de Blob 2

The wonderful, colourful world of Blob is back and Comrade Black has drained all the colour out of everything, even poor Graydians which are inhabitants of Paradise, but it’s not a very happy place to be.

If you’ve ever played one of those games where, as you touch stuff, it colours the whole thing, de Blob is basically that, but on a way larger scale. Excuse my lack of memory as to which game I’m thinking about that was way more basic than de Blob, in fact, am I even saying that right, de Blob? De Blob?
Once the game is up and running, you’re introduced to the characters and once in-game, you’re treated to nice, simple tutorials that guide you through how to do what you need to do. The basic idea is to jump or roll into coloured pools and soak Blob until he’s full, then roll to whatever needs some colour added to it and just touch. In some cases, you’ll be required to add a bit of style and that’s done by collecting swirls, so instead of painting buildings a plain colour, it adds a pattern to it.
Controls are nice and easy due to mainly rolling around, jumping and the occasional slamming and charging when you need to smash or crash into things. The only times it gets a little frustrating is when you’re a bit close to the edge and you can’t quite jump back on, resulting in a drop to somewhere you’ve previously been and making your way back all the way around up paths and even cliffs. That’s why I’d say that it’s not really for kids aged at least eight or under, yes the rating is seven, it’s just recommended that kids of around nine or ten would probably be able to play it better.
It looks and moves great, it’s (obviously) very colourful and the animation is nice and smooth, I do tend to mention things like that in most of my reviews, but I think a smooth flowing game is more enjoyable than a choppy one. The background has some depth to it and I don’t mean the 3D, yes, de Blob 2 is 3D compatible if you’re posh and have one of those kind of televisions, I’m referring to the cutscenes and scenery in general that look solid and almost real in a cartoony kind of way.
Back to gameplay and one of the things that gives the player more encouragement to explore and cover as much of the levels as possible are things to collect like light bulbs which are ‘inspiration’ to upgrade Blob. Blob can hold 100 of paint, not sure of what, be it 100 pints or litres, but it can be upgraded to 120, 140, etc by ‘spending’ 10, 20, 30 and so on of inspiration bulbs.
Blob’s partner, Pinky is a flying sass-bot who can help him out and shoot things, she can be controlled by a gaming partner for some co-op action and be upgraded by increasing ammo, but that’s the only upgrade Pinky can have.
Other upgrades are increasing maximum armour and decreasing the time it takes Blob to charge up with paint, you don’t see the immediate effect of the upgrades until you’ve made three or four though. It’s not really worth going on about Extras since it’s mainly Movies you see throughout the game, Galleries which is obvious and Pinky’s Guide To Inkies.
Blob Party let’s two players play with or against each other to see who can cover the most area within three minutes, but there are also challenges to be met which might have you needing to paint buildings or boats a certain colour or even a number of Graydians before time runs out.
There’s a lot to do in each level, the level doesn’t end when you’ve finished the main challenges, there are still challenges to do which are similar to what you do in Blob Party. Usually just colouring buildings to a specific colour, colouring remaining Graydians and smashing anything left behind by Comrade Black and his accomplice, Papa Blanc who appears to be the one who goes from city to city to brainwash the citizens into thinking that no colour is best. That, of course, is where Blob comes in and the aforementioned takes place.
You can easily lose many hours to the game just by doing a couple of levels since there’s so much to do if you play it properly, then there are the Blob Party levels which can vary in-game time, but are so replayable as you try to do as many challenges as possible. Massive levels, loads of gameplay, great graphics and sound, it’s just what a game needs and de Blob 2 has, and although the style of game may not suit everyone, it ticks all the boxes.