Aside from minor dalliances smashing cars in to retainer walls and liberating Viking cities,the vast majority of my game playing lately has been spent restoring peace and hope a neighborhood at a time to the good citizens of Chroma City, which currently suffers under the cruel and colorless regime of Comrade Black and the INKT corporation. While dire, the situation is far from lost – why, just last night I personally led a strike against the vile pumping station INKT were using to fill the water supply with vile ink, pumping enough enough paint into it to transform back in to the wonderful machine that hurls massive, tattooed fish into the ocean below that we all know and love.

Despite only owning it for two days, de Blob for the Nintendo Wii (from developer Blue Tongue) has already cemented itself as some of the most fun I’ve had with a new game in ages. The premise for the thing is short and sweet, just thick enough to build a game on the back of (and yet told through adorably hilarious cut scenes that not only hold up to repeat viewing but pretty much demand it): The INKT corporation has drained Chroma City of its color, turning the world and its inhabitants flat and gray. As de Blob, a legless ball of somethingoranother, it’s up to you to set things right by soaking up paint and splattering it all over the buildings, trees, hapless citizenry, oppressive INKT troops, and anything else in need of brightening up. Doing so is as simple as rolling, jumping, wall running (de Blob can helpfully stick any wall you like, and can just as helpfully drop off instantly with a push of the B button), and generally smashing your body in to anything that will hold still long enough to be hit. It’s a simple and elegant situation that is immediately rewarding whether your watching or playing – your every action has a effect on the world around you, and while often messy, it never fails to be beautiful.

While there are many things de Blob gets right, its take on instant gratification is maybe the most important. The OCD itch behind collection challenges is one of the more powerful motivators used to propel players through games – it’s human nature to want to restore order to a system, either through creation (Animal Crossing: make everybody in your town happy) or destruction (Assassin’s Creed: kill all the Knights of Templar), and the task of collecting all of a certain kind of item that’s been scattered hither and yon feeds directly into that urge. The trouble comes, however, when the number of things in need of collecting and/or the effort required to track them down is greater than the satisfaction that comes with finding them all. If there comes a time in your game where the player decides its not worth seeing a percentage tick over to 100%, then you’re doing something wrong.

de Blob isn’t completely immune to this problem, particularly in later levels, but it comes closer than nearly any other game I can think of to wiping it out completely. Because the gameplay core and mechanics are woven so thoroughly together, every move you make through a level – provided you’ve got a bit of paint in you, of course – provides both a visual reward and indicator of your progress through the level. Touch an object and it transforms, taking on whatever color and pattern you picked up last. Even rolling down the street leaves an impression, with a gloppy trail of paint appearing in your wake that sticks around for a while, letting you crisss-cross back over it with a different color later. there’s an aural bonus for painting things as well – depending on what song you chose for background music at the start of the level and what color you’re currently using, each time you paint an object produces a musical flourish that falls perfectly in with the track you’re listening to, whether it’s red providing a burst of of horns or a record scratch accompanying every newly brown building.

The combined effect creates a motivation to explore every nook and cranny of the world that no charge to collect all of a shattered sacred stone could ever hope to reproduce – rather than painting for completion’s sake, you find yourself painting because it’s fun. Because in exchange for moving through a level, something you were doing any way, the world bursts into color and sound, rejoicing in every step you take towards the goal. There are a handful of percentages available from the pause menu to let you know how close you are to completing smaller, unmentioned challenges such as painting all the trees, turning all the sad-sack Graydians in to dancing Raydians, or whether you’ve managed to color the blimp flying over your current level yet, but you’ll often find yourself using these more for housekeeping rather than goals to master. If anything, it’s just a gentle reminder that there’s something out there you have bounced in to, and maybe you’d like to go look for it, if you have a second?

What else? Each level in de Blob comes with a timer that starts ticking down when you start it, counting off the seconds before INKT’s goons track you down. What might initially feel like a stressful nag pushing you along to your end goal before you’re done looking around turns out to be (in all but the rarest cases) little more than a gentle reminder to look in to knocking off some of the many goals floating around each level. Completing challenges gives you more time, see, adding another minute to the clock every time you run a race, paint a group of buildings a certain color, defeat a mob of INKT guards, or restore a landmark to its former glory. You can also earn more time by painting neighborhood blocks or all the buildings along the street, which sends little mobs of Graydians tumbling out in to the street for you to color. It’s a wonderful method of keeping players on track, reminding of the game around them and rewarding them for playing it with more time to goof off and explore.

There’s more, or course: the hilarious cut scenes that open each new level, unlockables in the form of beautiful concept art galleries and even more movies that you’ll actually want to try and earn, secret missions that accompany each level once you’ve beaten it, offering you even more opportunities to see odd little corners of the world, and a dozen other little touches worth noting. It’s best you find out about them for yourself, though, by going out and buying the game immediately. It’s fall, and the floodgates have already opened on the stream of big-name games that’ll be demanding your attention between now and Valentine’s day, and games like de Blob are always the first to fall through the cracks once your Fable 2’s and Fallout 3’s start appearing. It’s a genuine shame, too, as this is a game that genuinely deserves to be played by as many people as possible. While the number of great games on the newly arrived on store shelves or just around the corner is staggering and a bit terrifying, I can promise you that few will be as immediately engaging or as fun to play (or to watch someone else play, for that matter) as this one. If you own a Wii, you should pick it up. If you don’t but know somebody who does, buy it for them for christmas and make them have you over for a bit of multiplayer. Quickly, now. Chroma City surely can’t last much longer without your help.

Filed under: talk about games