I love camp. My favorite movies are campy, many of my favorite games are campy, my favorite toys are campy, heck I figure life would be a far less enjoyable plane of existence were it not for camp. So when I saw a stylized campy game called Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack was coming to the PC I thought it was the best of two worlds, the only thing that makes camp better is stylized camp. Then a moment’s hesitation… wait this is a port? Why hadn’t I heard of it? Ah the PS Vita was it’s previous home, one of the few holes in my gaming collection. How well would a port, from a portable no less, translate to a PC screen?
Storyline:
As stories go it is pretty thin but let’s face it in stylized camp that quite often is a good thing. The less time people have to spend figuring out the plot the more time they can just go on a silly ride. You are in a lab with scientists experimenting on your blobliness. Not cool. But you manage to escape the lab and you go on a mission to vacate the whole planet. To do this you must grow big and strong, by eating more trash than a junk food addicted teenager. If you can wrap your blobby form around it you can digest it (probably even corn!). So that is what you do, cruise around, eat and expand like the average American!
Graphics and Audio:
Campy music with Saturday morning cartoon graphics suck you right in and keep you playing. This game is only taken serious in the execution of the quality of sound and the hand animated look of the video are just amazing. I could see people who don’t really even care for this type of game playing it for a while just because of the feel of the game. Just about anybody who loved shows from Scooby Doo to Samurai Jack (definitely a Samurai Jack feel to the video) will love giving this a play, maybe with a bowl of cereal next to the keyboard.
Gameplay:
The gameplay is using the mouse and a few keys on the keyboard and is fairly intuitive and pretty fun. There is a bit of puzzle solving which I was pretty good at. Then there were jumping sections I was pretty good at. Then there was trying to jump with a red hot laser on your ass and I started to have problems. I actually went from having fun and moving at a good pace to struggling in a single transition but then I have always just been good at jumping games not great so my challenge will probably not transfer onto many others (hint: if you suck at jumping games you will have some spots you get stuck a while!).
Last Call:
This may be a bit of a shorter review but that is because the game is pretty straight forward and the true fun in it really is in the experience. The music is great, the animated cutscenes are great and the gameplay is fun, all wrapped up in a campy cartoon ball. Or in this case… blob.
Trailer:
Gallery:
