What nobler cause can their be for a hero than restoring life to a colorless world?
Enter de blob, rising up amist the shovelware of third party Wii games, to bounce and color his way into your heart. Bringing a unique and colorful platformer with the simple premise of coloring the city.
The story goes that the evil INKT corporation has taken over the once colorful and happy town of Chroma City turning into a drab world of dull conformity. The de blob leads a group of color revolutionaries who are out to overthrow the Inkies, rescue the Raydians and bring color back to Chroma City. While there's no voice work the story is told through a series of well done and wonderfully comical cutscenes. If you really think about it, there's the underlying message of using art to rebel against a conformist society. The Blob himself despite not being able to talk, actually has a lot of personality making him rather loveable.
At the core, de blob is a 3D platformer with a bit of Katamari mixed in. The goal is to gather paintbots and color as many buildings as needed to move onto the next area. You're timed but there's plenty of way to increase your time by completing side missions within the main level, coloring the Raydians you free and taking out enemies. You can get more points if you use secondary colors like purple and orange and there's this wonderful feeling of accomplishment as you watch this once dull city spring back to life. You watch as dull billboards transform into a wild work of pop art, trees get their leaves back and instead of buildings simply getting back color, wild and crazy patters appear all over.
As third party Wii games go, the controls are good. A simple flick of the Wiimote lets de Blob jump and you control him with the analog stick. It works but I will admit the platforming is a bit dodgy at times and it would've been nice to have been able to map that jump to a button. Also from time to time the Blob will get hung up in a corner and the camera gets a bit spazzy however it's not enough of an annoyance to be a deal breaker.
As you travel though a level letting your inner Jackson Pollock out, there are four kinds of side missions. Racing, defeating enemies, restoring landmarks and color asignments. While they might be a bit repetive after a while, they still manage to be fun especially jumping inside a landmark and shaking the controllers to restore it and watch a dull prison transform into a skate center. The painting missions will grind the most after a while. You are told by your friend Arty to paint said buildings a certain color and all too ofter you'll accidentally hit the wrong paintbot and color a building the wrong color however you can always start over and oddly enough if you lose, your buildings will remain the color you already painted them so say you ran out of time and two buildings weren't finished, just go see Arty again, restart the mission and paint the two you missed. It feels a bit easy then, but at the same time you don't have the annoying frustration of doing it over and over again.
The levels themselves are long especially if you are trying to paint as much as possible and finish all side missions and find all the hidden goodies throughout the stage. Unfortunately there's no saving during levels so if you quit, you have to start over again. After finishing a main level, you have two mini quests which you can do as well. Though overall the single player campaign lasts anywhere from 10-15 hours depending upon how much of a completionist you are.
There's also "Free Paint" mode where you can choose a location and just paint for as long as you like and getting a couple friends together for the multiplayer races is also fun given the easy to pick up and play nature of this title however online play would've been nice.
Also de Blob is a game that drips with artistic flare and has what is possibly one of the best soundtracks out there that consists of funky jazzy tunes. The game will let you choose the background music or de Blob's "mood" at the start and a really neat touch is depending upon de Blob's color when you paint, different instruments play, like if he's orange, you hear horns, if he's brown you hear scratchin and if he's blue you hear electric guitar.
Really anyone who's looking for something really unique to play, should pick this up. People complain about wanting good third party Wii games, well here's one right here for you.