Spark Comic 19 - Blobtacular

August 8th, 2011
Spark Comic # 19 - Blobtacular

Welcome to a Sparktacularly Blobtacular edition of Spark Comics. Today's topic, the Wii game A Boy and His Blob. Now, I had heard of this game for quite some time and have only recently gotten my hands on it. While I haven't had a chance to play it too much, been busy with other things like life, doing these comics, and playing Catherine, but I love the game. It has amazing animation quality and it is outrageously cute, not to mention it has decently solid gameplay mechanics and yet it's very underappreciated. Laugh if you want for loving a "kid's game", as you might call it, but I'm gonna have fun playing this and I highly recommend you buy it!

Playing this game has made it even more of a shame that more games like this aren't made anymore. It seems sometimes the games industry has grown into a bit of an weird state as of late. These days, the only games that seem to sell or get greenlit for production, are the same cut and pasted shooters with no originality. This stems from Halo, but should not be blamed for it. After all, Halo revolutionized game creation, art direction, and shooter gameplay and I do love the series for it (Though, I'm not really much of a Halo or shooter fan). Then you have Call of Duty, that I will forever consider to be the cause of the downfall of artistic and intelligent gaming, coming in and turning games into a state where people have to stretch the uncanny valley as far as insanely possible and fooling the general public that anything that doesn't look redundantly realistic is a waste of time and belongs to the 5 year-olds whom they will berate if they play it and complain if they don't.

Much like comics, games can be a storytelling medium, even in the most basic sense. What ever happened to games with actual stories and characters I cared about, that have a even shred of personality, actual creative design and unique & intelligent game mechanics? Oh wait, they're undiscovered gems in the bargain bin because nobody thought it were edgy enough, just like this game and No More Heroes 1 & 2 (The fact that games like Catherine now exist and is selling well make me hope that maybe this will change). A Boy and his Blob actually makes me care about these characters through just their actions. The story isn't anything super complicated, instead it's basic and perfectly reasonable for a game like this. The gameplay doesn't re-invent the wheel, but it's unique and has interesting mechanics with beautiful art design.

There is only so much you can actually do to innovate a genre where you just point and shoot anything that looks at you the wrong way, but there is still a way to innovate it. Many games have rovolutionized the genre and continue to. The problem is that most developers take the easy way out and don't bother to try anything new or presents an actual innovation that's half-baked. Everything else that uses creativity and actual artistic quality just falls by the wayside, which is why so many games that are better than the giant rich gorilla in the room keep getting cancelled or underperform so much they make sequels impossible.

My apologies for the long rant, but in the end, what I'm saying is play and watch what you like, but give other things a chance too and broaden your horizons. There is more to life than shooting games and hyper-realistic graphics. Even if the thing looks silly and for 5 year-olds, like Winnie the Pooh, doesn't mean it's not worth your time.

P.S. Coincidentally, the same week I make this, Smosh made this video. This hilarious video shows the unfortunate state the games industry is in. [link]