Lastly, this game has some multiplayer modes as well, based around, surprise surprise, painting buildings. Being the friendless misanthrope I am, I had to try these out without properly having two people there, but luckily I was able to grasp what the modes were. The first, Paint Match, is basically a game of graffiti, wherein up to four players try to paint as many buildings as they can in their color (while trying to drain color out of their opponents). The second mode is basically like King of the Hill, wherein only one player has the right to paint buildings at any one time, and the other players must try and snag it. The third, Blob Race, took a bit to figure out. As it turns out, only a handful of buildings are paintable to start; each building can only be painted once, but the more you paint, the more buildings are available for painting. They all seem pretty similar, but in a Tony Hawk kind of way, and I’m sure they’ll end up entertaining the Blob-loving crowd.

While I could sing the praises of this game for a while, I do have to mention that this title does have some issues. One gripe I’m sure many will have is that while the game is fun, it’s also very easy; I never had much trouble completing anything but the hardest missions in the game, even when trying for a gold medal. More pressing, though, are some control issues for the game. Jumping is handled by flicking the Wii Remote downward; while I didn’t have trouble with this, other people have reported that this makes their wrist ache, but even beyond this, I had trouble jumping sometimes. There were instances where Blob was just barely airborne, but you couldn’t tell, and it ended up with me falling to my doom because I thought I could jump. Another issue I had was with the wall run system; while most of the time wall running works fine, there will be instances where you try to jump for something, but you’ll be hindered by sticking to a nearby wall, annoyingly. Lastly, the automatic lock-on has some issues. While you may be able to change targets with the Z-trigger, you’ll often be moving too fast to notice until you jump on a canister of paint, making you the wrong color for whatever task you wanted to do. So there are some issues that will hinder your experience, but they certainly won’t create a major obstacle to your enjoyment.

Overall, de Blob is a game whose simple premise is executed with brilliance, making it fun to do the simplest things in the game. It’s also going to keep you occuiped for a fair amount of time, about ten hours or so if you played it like I did, which isn’t the maximum. For its skilled mix of style and substance, de Blob gets a 9.0 out of 10, and the title of "funkiest game of the year". Give it a try; I doubt you’ll be disappointed.