Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack

Developer: Drinkbox Studios
Steam Release: Aug 2012
Hours Played: 6.6
Similar To: Gish / Gumboy / Leo's Fortune / Unmechanical / Wimp: Who Stole My Pants?
Rating: 4/5 Parsnips




GAMEPLAY
This is the game for all those who were disappointed with Gish. Like any decent precision platformer, it is challenging yet user-friendly and incredibly fun to play. To a 1950s soundtrack and art-style, MBA blends classy presentation with whimsical gameplay and makes you 100% determined to crush that score. Comparisons with Gish are unavoidable as you control a globulous blob while bouncing, jumping, clinging and eating your way through the environments. Later, you manipulate levers with a telekenetic skill as well as magnetically clinging to and repelling away from metal surfaces. Furthermore, intimidating lasers and other such evil obstacles impede you progress and threaten to kill you as you go. Levels are brilliantly designed and generally last around five minutes. 



BALANCE & PACE
The idea is to eat and absorb as much as you can so that you grow and get to other areas as quickly as possible. Eating objects to become bigger allows you to consume those cork-like stoppers that act as blockers to the next area and so is crucial for completion but it's the inventive obstacles and intriguing level-design that will have you appreciating the superb quality of this title. It's clearly apparent that the makers have put in the extra effort to make this game polished and a fulfilling experience for the gamer. There may not be a huge amount of levels like a Super Meat Boy or a Shuggy but every time you complete a level and move onto the next, you know that the game will present something different and special. Hardcore gamers will no doubt learn the courses and attempt to complete them in ever improving speed-runs. 



PRESENTATION & DESIGN
When it comes to best scores, best times, ranks and leaderboards, a precision platformer has to get it right and thankfully TFS:MBA delivers. Presentation is also superb. To a catchy 1950s spy-theme riff, on pressing Story Mode, you are taken to a very simple level-select screen which divides the game into six areas that become unlocked as you play. Each area contains anything from about 2 to 5 levels which you access by way of a sub-menu when you click on one of the six areas. At the end of a level, you are shown all the key stats you'll be interested in such as score, medal awarded, final time, bonuses, ranking score and your online rank.




PROGRESS SYSTEM
This info is displayed in a cartoon-like font but in a plain and simple, no-nonsense manner. To get to the real meaningful info, however, you'll need to dig back to the title-page and access the Leaderboards. From here, you can click through each level and see how you rank and compare with all the other online players. This I like, because you can fine-tune your speed-runs, shave off vital seconds and add vital points as you see your name rise up through the ranks. There is nothing like a good precision-platformer that can manage to stir up friendly competition like this and to make you want to perfect your game. Maybe I'd like to have seen more than five names per page plus info explaining how the score system actually works but you can't have everything.
 

CONCLUSION

Sorry Gish fans but Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack is an out and out triumph and has everything that the earlier black and white game should have had. It is one of those games that makes you desperately both want to redo levels to beat previous scores and plow through the game to enjoy its delights in equal measure. Personally, I have spent so much time trying to perfect my Level 1 score (still only 258th in rank) that I have plenty of the game to unlock. Yet I'm sure I'm not going to be disappointed with future content which I know will be complex and challenging as well as a pleasure to tackle. This is one of those games that you'll be happy to have in your library.