Saturday 5 December 2015

de Blob ~ Memory Review

de Blob eh? More like de Man, de Legend. Old Blobby. de Blobmeister! What is there to say about de Blob? What is there to say? What. Is. There. To. Say. About. de Blob? People have said things about de Blob before, many things, so the question is what will I say now? Seriously what is there to say? This is it. The fabled point where the mists of time and general apathy about the game in question join forces.
What do I remember about de Blob? You played as some sort of paint based anarchist, but rather than spray painting clichés and suggested google searches on road signs you cover entire surfaces with paint. The villains were little black and white star fish in English constabulary hats who served another star fish in a general's hat. They wanted to take all the colour out of the area. You are a beacon of hope in this monotonous grey. I think you had some kind of ground pound attack, or maybe some kind of roll attack with which to cover the streets with their blood. And paint. You did a lot of painting. And jumping. Jumping's one of the two things I remember.
Jumping in the sorry de Blob is carried out by flicking the Wii-mote, this kind of thing was the style at the time. I don't recall how well it was calibrated so we can assume that it wasn't so bad as to send me into fits of rage. I have a hazy recollection that while you did a lot of it, the platforming of de Blob was relatively sedate so I doubt you were ever up against it to make precise jumps. What I do remember is the feeling of doing that motion, awkwardly jutting your wrist and to some extent your arm up when really you'd much rather keep it by your side. There's no dignified way to do this micro spasm and unless you're especially slim shaking your whole body like that and scraping you arm along your side constantly is likely a wobbly reminder that you should cut back on the snacks. Not that this is a bad thing to be reminded about it's just sometimes you want to play a game to put your mind off these things.
Which is shame because as I remember the environments in de Blob were nice, large open spaces that spread out both horizontally and vertically. Mr Blob had some kind of wall jump power that let him ping from surface to surface and there may have been some kind of cannons for especially scenic jumps. The other thing that is clear in my head about de Blob was the soundtrack. Each level started out quiet but as you added colour to the area the music slowly started to build and the mixture of different colours in a particular area affected the kind of instruments used. Each colour corresponded to a different genre of music leading to some bizzare yet likable combinations. Seriously the soundtrack was lovely, look it up!
The restorers of time have inadvertently eroded the eyebrows of the Mona Lisa of my memory so I can't really give a proper verdict of de Blob. At a push I think my thoughts at the time were that the gameplay was nothing special but that the music and style was nice enough to elevate the experience above mediocre. I would highly recommend that you.... read another review before purchasing it.

And now the latest quote from Miister X which our intern assures us is about de Blob
"From: MiisterXPersonal@gmail.com / To: EnlargeMiiTool@fakemail.com/ Re: Very interested
Dear Dr. Layton,
I'm very interested in the service you described, I just have a couple of questions.
I'm something of a public figure so it's is very important to me that your patient records are kept secrets and that I will be able to visit your clinic without being recognised. I'm looking into a number of different providers of this service so I want to know, using your procedure, just how big it can-CRAP THIS IS THOSE MOUSTACHE GUYS AGAIN, THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A  dE BLOB BASED PROCEDURE AT ALL IS THERE, GAAAHHHH"

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