Extremely polished, but in the end a kind of unsatisfying puzzle game
World Of Goo is yet another take on the familiar Bridge Builder formular, but it puts a cartoony twist on the whole thing as your building blocks are little creatures made up of goo and the goal is to guide them to the level exist like Lemmings back in the day. The game also shifts the focus from pure static bridge building to building all kinds of contraptions, towers that fall over by design, things that attach to rotating wheels and numerous other creative endevous. The gameplay happens all in realtime, so there is no separate construction mode, all your constructions have to be self supporting all the time, this adds a bit of an action element to the whole game.
On the technical side of things World Of Goo is a pretty mixed bag. On one side the graphics look quite impressive, with a great style and lots of polish, but on the other side the game is limited to an arcaic 800x600 resolution that even back in 2008 was already way out of date. The game also doesn't allow any kind of zooming, which makes the level often feel artificially restrictive, as you just can't see much of the level.
Overall the game is much better then expected in some ways and much worse in other. The twist on the core bridge building formular is impressive and it makes the game feel fresh even so there have been numerous similar games and the whole presentation is top notch. On the other side the switch to realtime building makes the game a lot more luck based then I would like. Frequently there just isn't a whole lot of thinking involved to get to the exit, instead it's just trial and error to get the execution right. The constant introduction of new types of goo balls and other mechanics also stops the game from ever getting a consistent rhythm, it's not so much about using all the stuff you have learned in the past, but more about figuring out how whatever new gimmick they throw at you works. This makes getting to the end of a level kind of unsatisfying as it never feels like you have accomplished much. The resources you have for building are also restrictive enough to make it impossible to get very creative, so there tends to only ever be one solution to get to the end of a level. As your goo balls are restricted to a certain length all your bridges also end up looking kind of the same and you never get to build complicated support structures or such. It's a solid game and it fun enough for the five hours it takes, but it never feels all that satisfying as it should be. For all the stuff they added, there is just to much that you can do in other bridge building games that they left out here.
