Can it get better than Goo?
Monday, January 5th, 2009
Recently I finally downloaded World of Goo on my Wii, it had escaped me since this whole business with Christmas and New Year had kept me way busy. My older brother had bought it before me on his PC through their website, but it is also available through Steam, but even so I wanted it on the Wii as I find it easier and more comfortable to focus on these kinds of games when playing them in the couch by the TV. If I am at the computer I mostly want to do other things than gaming, like writing up blog posts! I had not checked the differences between the different system versions of World of Goo, but to my delight I discovered that the Wii version had a four player local co-op mode! One word: Epic! But before I go into describing that experience I will describe the game itself.
The game takes place in the fantastical World of Goo (doh) and you control a plethora of different goo balls to build structures to reach a pipe which the goo who has not been used for construction will escape through. The challenge is not only to finish the level by rescuing enough goo balls to meet the goal, but also to save as many extra as possible and to do it as fast with as few moves as you can.
The process of building structures with goo balls is by dragging them into place with your cursor and they will automagically connect to balls near them. Different kinds of goo acts and reacts in very different ways, and I am amazed on their ingenuity! The whole game is based on a physics engine which works on every goo ball and the environment, which really adds a great sense of realism to the simplistic but great looking graphics! Design really is worth more than high definition, for me, I have seen many ~nextgen~HD~games~ which sure has a ton of details and high resolution graphics, but the design is… well, crappy!
Yesterday evening I had a number of people at my place, and we played a bunch of levels together! The co-op function is really logically done, it simply adds one extra cursor per extra controller, so you can have up to four differently colored cursors zooming about the screen! This of course adds a ton of chaos, but also increases the speed with which things are constructed, and it is hilarious! With the right people that is.
As we progressed into the game, and into the night, we did more and more stupid things to sabotage for ourselves with tons of laughter at the funny goos their funny sounds, designs and functions. In the end we always finished the levels we played, even though we were building stuff like crazy, and we got to Chapter 4 before resigning to our respective beds. At certain points we did have to organize ourselves slightly and do some more planned teamwork, but most of the time it was just a flowing experience. Absolutely the funniest gaming session I have had in a very long time.
Right now I cannot tell if the game will be fun for long a long period of time, but for the price, 1500 Wii points or ~€15, it has in my oppinion already payed for itself! Nowadays with the small amount of spare time I have the motivation to play a game is proportional to how fun over time it is, this means I have a kind of a hard time motivating myself for anything which is rewarding after a big time investment, as I usually move on to another game before those rewards. I have a whole bunch of single player games in my bookshelf waiting to be played.
