de Blob (Wii)

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Back in 2004, Namco's Katamari Damacy proved that the videogame market was still safe for a certain type of playful, nonthreatening game. Amidst the metal walls and gray skies of countless first-person shooters and Grand Theft Auto-style crime simulators, this quirky Japanese game -- with its simple graphics, bright colors and basic roll-around-and-pick-up-stuff gameplay -- managed to become a minor hit. But Katamari's success didn't really ripple across the gaming market, and the dark and gritty games it stood against continued to dominate.

Now, in 2008, de Blob injects a similarly fresh, carefree experience into a depressingly realistic gaming space. While de Blob never quite rises to the level of Katamari's unique, intensely memorable experience, it ends up being an enjoyable way to spend some time.

Like Katamari, de Blob is, at its core, about rolling an oversized ball around simple, brightly colored environments. Well, I should qualify that "brightly colored" description, as the despotic "Inkies" have transformed the once-vibrant world into a depressing grid of nondescript, gray buildings and stark, empty squares. It's up to you, as the titular Blob (with the aid of some freedom- and graffiti-loving cohorts) to infuse yourself with canisters of paint and glom onto every piece of the scenery, dripping life-granting color as you go. As you bounce around, flowers sprout from empty fields, inky pools turn to clean, clear water, and the ink-black, Gestapo-style police are replaced with brightly colored aliens dancing to catchy, improvisational jazz. The slow transformation of each city from dull metropolis to bustling, vibrant bohemia is endlessly intriguing to watch, and makes up a good deal of the game's appeal. The color infusion sticks with you, too -- for hours after a play session, I would look at the white walls of my apartment and imagine a small blob blotting them into a Technicolor rainbow.

Unfortunately, there are a few annoying touches that get in the way of this, er, transformative experience. One is the controls, which never feel quite as precise or tight as they should be. Each jump requires a quick, sharp shake of the Wii remote, a move that quickly turns into a pain in the wrist. Ledges constantly seem just out of reach of your highest possible jumps, although some frantic shaking while on the edge will occasionally net wall-jump salvation. Even then, the slowly panning camera and some floaty physics make it hard to guide a precision landing, leading to many frustrating and undeserved falls. Add a lock-on targeting system that consistently chooses an undesired target and a slide-along-the-wall move that's never quite "sticky" enough, and you're left with a control scheme that, while not awful, feels just short of perfect.

While the control problem never rises above a dull roar, the game is full of frequent pacing interruptions that mimic the effect of a screaming baby at the symphony. Invariably, just as you're getting into the flow of the game's gentle, low-stress coloring rhythm, the whole thing screeches to a halt, fades to black, and then slowly fades back in to display some bit of trivial information -- a newly unlocked door or a new color-granting bauble, for instance. Worse, the action is constantly -- and I mean constantly -- interrupted by "Challenges" that necessitate stopping the free-wheeling gameplay for seconds at a time to read some explanatory text. These missions are made more galling by the fact that they're the kinds of things you would inevitably have done even without specific instruction: destroying enemies, painting buildings, and racing through areas. These might sound like minor annoyances, but they happen with such frequency that the compound effect is hair-tearingly frustrating. If the game would just get out of the way and let the basic bounce-around-and-color gameplay shine through, it would be a much more satisfying experience.