I’m always on the lookout for interesting Wii games, so when a friend of mine recommended indy release World of Goo, I decided to check it out. Balls of goo? Sign me up.
Admittedly, I was crotchety when I saw that World of Goo cost 1500 points ($15). Why couldn’t it be 800 or 1000 points like most games, I grumbled to myself. Stupid no-name developers (2D Boys). Stupid Nintendo. Stupid stupid.
Then I started playing. Oh. My. God. Laugh if you must, but I love goo.
The game plays like a physics simulation. There aren’t really any playable characters, just tons of little moving balls of goo. Stop laughing, damn it. You can use the balls to build things, at the prompting of little signs. The sign painter in this journey is reminiscent of GLaDOS from Portal - he’s pessimistic and often misleading (though not always). Also like Portal and other puzzle games like Braid, you learn as you go without any real direction.
Because the balls of goo are alive, you’re presented with the problem of building bridges and towers in a very unstable environment. Every level has additional challenges as well. For example, sometimes there are buzzing saws that chop out your little goo balls and other times there are fires which cause your balls to explode.
Stop. Laughing.
Anyway, the game also throws in a number of references to other classic games, so it is fun to spot them all. For example, in one of the first levels, your narrator references a frog that spits jewels from his mouth (Zuma) and on another level, you find a magical whistle, referencing the Mario whistle. Like Portal, what the sign painter says is often hilarious, and like Braid, there is underlying serious commentary, on things like (in this case) Internet security, discrimination, and the Barbie-doll nature of our society.
There’s also an online piece of the game, and although the Wii is lacking in this aspect right now, games like this will hopefully change that. In each level, you have to collect a certain number of goo-balls, but if you collect more than necessary to “pass,” the extras are sent to a bonus level, where you can compete with other players to build the tallest tower of your extra balls (now see, you should get points or trophies or something for this…sigh, maybe someday…). If you get high enough, there’s a bonus mini-game.
I know I said I like de Blob, but if you buy one Wii game this fall, make it World of Goo. This should have been a $50+ game on disk, not a download. They make good use of the Wii controller, something few Wii games do well, and they are well-deserving of all the prizes they won. I keep referencing Portal and Braid in this review because I put this game in the same category. Kids can play it at the lower levels, but really this is an adult game, which the Wii needs right now.
The Bender Podcast
Your loss.