Jason D'Aprile

de Blob 2 Review

By Jason D'Aprile - Posted Feb 22, 2011

11 Comments

De Blob returns in another paint-filled, coloring adventure. Comrade Black is sucking all the fun out of Prisma City and only one lone blob (and his robot buddy) can save the poor citizens from a dull life of black and white conformity. Roll, jump, and climb through massive levels, painting everything in the way, while upgrading your blob and taking on new foes and challenges through a variety of beautiful, cartoonish landscapes.

The Pros
  • Great, bizarre graphics with spectacular color
  • Fun painting gameplay and interesting puzzles
  • Tons of things to do in-game
The Cons
  • Camera is absurdly sluggish
  • Measuring jumps can be challenging
  • Life and time limit seems out of place

de Blob 2 Review:

De Blob is back in de Blob 2 and this time, he’s in glorious hi-def! The sequel to one of the best third-party Wii launch titles takes the paint-laden gameplay of the first game and runs with it across a surprising array of huge levels. Carrying over the superbly strange animated style of the first game, the sequel is definitely a great looking adventure with plenty of charm.



De Blob Returns!

Basking in the glow of victory from the first game, de Blob is minding his own business and cruising around with his robot buddy when he discovers that the evil, color-hating Comrade Black is back and intent on sucking all the color and joy from the world. Taking place in Prisma City and beyond, de blob is tasked with painting an insane amount of buildings, landscapes, trees, billboards, bad guys, good guys, and everything else he can roll over.

As it turns out, Prisma City is a pretty diverse place, complete with a beautiful paradise island, a variety of funky looking urban areas, factories, a military base, an arctic outpost and even a space station, among plenty of other interesting locales.

The gameplay is fundamentally simple. Blob sucks up paint found in fountains, pools, and handy paint-filled robots, then rolls around and paints anything he comes across. The game starts out simply enough, but uses this paint mechanism to create some interesting and challenging puzzles. Different buildings, for instance, must be painted a specific color, and you’ll find combinations of buildings that must be painted different colors to complete a goal.

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Have a Color Mixer

To add to the complexity, you’ll frequently have to mix colors to create new ones. Although the gameplay really does boil down to sucking up colors and rolling, jumping, and hitting obstacles with paint, there are so many side quests and main storyline objectives that there’s always something to do. The game is designed so that you’ll want to paint everything on the level—including the trees and yards. Doing so nets you bonus points that can be used to upgrade the blob with more lives, more power, and more painting potential. There’s also a co-op mode where the second player can be the robot sidekick who shoots instead of paints, and is really only useful against Black’s mind controlled forces.

Mixing up the 3D painting adventure are frequent side-scrolling levels within buildings. These levels focus the jumping and color puzzle solving into a semi-retro feel, as you leap over poisonous ink pools, color-washing water, electrical pads, and bad guys to unlock a color-bursting attack that moves the game along. Beating a main level also unlocks specific multiplayer levels with more co-operative gameplay, which is a nice bonus as well.



I Need a Better Camera

Since de Blob 2 is seemingly aimed at all ages, especially kids, the inclusion of both a time and lives limit seems like a questionable addition. While average players will seldom have a problem running out of time (or lives), and you earn more time frequently, it could cause frustration in younger gamers. The camera is also noticeably problematic. It’s sluggish to change your view around, and often won’t provide a full range of view around the blob. The camera also makes jumping from rooftop to rooftop an issue, since judging the edge of the building is sometimes a problem.

The single biggest problem with de Blob 2, however, is simply that the gameplay doesn’t vary that much over the course of the game. Although new enemies and obstacles appear regularly, you’ve seen almost everything the game has to offer pretty early on. Although this seems like a big issue, the gameplay is still a lot of fun and there’s so much to do on each level that it keeps the pace moving.

The bizarre characters and cartoonish take on oppressive dictatorship make the cut scenes surprisingly amusing, and the game’s use of bright, bold colors throughout is impressive. The soundtrack is also surprisingly funky, with plenty of jazzy tunes to paint by. There’s no actual voice acting, but the amusing non-sense language everyone speaks is sure to delight kids.

Paint the Town Red… and Blue… and Brown… and Orange!

De Blob 2 is a goofy, fun little game that deserves a wider audience than the cartoonish artwork might suggest. It’s perhaps too hard for little kids, but provides plenty of challenge and gameplay for older gamers in search of a good alternative to the grim and moody action games released lately. While the game suffers from camera issues and repetition, it’s definitely recommended.