Wednesday, November 12, 2008

No, really, World of Goo is pretty cool

I don't normally do "follow-up" commentary on games I've already blogged about... but I'll make an exception this time. On the down side, the end of the second chapter is, well, bizarre, and not necessarily in a good way... but the last two chapters (and, to a lesser extent, the epilogue) make up for it. That's especially true for you Gen-X types and younger boomers when you hit the "Information Superhighway" chapter, which comes complete with "green screen" technology and 8-bit sound in places. Oh, and those "artillery" games I reminisced about last time? You get to play a version of that with the gooballs on that last chapter, too.

Beyond that, well, let this be your guide to how hooked I am on that game... I took the day off yesterday, it being Veteran's Day and all, and figured I'd get some Fallout 3 time in (another worthy game, but a topic for another day)... but first, a little World of Goo. Eight hours or so later, I had finished the storyline, gone back through some of the earlier puzzles to gather more gooballs for my tower, and made more than one attempt to build a stable structure as high as I could. For all that the main game is "done", this is one game that I'm not done with yet... I'm obsessed by the fact that I'm still 2 balls shy of the maximum in tower mode, and haven't built a reliably stable tower to my satisfaction yet (I saw some Canadian got up to 29m high, and I'm sure I can do better than that). I'll be back, again and again... just not on a day that I need to get up and do anything the next day, I'm thinking.

Oh, side note? 8 hours clutching a Wii Remote in an underhanded death grip is a sure way for your body to tell you later that this is something you Should Not Do... but at least it doesn't seem to affect your ability to type or mouse about the next day, like, say, doing the same in most MMORPGs or FPSs would.

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