Some Wii games are unsatisfactory, but when I first played De Blob, I knew immediately that it had a lot of potential. The people of THQ were very excited with the launch of this game and they said that it was their ace up their sleeve; they were not wrong. Wii is both a loved and hated console -- that is why some developers don’t take much interest in it. Fortunately, there are still some people that are willing to take advantage of all the console features and remember the players that the Wii has, making games that are very friendly and brings lots of fun.
The story of De Blob is told through a series of excellent movies that manage to be funny and smart without saying a word at all. The evil INKT Corporation, led by the dictatorial Comrade Black, has drained all the color from Chroma City, turning it into a monochromatic metropolis. It has also turned its colorful citizens, the Raydians, into homogeneous Graydians. Blob joins forces with a resistance movement called the Color Underground to bring color back to Chroma City and free its people.
The basic goal of each level is to paint part of Chroma City and, by doing so, gradually free the city from the colorless grip of the INKT Corporation. As you paint the area, the color energy level increases, and you'll need to reach a certain total in each section before you can open the gate to the next. There's always a clock ticking down in story mode, but this is not a high-pressure game. You generally have plenty of time to make your way through each section at your own pace.
Blob starts each level without any color himself, but thankfully, Chroma City is crawling with paintbots, which are spiderlike robots with tanks of red, yellow, or blue paint on their backs. By smashing one of these, Blob becomes coated with paint. Each paintbot you smash nets give you 10 paint points up to a maximum of 100, which work both as his health and as his attack strength, as certain foes require a certain number of paint points to be defeated.
You move Blob around with the thumbstick on the Nunchuk and swing the remote down to jump. Blob gets around by rolling, and maneuvering him around Chroma City is really easy. He is also capable of running along walls and jumping off of them. These more advanced skills are a bit trickier, but once you get the timing down, you'll be bopping your way all over the place, though Blob has a frustrating tendency to get wedged into tight spaces, especially when he's absorbed a lot of paint. Combat is also simple but fun. You target your enemies with the Z button and then jump on them to smash them. Blob hits his targets with inerrant accuracy, and targeting distant paintbots or INKT troops is often a necessary technique to get across greater distances that Blob might not otherwise be able to accomplish.
The single-player mode is definitely the best part of the game, but the gameplay translates very well to multiplayer action as well. The game has three multiplayer game modes and each one can be played by up to four players. In each one, your goal is to paint more of the level than your opponents. In the Paint Match mode, you can paint over other players' colors, whereas in Blob Race, each building can only be painted once. Finally, in Blob on the Run, only one player can paint at any one time while other players find and smash that blob to acquire the ability to paint. The more people you have on hand for these modes, the better.
