A vanguard work of art still rooted in old videogame conventions.

User Rating: 6 | World of Goo PC

The Good: Artstyle, cutscenes and music are phenomenal; sharp humor and smart twists

The Bad: Controls and physics doesn't match the game's difficulty

Raised upon a little physics proof-of-concept (called Tower of Goo, still available for download in the old 2D Boy's site) World of Goo was a major agent of the indie takeover 7 years ago. Much like many of its contemporaries it gets half the job astoundily well done--the artsy one--but doesn't quite nail the core gameplay content that smartly.

On the bright side there's plenty to be proud of: presentation overall is plain superb--both music and graphics are a testimony of a very cohesive art direction--and everything sums up nicely to serve the plot--or at least the philosophic dialogue it proposes if we can't agree it has a proper plot.

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On the other hand the developers couldn't help restricting the player's resources as if it was a classic hardcore game. Physics here are way too loose to ask the player the precision and swiftness the levels so constantly demand, goo balls are often too limited in number and as they grow in variety it gets tougher to pick the right one from the crowd, and checkpoints (despite the smart "undo" concept) work poorly. (Using OCDs for triggering Achievements sits on top of that as well.)

The game sometimes try to make up for those frustration moments by offering alternate paths in the maps but they're often useless since it eventually forces you to get back to the avoided levels before allowing you to progress anyway.

World of Goo weights in the "games as art" debate but does so by improving the usual external assets related to that instead of improving interactivity--the main feature that makes the medium unique for exploring new forms of art.