So I have obtained two new games this month which I think everyone on the face of this planet should try at least once, and I've also got a new job.

Let's get the job part over with first, since it's the most depressing. I work at a call centre now... yeah... outbound too. On the plus side, I'm calling businesses, so it means it's less likely people will get ridiculously angry at you. The downside is it's actually MUCH more challenging to talk to the people you're supposed to. It's an incredibly repetative and difficult job and I barely make more than minimum wage, but... a job's a job, I guess...

It's certainly left me really worn out and depressed for the most part, but at least it means I have my own money again.

Which also means I've come into posession of two recently released video games, one for the DS and one for the Wii. Let's cover the DS title first: Scribblenauts!



Firstly, Scribblenauts is extremely addictive, make no mistake. It's a puzzle game where you basically solve platforming puzzles using virtually ANYTHING you can think of. Granted, there are limitations to the stuff you can conjure, and despite the hundreds of objects I've come up with I've found a couple to be missing. (Granted, 2 misses out of a few hundred isn't so bad.) There's supposedly over 20,000 objects, which is pretty insane.

Scribblenauts does suffer from annoying controls, but really, considering the type of game they were trying to make I think any control scheme they came up with would've been difficult to use. Controlling a platformer with the stylus is very annoying for various reasons but considering the nature of the game I think D-Pad controls would've had its own set of problems.

Scribblenauts is definitely worth trying, but the puzzles can be down-right evil sometimes, so whether you like it or not will depend on how hard you like to think.



But now, we come to the better of those two games, A Boy and His Blob, freshly re-imagined for the Wii, and it is perhaps one of the best games to come out in a long while. X3

Firstly, a little history. A Boy and His Blob was originally an NES game made under the same vein as the Pitfall series of games, by the same designer, where you played a boy who was followed around by a blob that could transform into various things to solve platforming puzzles. You transformed the blob by feeding it jellybeans. Different flavours would result in different contraptions such as ladders, holes, trampolines, bubbles, even a special kind of vitamin shooting firearm dubbed the VITABLASTER.

Then came a Gameboy version that I've actually played before. It was a bit more challenging due to the limited screen space thus requiring much more exploration and time on the player's part.

Since then, there's been two previous attempts to get a new version made. One attempt on the GBA, another on the DS. Neither saw the light of day, though it's rumoured the DS version actually was completed but couldn't find its way into the market for whatever reason.

Now, we have a new version on the Wii that they put serious effort into because it's a nearly flawless game with adorable (but not TOO adorable) traditionally animated graphics and less exposition than virtually every game to have been released in the past decade. Seriously, until you beat the game and the credits roll there's pretty much no text anywhere short of the title, the pause screen, some of the bonus artwork unlocked through challenge levels, and a very short storybook you can unlock in the third world. For the most part, the story is told through very small in-game cutscenes that have an air of subtlety and the game never tries to force itself at you... kind of like with the original NiGHTS game on the Saturn. By not explaining itself, there's tons of mystery and intrigue and the player can imagine whatever they wish to fit the context.

The controls are almost spot-on. Some reviewers have complained about the lack of D-Pad movement but then, it's a tiny thing really, and aiming where you throw jellybeans would've been nasty to do with the D-Pad instead of the analog, so I think the controls are fine in that respect. My only control gripe is with ladders, since they don't respond well to diagonal movement thus you have to be a little more patient with them than in game like Megaman.

Controls aside, the gameplay is awesome. Rather than limit you to a quantity of all kinds of jellybeans like the original two games, you get unlimited quantities of select jellybeans for each stage, but unlike the original games where each jellybean only served one or two purposes, here, they can serve TONS. I'm really impressed with how they've expanded the use of some of the old ones, such as the Apple flavour which transforms the blob into a jack. As you progress you get to try out more and more flavours, and the very last flavour you get is full of epic and win, especially considering the story context it's introduced in! X3

Some people have said, without having played the full game, that it doesn't look any better than a Flash game and thus they can't justify spending full price on it. I say, screw that. Yes, it does kind of look like a Flash game, but you get about 100 times more graphics and the lighting is done far better than any typical Flash game. I'm apparently not the only one who thinks it's a masterpiece either, since I bought the last copy at my local EB the SAME DAY IT CAME OUT. (Talk about lucky!) They've probably got more by now I would imagine. ; )

I've already beaten the game through and through, challenges and all, which leads me to my only other gripe with the game: One save state. Considering many families have more than one kid playing Wii games I think this was a bit of an oversight. It also means once you beat the game, if you wanna play it over again and see all the little cutscenes again, you have to erase your previous progress. Again, it's a small flaw in a primarily wonderful game.

I recommend to anyone who still has their inner child intact to play this game. You won't be disappointed! :3



As per making my games and stuff, I'm planning on learning to do 360 stuff with XNA so I can start making smaller games for the Indie games section of the X-Box Live Marketplace. I have a series of small games planned which should be fun, all with a particular style that I'm actually very good at, even if it is quite minimalistic and possibly TOO retro for some people. I'm also going to eventually get my website updated to a new (but similar) design. As for the game I was making, Space Fortress 2, I don't have the time to complete it anymore because of how huge it is, but since it's virtually complete gameplay-wise already, I'm thinking of just adding a quick and dirty text menu to play the game and then release the incomplete version for free.

So yeah, life is hectic, but at least there's some good games to keep me going and other things to look forwards to. (Like the new Tron movie coming out next year... I can't WAIT for that!)

--- Gemini



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My Games at Pixelmusement

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