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syntheticgerbil

Trouble on Blobolonia

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Sounds good, Miffy, I think I may get it soon then (if anything I really need to relax lately), it's $18 on Amazon currently, so I'll probably order it later today. I always enjoyed the concept of A Boy and His Blob, and I would really like to play a version where things are done right (and look beautiful and animate well to boot), since David Crane seemed to think it was appropriate to make his original game near impossible to finish.

I think I'll play it concurrently with Cave Story and make some use out of my Wii.

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Yeah, I've exclusively played it lying in bed late at night while winding down. It's great for that. If you need to relax, do it.

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How could you possibly know the *actual* influences without having spoken to the art team or art director?

You are actually starting an argument since now you are just acting like an arrogant jack off and don't like my "impression of it's influence."

I know you dislike Braid's art style, but avoiding any possibility that this new Boy and his Blob could have had the art team taking cues from Braid's success to try out a similar painterly traditional style for a commercial is just being purposefully dense. Even checking out the link Noyb posted to Hellman's blog should be enough to say it's not crazy to get the image. And as Thunderpeel said much earlier, in no way is it bad thing that people are using a similar art style for new 2D games.

I'm sorry I bumped this thread, I should have just made a new one to talk about it, geez.

Sorry if you took it that way, I ment no offense and I cleaned up my post quite a bit to make sure i didn't sound like i was on the attack or a jackass.

My apologies. And yes, I was incorrect in saying actual influences, rather its my personal opinion and experience in what I think was their actual influences; in fact this topic has made me more interested and I will actually go talk to the art director about this.

And I did check out Hellmens post, but again I'm not trying to argue, I'm graciously bowing out because I just wanted to say how I really like the art in this game.

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Anyone know a good place I could order this from, that ships to EU? It can't be found in Estonia and game.co.uk is out of stock.

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I don't know how to help you Erkki outside of an Ebay site. International shipping on video games has all these restrictions on every internet site except that one.

Also, I received A Boy in his Blob in the mail this week and I've played about 16 levels so far I think. This is great. I'm loving the music too. I don't even care if the games has been really easy so far, because this is the Boy and his Blob I had always wanted to play as a kid, not that mean ass NES game.

I'm glad WayForward took the time to stop developing shitty CG movie licensed games and developed this.

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I actually found one local seeming site that sells it but there is no info about the company and translations seem to be done with Google Translate, I don't trust them.

Damn it, finally something good comes to the Wii and then it's so hard to find.

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Is your Wii NTSC or PAL? If you have an NTSC Wii, I can get one either from Amazon.com or locally and then ship it to you.

If it's a PAL copy you need, maybe one of the other UK or European Thumbs can help you out? You deserve it, I think.

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PAL. I'm willing to wait a bit though, but if it doesn't appear on game.co.uk after some time has passed, it'd be great if someone could buy it for me.

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So, I picked this up for the Wii today on a random whim.

I'm only four or five levels in, so I won't analyze to death yet, but so far it's decently fun.

I never played the original, but the simple change of making the jelly beans a power instead of a resource appears to have helped quite a bit if people's comments about the NES version are any indication. Of course that makes the game a little less of a puzzle and a little more of a platformer, but I like platformers enough that I hardly mind such a change.

I stopped really noticing the art direction about 20 minutes in. It suits the style of animation they're going for well and adds to a sort of relaxing atmosphere. I think that's the main takeaway I have so far; It feels very relaxing and isn't much of a challenge.

The few missteps I've seen appear to be based around the tutorial system, or lack thereof. I'm fine with hitting buttons to discover what they do on my own and sussing out level structure and system design through trial and error, but I've been gaming for a couple of decades. Several times I discovered something like how to control the parachute form properly and wondered why there weren't any doodles about how to use it on the (now traditional) wooden signboard hints. The overall difficulty and tone seem perfect for exposing a parent or younger sibling to the form, but I'd recommend shoulder surfing a bit early on. With a little prompting this could be an awesome gateway drug to harder Braid and Winterbottom-flavoured narcotics.

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I'm still not incredibly far in since I got sidetracked playing other games, but I'm on the second world now and it's definitely gotten somewhat harder. It could still stand to be harder, but I'm guessing this game increases in difficulty on a pretty straight edge upward slope. We'll see, I suppose...

I finished my first boss fight as well, which I thought was pretty awesome, even though I was hoping it would go on a bit longer. Nice to see these since I'm guessing the original NES version had one boss fight at the end. Who knows?

Funny you say that the original game were more of a puzzle because of the limited jellybeans, Xeneth. While I'm sure they added some strategy, you'd usually end up getting a game over before ever worrying about rationing your jellybeans in the original. The biggest problem with the original seemed to be just having so much shit just based on twitch mechanics and moving pixel perfect. This part where you have to ride around inside a bubble and gather treasure under the threat of instant death everywhere comes to mind.

Just because the lack of that unfair frustration, I feel like the new Blob is just more focused on you figuring out how to get through the level than just doing everything right in order without ever messing up.

Of course the original would have probably been way less frustrating if it had infinite lives or some kind of save system as well.

But you're right, it's definitely not as puzzling as Braid and way more based on just getting from point A to point B. Even if it's the easiest of the current platformer/puzzler trio, I wouldn't mind seeing more games of this type.

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Bad double post, but I finally finished this two weeks ago. Kind of sucks it's audience lies more in the early 90s when games were less macho and more about concept (not saying that is completely dead). The tone of this game's innocence is earnest, and I can see people getting put off by that, without some sarcasm slapping it in the face before it gets too much.

The one major concern with me and this game is that it took me months to complete it. Maybe it was because I was playing all of the challenge levels (which double the amount of levels easy) and finding all of the treasure chests along the way, I found myself getting burnt out and could only play an hour or two at a time. On the later levels where the puzzle difficulty ramped up incredibly, I would find the relaxation this game automatically brings quickly turning to frustration. The biggest problem is if you miss a treasure chest there is no way to reenter the level, find it, and exit the level quickly (like the start and then select employed in Mario games and a few Kirby's). You instead have to complete the level again.

The range is pretty incredible, because while some levels in the beginning could be done in a couple of minutes, a few of the final ten levels can take an upwards of 40 minutes to an hour depending on whether you are trying to get all the chests or not.

There's an extremely pleasant suprise in the third to last level that was incredibly unexpected and one of my now favorite moments in video games. I can't spoil it. It must be experienced.

So yeah, not much has changed of my earlier opinion. Definitely this is still how Boy and his Blob should have always been. Forget the '89 one.

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