De Blob 2 Review

Painting the town red… and green and blue and yellow and purple and…

If most of your time as a child was spent finger-painting, de Blob 2 might just be the game for you. Set not too long after the end of the first de Blob, protagonist “Blob” returns once again to help return color to Prisma City, which has been drained of color by Comrade Black (who is cleverly disguised as a cult leader, this time around). A cult full of individuals, draped in white while detesting “colored folks”—sound familiar? Slamming into them as a giant blob and coloring them your favorite shade of the rainbow is part of the fun here!

[image1]The main objective is to return glorious primary and secondary colors to everything, including the resident Raydians. This is all achieved by Blob soaking up paint and splashing it along every surface and living thing that can be reached. Besides treating the world as your canvas, avoiding sickness-inducing ink and completing challenges for each level guarantees a fair amount of time is spent on each one.

Heeding the “SyFy Kids” logo and “E for Everyone rating” will put you in the right mindset for this game. de Blob 2 is not the most challenging game you will ever play, but it is one of the easiest to get into (as well as being highly addictive). There isn’t a drop of blood to be found here, though the trail you leave behind when covered in red paint does look a tad gory. If you haven’t matured much since your finger-painting days, the brown and yellow paints leave an entertaining trail as well (I am guilty as charged).

If the somewhat mindless process of rolling up items in Katamari games is appealing to you, rolling around as “Blob” to bring color and life to buildings and their residents will share a similar appeal. It sounds awfully lame in writing, but many a poor soul who have played Katamari Damacy or any of its relatives know how many hours can be spent gleefully rolling, rolling, and rolling some more. It’s the bright colors, upbeat music and satisfaction of bringing a world to life that is so rewarding. Or maybe it truly is just the endless rolling?

[image2]The enjoyment that comes from instantaneously and evenly coating an entire skyscraper or motorboat in paint—only by simply bumping into it—is surprising. After coloring the first few objects in de Blob 2, you won’t want to leave anything uncolored. Not the trees, not the inhabitants of the buildings, not the boats, trucks or billboards—everything must be covered in paint! And for once, you’re actually allowed (and encouraged) to go nuts and paint all over the walls and floor.

Unfortunately, the elated joy of splashing everything with paint does fade over time with repetition, especially when your one wish is that you could simply roll faster. The repetition level after level might not seem such a bother if you could blast your way through the city, ricocheting off of skyscrapers and smokestacks and into pools of paint. Fortunately, when it does inevitably get boring, you can step back, wait a while, and then approach the game to find it as magically exciting as before.

Multiplayer, or “Blob Party”, is limited to mini-levels to be completed with one other player. These mini-levels consist of racing to see who can paint the most the fastest, as well as completing small challenges (painting buildings a specific color, for example). But with only two Blobs in familiar settings, it’s not much of a “party”. Co-op is a more useful feature—two people can play all the way through story mode together, with Player 2 using Pinky’s paint blaster to assist in coloring and acquiring items. The dot used to represent the paint blaster is hard to follow and frequently goes off screen, but when your only objective is to “shoot” stuff, it’s not so bad.

[image3]de Blob 2 is simple and pleasant enough that it is ultimately playable by anyone who is able to hold a controller, though it’s obviously not a great colorblind-friendly choice. It makes an excellent addition to households with a wide age-group of gamers, but is entertaining enough that younger siblings aren’t needed to justify owning a copy.

The replay value is not terribly strong unless you really appreciate the somewhat soothing-quality of endless rolling/painting, which can be lovely when you don’t want to think too much. Certainly de Blob 2 is worth checking out if only because you need a break from epic first-person shooters or intense puzzle games (hey, it happens sometimes).