want anything other than to see the next portion of the story; but it still was pretty decent--for a game where you run...err..roll around and paint stuff to move on to the next level. This is definitely a kid's game, but at the same time they did manage to make it tricky and time-consuming enough to make it worth the play.
Graphics: The graphics are pretty fun in this game...You control them! The graphics start out with gray worlds and levels. It is your job to bring the color back to the place. The character designs are charming and friendly enough. And eveything overall looks quite beautiful...at least when you are done playing! I would definitely have to give them a 10 on this.
Sound: This is another department that you have some control over. When you go into a level, you have a choice to choose DeBlob's mood. Depending on what mood he is in, different music will play. Why did they do this? I do not really know, but it does add a little bit of fun to the game anyway. All of the tunes that you can choose are fairly upbeat and cheerful. The sounds were all pretty good. Even though most of the characters just make noises instead of actually talking. Their noises can be made out for different words, and I feel that it just adds to the atmosphere of the game.
Story: While it is not nearly as good as the second one in the story department, I have to hand it to them for creativity. Who ever heard of hateful little inky characters that want nothing less than to enslave the entire world by draining all the color and destroying it? And who ever heard of saving the world through art? While it is a little far-fetched, it is a fun story and deserves a 8.
Depth: Well, there is a lot that you can do in every level, there are a lot of buildings, landmarks, billboards, and environment things that you can paint, and well as graydians to rescue for their colorless prisons. Basically, though you only need to paint enough to raise the color energy high enough so that you can finish the level. the levels can be lengthy if you are trying to do everything, so I think that a 8 is fair enough for this game.
Difficulty: All in all, it really isn't super hard. But it was difficult enough to hold me back a while. Probably the toughest part is the last level. There were several times where I got to the end of the level but ended up losing my lives on the boss--yes, there is a boss! I know that sounds unbelievable, but it is true!--and had to start the level from the beginning. There are some concepts that take some work to master, and there are a lot of challenges in every level. So I would have to give the difficulty a rating of 7.
Overall: All in all, this was not a bad game at all, and is worth a shot--even if you only give 5 minutes to it. For a game that does not focus much on platforming or fighting, it really turned out pretty well. I'd have to say that it gets an 8.5.
Graphics 10 Sound 10 Addictive 7 Story 8 Depth 8 Difficulty 7
Review Rating: 3.5/5
Submitted: 10-19-14
Updated: 10-31-14
Review Replies: 1
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