A Great Time To Be Sure
It's no secret that the Wii's game line-up has been lacking. Not mind-blowing by any means whatsoever. However, they do some get of the most random awesome titles out there. Boom Blox was one game. de Blob is another one.
This game is, in every sense of the word, a Wii game. Nintendo consoles tend to attract these family-friendly games with unlikely mascots that have tons of depth if one chooses to really pursue it.
In the world of de Blob, the INKT Corporation has taken over a city and has sucked all of the color out of it. You are the Blob, who can suck up any of the color creatures in the world. You work with yellow, red, and blue --- and, of course, any combination of the colors possible. Not a ton of colors, but the 7 variations provide enough difference to make the challenges, which are definitely not overly challenging, but they do avoid making them insultingly easy.
While you can breeze through the average level in about 30 minutes to go to the next level, there are so many other things to do, such as freeing all of the citizens of the city by painting blocks of the region and then painting over them to bring color to their world. You can choose to spend the needed time to free all of them, but it is not needed. You can choose to compete all of the races, painting missions, and attacks on the evil minions of the INKT Corporation --- but, again, you do not have to do so. The freedom to decide how much you wish to do is one of the best aspects of this game.
The only real issue with the game is the jumping controls are less than responsive. Rather than a simple jump button, you have to waggle the Wii-mote to jump, which can be fairly irritating on occasion. You also stick to surfaces for a little while (a needed thing for some of the missions), but it can really cause problems if you're making a series of tight jumps. But this is simple nit-picking and it's really not that much of an annoyance.
This is the kind of game your kid will love to watch you play --- and you'll love to play it for them. There is nothing but a positive thing for it. This is, along with Mario Galaxy and Boom Blox, one of the only real must-have games for this console.
