From the valhalla of Brutal Legend and the dark corridors of Dead Space Extraction to the joyous world of A Boy and His Blob, remake of the NES game of many years ago.
If you played the original you know how the game plays: you feed a white Blob jellybeans to solve puzzles to let you advance through the levels.
Unlike the original, the Wii version does not feature an open world but levels with a linear progression. Each level has three treasure chests hidden and gives you a certain type of jellybeans to experiment with: so far I've been playing with blue (air baloon), green (parachute), black (ladder), orange (trampoline) and red (hole); though I've found this a bit strange in the beginning, it's probably to avoid that players will abuse a certain bean to solve all puzzles.
In the first world, progressing through the levels is very easy and the game clearly identifies most of you obstacles with signs depicting how you should proceed.
What the game doesn't tell you is how to get treasure chests, which is completely up to the player; if you collect all three of them, you'll unlock a challenge stage with a more complex layout than the levels in the "story mode" and without any clues; they still can't be considered "hard", but they do restict your options with only two types of jellybeans. Beating these levels will unlock artwork pieces that will decorate your hideout as stones.
The hideout works as a menu. You can access the standard story levels, unlocked art galleries, challenge levels and even manage your saved data.
Something I particularly like is the total lack of on-screen texts and meters, as well as no in-game tutorial where you are instructed on each and every button and mechanic in the game, forcing the player to experiment to get things done.
More impressions soon as I continue.
If you played the original you know how the game plays: you feed a white Blob jellybeans to solve puzzles to let you advance through the levels.
Unlike the original, the Wii version does not feature an open world but levels with a linear progression. Each level has three treasure chests hidden and gives you a certain type of jellybeans to experiment with: so far I've been playing with blue (air baloon), green (parachute), black (ladder), orange (trampoline) and red (hole); though I've found this a bit strange in the beginning, it's probably to avoid that players will abuse a certain bean to solve all puzzles.
In the first world, progressing through the levels is very easy and the game clearly identifies most of you obstacles with signs depicting how you should proceed.
What the game doesn't tell you is how to get treasure chests, which is completely up to the player; if you collect all three of them, you'll unlock a challenge stage with a more complex layout than the levels in the "story mode" and without any clues; they still can't be considered "hard", but they do restict your options with only two types of jellybeans. Beating these levels will unlock artwork pieces that will decorate your hideout as stones.
The hideout works as a menu. You can access the standard story levels, unlocked art galleries, challenge levels and even manage your saved data.
Something I particularly like is the total lack of on-screen texts and meters, as well as no in-game tutorial where you are instructed on each and every button and mechanic in the game, forcing the player to experiment to get things done.
More impressions soon as I continue.
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