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14 Jul 2014 - 18 Jul 2014
Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3 | Episode 4 | Episode 5
A laboratory of (mad?) scientists have created a wide selection of blobs to experiment upon. Their experiments are usually fatal to the creatures, but for one exception: the titular mutant blob. When the opportunity arises to escape, it does so ... and eventually claims its revenge.
I am terrible at puzzle platformers. That should be painfully obvious from the videos. It is incredibly easy to get a degree with momentum, though, and soon enough I found myself having a lot of fun with the concept, especially as the blob grew bigger and was able to take on people-sized threats.
Of course, the logic of the environments doesn't make any sense at all. What cruel architect designs a building, or what horrible civil engineer develops a city with that degree of malevolent architecture? What purpose do those terrifying spikes serve, especially with a healthy (or not-so-healthy) portion of laser-delivered death? In some cases you might be able to chalk it all up to the humans setting up obstacles to stop the blob, but others are just inexplicable.
That's just a staple of the genre. Obstacles must be placed, pits must be traversed, spikes must be poked.
As a platformer, it's actually pretty easy. The checkpoints are forgiving, the blob can take a lot of punishment before he pops, and it's kind of satisfying to get to the end of a level, having figured out how to get there. There's almost a Katamari-like glee in swallowing up pets, people, tanks, whales, and buildings, all adding to your already exponential growth in body mass. It's a good, clean, termination-level event.
I can't think of any serious fault. Sometimes the game is frustrating, but that's my own fault for being bad. Eventually I can get my way through a level with brute force. If I want to retry a level, I can. If I want to skip over a level, I can do that, too - heck, you can jump to any chapter at any time, if you don't care about the storyline progression. If I want to see if I can beat my previous score, well, there's a mode for that, too.
The only things that seem out of place are the top-down levels, especially as the blob grows to massive size. Why does it need to go through these passageways? Why does it die when it falls into one of the circular pits? It's an odd departure with a difficult control scheme that's a wide divergence from the hopping around in the rest of the game. It almost feels like a completely different game that's been tacked on to extend the playtime.
Play it. It's pretty fun, especially once you've done the first playthrough, and thus are able to easily handle anything coming your way. Like Katamari Damacy, it can be a good way to relieve stress after a long day.