Review: A Boy And His Blob (Wii)

Author: Rees | Date: November 18, 2009

Nintendo’s Wii can be a strange beast. At times feeling like nothing more than a gimmick, a retro games player with some tacked-on motion controls, games developers struggling to make the most of the hardware in the most gratuituous ways possible to grab attention and sell more of their poorly-polished wares. Sure, the system has some outstanding titles and clever uses of its strong points, but as someone who loves his Wii dearly and thinks it deserves more, I can’t help but feel a little sad that the system’s reputation is constantly tarnished by third-rate minigame-fests, poor controls, and lazy gimmicks.

A Boy and His Blob, however, is none of these things. It’s exactly what the Wii should be known for – what the system was designed for, and hopefully a game which history will remember as one of the console’s finest.

For a start, A Boy and His Blob doesn’t use the motion controls at all. It doesn’t have any “Wave it like this! Now like this! Now like this!” moments very loosely related to the on-screen action. It doesn’t have you pointing at things on screen and frantically clicking on the B button. What it does offer is a sensible 2D platforming control scheme which old-skool gamers will love, particularly as it can also be played with the Classic Controller (and this is, in fact, highly recommended if possible).

The game’s art direction is beautiful – it has a hand-drawn feel to it which makes A Boy and His Blob really stand out from the competition, in fact, everything about the game’s artwork oozes character. It’s also a nice touch that concept art can be unlocked by completing the game’s challenge levels, and shows the designers’ dedication to creating this distinctive look and feel even from the very early days of the game’s development.

The sound is similarly charming, with an ambient soundtrack adding to the atmosphere of the game, and the titular boy’s shouts to his blob friend coming across as warm and sweet. The whole game has a warm and fuzzy feeling to it which makes a great change from the action-packed racing and shooting games which usually occupy my gaming time.

Gameplay-wise, A Boy and His Blob is a classic 2D platform puzzle game. With our boy using his blob’s unique ability to transform into different shapes to help him overcome obstacles. As it happens, this can be achieved by feeding it different types of jelly bean – the different tools and shapes that blob can morph into are introduced gradually over the course of the game, and each level allows a limited set of these abilities to be used to progress.

For the most part the gameplay is slow paced, with a careful, though-out approach to overcoming the levels’ obstacles. It has a very gentle learning curve, which, coupled with the look and feel, should help this title really appeal to smaller children. Dads or older siblings should also appreciate giving the occasional helping hand when the puzzles get a little too tricky, but I think that they might perhaps bore of the sheer “gentleness” of the game quickly if they were to attempt the entire thing on their own.

It does become progressively more difficult as time progresses, however by this point players should be so used to the control scheme and so engrossed in the game that they should have no problem overcoming some of the later levels. It especially helps that there are no “lives”, and no restarts from the beginning of the level when things go wrong – you’d have to have quite a short temper to describe A Boy and His Blob as “frustrating”.

There’s plenty of game to be had, with 4 separate areas to progress through, each offering 10 levels each and ending in a tricky and adrenaline-filled boss battle. Replay value is high, as collecting 3 treasure chests in each of the game’s main levels unlocks a “challenge” level – the chests are often way off the beaten path, so playing through multiple times to try to find them is a regular occurence. In total the game offers around 80 levels.

In summary, A Boy and His Blob has been a very pleasant surprise for me. While I can’t say that I would recommend it to the hardcore gaming community (who will find it rather slow), this is a game that will appeal to older gamers, smaller children, and perhaps those who aren’t traditionally into the loud noise and bright lights of mainstream gaming.

A perfect fit for the Wii’s core audience, then.