I have very mixed feelings about this game. It's a fairly unique concept of Mario 64 meets Katamari. You need to platform around to paint enough of the level and earn enough points to unlock the stage exit before time runs out. Along the way, there are several missions scattered around the stage which range from bashing enemies, to painting specific buildings specific colors, to foot(?) races. On one hand, the style, level design, and presentation are all top notch. On the other hand, the controls kinda make you wanna die, but only kinda.

First up, my biggest (and really only) complaint: The goddamn controls. In the lovely THQ fashion of running with a gimmick so hard that it is a serious detriment to the game, cough Udraw tablet cough de Blob really feels like an earlier Wii game. This is exemplified entirely by the fact that jump is NOT a button, no dear reader, it is SWINGING THE WIIMOTE UP. Let me repeat: IN A 3D PLATFORMER, JUMP IS NOT A BUTTON. Why couldn't it be A? Well, that's your compass button. Why not any of the D-pad buttons for the compass and let A be jump? Well, those are already occupied with precision camera controls on Right and Left, and a first person view by holding the Down arrow. The Up arrow, oh, that's right, that does JACK SHIT.

I'm giving the developers the benefit of the doubt, since they seem very competant, that THQ higher-ups forced them to incorporate motion controls, so the view-button was changed from Up to Down, compass changed from Down to A, and jump from A to swinging. For the record, B is your breaking maneuver (you zoom towards the ground and lose basically all momentum: useful for stopping in the air), C repositions the camera behind you, and Z targets things in a Zelda style, so you can smash them in a Sonic Adventure Homing-bash style. All of those things work just fine (or as well as they possibly could, in the case of the homing smash).

Now, as my rant hopefully gets across, this is an annoying mechanic, but is it game breaking? The answer, thank goodness, is no. Being that the prime objective is painting the level to earn points, hyper precision platforming isn't usually necessary. It can make wall-jumping a pain, but you almost never need to do them unless you're doing the challenge stages (which are really good fun, actually, in a welcome change for challenge stages) or going for very out of the way collectibles in the normal stages. The game just isn't that hard, and that's to its benefit. The clock is SUPER generous, especially if you kill enemy packs and do missions, both of which get you loads of extra time, and just the way damage works on enemies, it's pretty tough to die, and you get plenty of lives and forgiving checkpoints for even if you do. This lets you concentrate far more on having fun by jumping around, painting all the things, collecting all the things, and generally derping around.

The presentation is also very good. The story is very wacky and light hearted, and actually quite genuinely gave me good belly laughs once or twice. A colorful, happy world of Raydians is invaded by the evil Inkies, who force them and their world to all become horrible and monochrome like them, and use their world for Ink production (which is truly quite horrifying occasionally, somewhat reminiscent of the Shroobs from Mario & Luigi Partners in Time). A small rebellion exist, but they're no match for the might of the Inky empire, that is, until you, DE BLOB show up! There's not that much story, but what there is is told in cutscenes before each level. My favorite character by far has to be Comrade Black, the leader of the Inkies. He's sort of a wonderfully silly dictator (almost definitely a Hitler parody, despite his title of Comrade), and it's just so funny watching him try and keep his cool when dealing with the incompetance of his subordinates. De Blob himself comes in at a close second, as he has a very snarky, Rayman-ish disposition that makes his pre-level vigniettes very silly, more often than not, just making the Inky soldiers look like fools.

The level design is also soooo fun. Each level is gated off into sections that you unlock by getting enough points, and they all make up one large city district in each of the 10 or so stages (each of which take about an hour or less). Every section is just so fun to enter, though! You go through the previous section, exploring and completing missions and painting everything to look pretty, and then you find a new one full of blank, boring buildings and full of nasty ink, all to purify again! The locations are very varied as well, and even though your tasks are usually similar, the mission variety and level layouts are varied enough that it never gets boring. There're also a ton of music tracks, which while not all exactly "put on your iPod"-worthy, are all hopping and jumping and even get faster and happier as you paint more of the level without taking hits.

Verdict: Recommended. It's not the best platformer on Wii, but it's probably one of the best 3rd party ones on Wii. It's a colorful, fun time, and while it did occasionally make me rage when I messed up a jump a few times (those challenge levels caused much rage), It was always so satisfying to be done. It's like $3 anyway, so it's definitely at least worth a try if you see it somewhere.