Thursday, February 7, 2013

Thursday Impressions: World of Goo



I recently realized that I own too many games on Steam, and unless I do something, a lot of those games are probably never going to be played. My solution is to set aside an hour or so every Thursday to play a game I've never played before (or at least that I haven't played in a very long time). I'll archive my impressions of said games on my blog because... well... because I feel like it!

I started this out with World of Goo, one of the first independent games that made itself known to the mainstream gaming industry. I've played a demo a long time ago, but I was awful at it and my brother thought it was stupid. Nonetheless it's a classic, so I thought I'd try my hand again.

This is a puzzle game that involves connecting balls of goo in order to get to the end of a given level. It's a simple concept, but it was pulled off with great presentation.

Unfortunately, my very first impressions were negative, as the game runs on a set resolution that you're not allowed to change. The entire game was stretched on my 1366x768 monitor, and since there were no in-game options, I had to use alt+enter to activate windowed mode.

I'm generally awful at puzzle games, so it took me an entire hour and a half to get through the first world, but I had a lot of fun along the way. The graphics are cute, the physics are well-implemented (albeit quite frustrating at times), and the music was phenomenal. Even if the entire game was a boring piece of crap, I would still play it for the beautiful soundtrack.

In conclusion, if you generally enjoy puzzle games, you'll certainly enjoy this game. I found it frustrating and it took me a long time to get through some of the levels I played, but that's simply because my mind doesn't let me figure out puzzles as well as others' do. World of Goo is a great game with great presentation.

Verdict: Keep playing... for a while.
I'm not great at puzzle games, and I probably won't get much farther in this game, but I'll probably go on to see how far I can get.

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