Tales from Space: About a Blob Review
I remember when I was younger and I’d play a game that totally blew me away. It was something that I simply had to tell all of my friends about so they too could experience the awesome that I experienced. That’s basically how I felt as I was playing About a Blob. Once you can ground pound a cow and watch as it turns into a pile of cheeseburgers and fries it’s hard not to fall in love. Seriously. (It also helps that the cartoony art style for the game brings me back to my younger days of watching Saturday morning cartoons.)
In About a Blob you control a small blob that must rescue his blob friends and absorb objects to grow larger. Much like Katamari each checkpoint in a stage will set a goal size that you need to reach to continue. Absorbing objects will increase your size and reaching the goal will allow you to progress further into the level. You also have the ability to ground pound (which is needed to break certain objects, use objects you’ve absorbed as projectiles to destroy turrets and you’ll gain a magnetic and electrical ability as the game progresses. The magnet ability allows your blob to attract and repel away from metal while the electrical ability will allow you to carry an electrical charge from one generator to the next. Each of these abilities help to build upon a rather simple concept and offers up a really fun gameplay experience. On top of all that the game features a co-op mode and encourages speed runs on each of it’s levels. I’ve taken a shot at the leader boards and believe me it’ll be tough to knock off the number one spot on each level.
You can play with TWO blobs!
The early levels of About a Blob play out as you might expect. Lots of absorbing objects to grow bigger and the game slowly starts to introduce new abilities for you to use. However after the first few levels something really amazing happens. As you progress through the game the world around you begins to become smaller. Suddenly you’re able to reach new heights and absorb objects that used to be twice your size. Eventually you’re absorbing houses, tanks and then even bigger houses without any trouble. The sense of scale that is presented in About a Blob is so impressive that I couldn’t help but smile from ear to ear. The progression from being just a tiny little blob to eventually being taller than a skyscraper is absolutely perfect. There’s so many games out there made by companies infinitely larger that try to make me feel like I’ve become super powerful throughout the course of the game and they continuously fail. About a Blob does an outstanding job of making me feel small and weak and slowly letting me experience the growth in both strength and size of my blob. Experiencing it first hand was incredibly satisfying to me and the entire ending sequence capped it off perfectly. Word to developers. THIS is how you do scale in games.
Gameplay aside About a Blob had me laughing consistently throughout the game at some small details that were applied in most levels. Things like funny messages on billboard signs, the reactions that the humans had towards you and a little Cthulu-like doll that I came across in one of the final levels. That goes without saying some of the really awesome stuff that you get to do at the end of the game. That’s just something you’ll need to experience for yourself.
I wonder what happens at Club Moo....
I know a lot of people are probably going to pass this up because it’s fifteen dollars and gamers seem to have some kind of grudge against download games that cost more than ten so I’m just going to say it. There’s no reason a PS3 owner should pass up this game. Fifteen seems like a lot of money (I’ll be honest I was iffy on the price at first too.) and I know there’s a lot of games out there that really don’t warrant that price but there’s a lot to About a Blob. The game itself is around four hours long and there’s tons of collectibles to go after as well. On top of that there’s a co-op mode and leader boards for speed runs so you’ll easily get your money’s worth with the game and have a great time doing so! So stop reading this review, open up the PSN store and get this game. You won’t regret it. Or as the Blob might say “Blob…blob..blob blob blob blob, blob!”
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