Some stages are wonderfully coloured, others can be dull and dark at times

Very rarely do we review Wii games here. Not because the Wii is a bad console, but because the Wii is a terrible platform for games right now – consistently being beaten down by what feels like its bigger brothers: the 360 and PS3.

But once in a while a title that isn’t featuring Mario or Link arrives that can really warm the cockles of your heart. This time, it’s the turn of A Boy & His Blob. This is a disc release, not a virtual console download. Probably one of the nicest, cutest and easiest platformers out there that uses the Wiimote in lazy fashion – just how I want it. This can be played in classic controller style, which appeals to old fogies like me a lot.

The game has a simple premise, you control a boy in a wonderfully rendered cartoon world, and you’re friend, who happens to be a blob, helps you go through platforming objectives by turning into ladders, holes in the ground, and so on. Your only real enemy are various sized black blobs (yours is white). It’s funny, this game hasn’t gotten any of the slack from the evil blobs being black that LocoRoco did. The claim there being that it was racist. The story follows the blob who lands on earth into the path of the boy after his home planet of blobbolonia…. you get the jist. This is typical Nintendo light & fluffy story telling.

Use of lighting effects on the hand-drawn artwork is wonderful

You control the boy and unlock abilities of the blob by collecting jelly beans as you progress through the game. These jellybeans are accessed by an in-game menu that pops up akin to Crysis, ironically. Each Jellybean is thrown on the ground for the blob to eat, and he will diligently perform whatever task assigned by said jellybean. These are mundane tasks such as becoming a hole in the ground, or a ladder but get interesting when you can parachute or make the bubble go around you in order to bounce around a stage.

This game came out originally on the SNES 20 years ago, designed by the Pitfall series creator, and was re-released earlier on DS, only to get a full port on the Wii. It features four main area’s and a total of 40 stages to platform your way through, as well as packing 40 challenge area’s.

The graphics are beautiful. The hand-drawn style really lends itself to the Wii, and it features some seriously impressive lighting effects that will whimsically make you smile like a 10 year old boy. The only downfall to this artwork is that throughout the game, a lot of motifs are re-played over and over as the four different stages of the game take places in roughly the same locations.

Blobolonia looks a bit Mario Land ish at times

To give this game extra cute factor, you can hug the blob for doing a good job. Or, alternatively, you can scold him for being a bad blob. Do both and you can probably scar the blob for life, turning him into a white trash hill billy blob that’ll undoubtedly raise a family of unruly young blobs to ruin Blobolonia’s suburbs.

Check this game out if you find it. I only stumbled across it and thought it looked interesting enough to dust off my Wii. It was released earlier on the DS so there’s a high chance of finding this in a bargain bin or second-hand shelf. It’s worth the experience. The full Wii version is due later this week.