Slimes. Goo. Blobs. Since the dawn of video game time, these balls of pudding, or whatever you may call them, have been public enemy number one in almost any RPG that you can name. What happens, however, when these snotty spheres turn on each other? What happens when you and your friends take control of these creatures and duke it out in arena combat? The Blobs Fight knows what happens, and it is nothing interesting, really.
Developed and published by SkyPyre Studios, this multiplayer arena party game is made for one to eight players. Your path to victory in each game mode primarily consists of smacking bits of goo out of your opponents. You must then use your own blob to absorb that goo. The more you have, the larger you become and the closer you are to winning. However, keep in mind that larger blobs move much slower.
In order to knock the flesh(?) from your friends, you have two options: dash into them, or ground pound them. In many cases, party games should not be too complicated. They should be accessible for players of all skill levels. Even so, the range of motion and moves you can perform as a blob feels incredibly limited. To make matters far worse, however, is the fact that the blobs do not control well.
If I were given the choice between maneuvering a rickety old grocery cart with wonky wheels down a steep, bumpy road, or maneuvering a blob in The Blobs Fight, I would undoubtedly take the former. Blobs are free thinkers. They cannot be expected to follow the inputs of some player who thinks they know what they want. To a blob, the tilting of a control stick is more of a suggestion. Attempting to tell the blob where to move results in the blob slowly turning in the general desired direction and at an irritating pace. The animation feels partly to blame for the lackluster feeling, as blobs lazily glide across the ground with little visual pizzazz. Even the act of slamming into opponents fails to carry any weight or emphasis.
In fact, slamming into friends is awkwardly difficult. Perhaps that is a design choice. It may be funnier to watch a bunch of blobby spheres hurl themselves at one another with little success. However, for me and the group of friends I gathered to play the game, it felt incredibly frustrating. Timed matches would end with hardly anyone succeeding in attacking, and matches with more time on the clock or none at all went on for way too long.
With four different game modes for competing with friends, one would hope that there could be plenty of variety to keep the game fresh. One would have to keep hoping, since you must either gather the most blob bits, make people lose the most blob bits, gather the most blob bits while standing in a certain spot, or gather the most blob bits for the longest amount of time. To put it much more briefly, you are always gathering blob bits. This extends to the adjustable rules which also fail to offer enough options for bolstering variety.
The greatest part of the game are the maps. There are nine in total, and they each feel distinct from one another. Some have light hazards to keep you on your toes, but nothing that felt too challenging or too inconsequential. The roughest part of the maps, however, is that they are hard to look at. Though that’s more of an issue with the game’s visuals.
It feels as though there is no sense of direction in The Blobs Fight’s color scheme. There are plenty of colors, to be sure, but they rarely feel like they go together well. On several maps, it also feels that those colors were poorly implemented as they made my eyes feel strained. These poor visuals apply to the blobs as well. Blobs can be equipped with cutesy little outfits to give them some individuality, but they do not distract from the fact that the blobs look like they were created in a flash game from 2006.
Going back to the game modes, there is a mode that can be done solo or cooperatively with friends. This game mode only works with three of the nine maps, for some reason, and sees you repelling an army of hopping robots. Even on the harder difficulty, these robots posed no threat. The most difficult part of this game mode is, like the others, simply getting your blob to do what you want it to do. Repelling the robots is so laughably easy that the addition of a single friend makes it practically impossible to lose.
The Blobs Fight on Xbox One is supposed to be a party game. Yet, because of its wonky, imaginative controls, and a huge lack of content, it falls extremely short. True, it has some distinctive map designs, but these are ultimately dragged down by the poor color choice and visuals. If you are looking for a great party game to entertain friends and family, unfortunately this game is snot for you.
