Played on: PS Vita (also available on PC) Released: February 2012

This is the sort of game I never would have paid for. I’d never heard of it. It looked like a generic platformer with a 50’s B-movie horror aesthetic. Do I really need another generic platformer?

But it came for free with Playstation Plus, and my Vita was quite starved for games, so loaded it up and gave the game a shot. The charm and polish that Drinkbox Studios deliver is apparent right away, and within half an hour I was completely sold on a game I’d have normally dismissed.

You play a green mutant blob that starts out nice and small, but grows in size as it consumes all items in the vicinity. The platform puzzles are generally fairly simple – find enough consumables so that you’re big enough to eat your way out of the area. Controlling the Blob feels both sluggish and smooth, just the right sense of inertia. The visual design is super-charming, the edges of the frame show the reflection of an old tube TV panel while the objects and backgrounds nail 50’s B-movie iconography. Each area becomes gradually more epic and hilarious – moving from ingesting pesky scientists and their lab equipment to gobbling up the military and their pathetic tanks.

I usually played when on the couch with other things on the TV, so sound was often off. It was easy to pick and play for 5 minutes or 50. It genuinely surprised me how good the game was, and I started to immediately appreciate the value of PS+.

It got me interested in the developer, Drinkbox, who I’d previously not heard of. Of course Drinkbox would go on to make Guacamelee, but thats later in the year….

Verdict: Refreshing side-scrolling platformer. Very fun distraction.

Should Bradley play this: Probably not. Maybe pick it up on Steam if its super-cheap, but otherwise, not really his cup of joe.