de Blob 2

For those into very silly, cartoony puzzle-platformer games, this game is it. However, there are some caveats that come with this particular port. As a general review first, dB2 is a wonderfully good game. It's funny (albeit immature at points, if that drives you off), whimsical and has a light yet compelling story. Gameplay is fast, responsive and intuitive once you get the hang of it, while rising to becoming challenging by the third act of the game. Blob and Pinky have a great dynamic as the main characters despite Blob never speaking a word we can understand as the player, while the Colour Underground are as charming as they are amusing. Plus, this game isn't without its slight edge, either. At times the humour dips into slightly morbid while keeping its toony tone. There's references to real world events and implied mature jokes that would easily fly over the heads of younger players. This has always been an aspect of dB as a series, so the consistency is appreciated. Aesthetically and graphically speaking, the game has aged well since its days in 2011. Though it isn't up to modern spec, it's delightful to look at and its stylistic choices are pleasing. I personally find levels like Downtown, Hydro Station and Prisma State College quite attractive to the eye once completed. It isn't flawless (looking directly at you, Soda Falls and early 2010s humour), but if you're into something as silly and story-driven as this slightly childish rebel's tale, I'd say give it a whirl. Mechanically, however, is where this particular version of the game falls apart. This isn't the fault of Blue Tongue as the original developers, as I've played countless hours of various ports and all 2011 iterations hold up fine. Rather, Blitworks scrapped together a shoddy port and declared it good enough to ship. At the time of writing, 9 years after its release, serious problems have come up such as the launcher settings failing to open. If you're playing on lower end hardware or wishing to use a nonconventional controller (like I did, with a 2015 Steam Controller), you may well be out of luck. This game lags on lower end hardware unless you change the video resolution and Steam Input might not be able to salvage your controller. Glitches are riddled throughout in this version, including an infamous bug in which Blob continually cries after being poisoned, even if he's been cleaned off. Polygons disappear, sounds pile over each other and camera angles break down completely at times. It isn't fair to view the whole game through this lens of brokenness, but Blitworks have truly made an uninspiring port that becomes more and more neglected year after year. They have also failed to respond to emails asking for support for these problems. Blitworks do not and will not care once they have your money. Overall, this is a good game, shoved into the box of a bad attempt to welcome it onto modern hardware. Whether or not you pick up this particular version or not is up to you, but I say to you, reader: give Blob and the Underground a chance. Find whatever port makes you happiest. Don't condemn this game to the idea of being bad mechanically for the mistakes of one studio. Thank you for reading this far, if you did. <3