Catch22: I have to admit, this is one of the strangest games i’ve encountered so far on the PS3. It’s barely a game. Most games have some sort of basic effort & reward system in place. This game seems to lack any sort of real goal and does little to reward player participation. The only thing that kept me playing was the hope that something might actually happen… which it doesn’t.
The basic gameplay (if you can call it that) its to navigate some sort of confused cartoon worm-bug-thing calle BOY around a small sandbox level. You can stretch yourself out and control both ends of the worm to travel different directions which starts to make basic navigation a challenge. You can eat eat random ingame objects and poop them out.. if you want. You can gain points by stretching lots and, for those who haven’t deleted the game by this point, submit them online to grow a GIRL character worm-bug-thing. The GIRL worm will continue to grow as long as players keep submitting their scores and new levels to wiggle around aimlessly will be unlocked. Last count it had reached the moon and was on its way to mars. If it does make it to mars – I will have officially lost faith in humankind.
Basically there’s no real level progression and no incentive to keep playing unless you are bored out of your brain with every other game ever published.
I understand Keita Takahashi made the very successful Katamari for PS2 as a statement about consumerism. I can see links to this game as it contains a very pointless consumption of objects and a pretty meaningless existence. If this is the case then theres a certain irony that people have wasted their money on this title
As i said, Noby Noby Boy is barely a game. I’ve had interactive screen-savers more entertaining than this. To be honest i think the only entertainment derived from this game is for Namco who are making money off a title that took all of a day to develop.
The 10 mins it took to write this review is probably longer than I could keep playing Noby Noby Boy without wanting to top myself.
It’s a strange term isn’t it? Depending on context, it can have a wide range of meanings. With a positive slant, it could imply future promise. With a negative slant – ‘could have, would have, should have’.
‘Potential’ is the word that immediately came to mind when I heard that the creator of Katamari was making a new game. I watched the trailer, didn’t really understand what was going on, but bloggers were saying nice things, plus – I love Katamari, and it’s only $7, right? Might as well go for it.
I should have trusted my gut.
A lot of this review could be very similar to catch22’s. To spare you the annoyance of reading the same criticisms twice, scroll back up and read his article now. I’ll wait here.
Finished? Good.
Noby Noby Boy isn’t a game. It’s so much less than that.
See, games have a purpose. They have a story. They have aims, goals, obstacles. They are an artifical construct, which provides you with a sense of achievement for meeting objectives.
NNB is the antithesis of this. Every so often you’ll stop and think to yourself, “Why am I playing this?”. You won’t be able to come up with an answer. For any game, even shit ones, this should never happen.
I’m going to go back to the idea of ‘potential’ for a second. I love the whole indirect-multiplayer thing that NNB has going on, with all players reporting back to the same GIRL. It’s a very clever idea. Everyone, just by playing the game, helps to unlock more game content for everyone? Marvellous. Lots of ‘potential’ there. Unforunately, the game itself isn’t enough to support the high concept. It relies upon the fact that thousands of people will be playing the game. The fact is, they don’t want to play it. It’s boring. I’m not the least bit surprised that player numbers are in freefall.
I’m likely being a bit harsh on this game, because of some misguided sense of betrayal. As a huge fan of the Katamari games, I figured that NNB would be a sure thing. And y’know, a lot of people do find a sort of zen-enjoyment from playing this game. Personally, I don’t see it. I play it – but I can’t find the fun. There’s the slightest glimmer of hope there, but a game worth spending your money on? No.
In fact, I’m going to delete it now.
Catch22:
Felix:
Popularity: 89%
