For some A Boy and His Blob was the pinnacle of puzzle platforming on the NES; I am not one of those people. It was just one of those games I never played as a kid, and once the SNES came out, I think I was too blinded by the “16-bit wonder” to give a crap about that lousy “8-bit stuff”; kids do the darnedest things. Anyways, the game revolved around a boy who found a blob that he could feed jelly beans, and each bean would transform the blob into an object. These objects would be used to traverse through an environment, and attack enemies in various inventive ways. Seeing as I haven’t played the original, I popped the game into the Wii with totally neutral expectations that weren’t going to be bloated by nostalgia. After playing through the game, and being drowned in cuteness…A Boy and His Blob has transformed me into a fan.

This is a series that doesn’t bother the player with a huge dramatic story, and for that, I commend it. All you need to know is that the blob has come from his planet, Blobolonia, after it has been taken over by some baddies. Shortly after landing on Earth, the boy meets the blob in the forest, and your journey begins. After befriending the boy, your new goal is to travel to the blob’s home planet and save his people. This blob may look pretty pointless at first, but once you start feeding him special jelly beans, he will transform into many useful objects. For instance, when you can’t reach a ledge, transform him into a trampoline…enemies you can’t pass? Squash them with a blob anvil! There are around forty levels (ten levels, spread across four worlds), not to mention challenge levels from collectibles you find; so overall, there is plenty of stuff to keep you busy in the game.

Personally, I had a hell of a time with this game. Even though I never played the original, it still struck this chord with me being a lover of 2-D games. The puzzles were pretty inventive and manageable throughout, and even though some were kind of boring, it didn’t ruin the experience. However, the difficulty curve for the game is a bit off. The first few worlds of the game give you constant hints and make every puzzle apparent, and then in the later levels there wasn’t much of a curve to the difficulty, it just goes from easy to hard. Some of the best and most tedious puzzles were found in the boss battles. Since you can only take one hit, and can’t actually hurt the enemies, you must rely on your smarts and blob’s abilities to pass these foes. Sometimes the main enemy you will face during the game is the jelly bean interface. While it isn’t too hard to hit the Z button and choose your bean with the analog stick, the actual throwing of the beans was a bit too touchy (your trajectory moves around really fast.) Many times, especially in boss battles, I had to throw a bean at an exact spot, and I would keep overshooting. While it was a bit of an annoyance, I began to get used to the touchy controls, so I can’t really mark the game badly for it. Even dying in the game wasn’t a huge pain in the butt; you have an unlimited number of lives, and start off exactly where you die; some game developers could learn a thing or two from Blobs mostly forgiving gameplay.

This game feels like it is for more of a niche crowd than anything, which makes it hard to give a strong recommendation. If you are like me and love a good 2-D puzzle/platformer, than Blob is top-notch. However, I think people looking for more of an action/adventure title need to look elsewhere, because they may not have the patience for some of the more tedious bits of this game. Also, collectibles and challenge levels aside, you can blow through the main game in a couple sittings if you are dedicated. The short length, may through this little gem into the “rental zone”, but I feel that if people purchase this game, maybe we will see other nostalgic reboots in the future. After playing Mighty Flip Champs on the DSi and A Boy and His Blob on the Wii, WayForward is slowly becoming one of my favorite Nintendo developers. Blob brought something to the table that I think even the most hardcore gamers need to fill up on; a nice, healthy helping of simple fun.

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