Noby Noby Boy Review
Noby Noby Boy
Namco Bandai 2009 for the PS3
Overview
I have been trying for about an hour now to think of some coherent way to describe this game. As many of you know, this is a title from the creator of the surprise PS2 hit Katamari Damacy. However, as if that title wasn’t strange enough, Keita Takahashi (the mad genius behind the game) has taken all structure and semblance of plot away form this title and left of with this… Noby Noby Boy. There are no missions; there are no time frames to worry about. It is only you, Boy, eating everything in your path to try to aid your friend, Girl. (I’ll try to explain more under the Story section… but bear with me…)
Controls
Not exactly the best control setup I’ve ever seen in my life, but it gets the job done. Essentially you can control both the head and the back end of Boy with each joystick independently. While this seems simple enough, they decided to throw a wrench into the mix by making practically every other control in the game hinging on one single button, L2.
L2’s functionality:
Holding L2: Boy grips the ground around his head, causing more friction and making movement slower and more restricted
Tapping L2: Boy’s front half jumps/Boy opens his mouth to eat what is in front of him. How can you differentiate between the two of these commands, you can’t! Sometimes you eat when you want to jump, and vice versa. Now the question is, with about 10 different programmable buttons on the PS3 controller, why would there every be a need to double up on the same button?
Graphics
These are glorified PS2 graphics, let’s just be honest. But then again, this is Takahashi’s style. I’m not going to dock points from him because he didn’t change who he is as a game designer. If you look closely, despite the rigidity of the shapes as first glace, there is actually a great bit of detail that went into each character and every one of the 50+ stages that was created. He took the graphics from his hit, Katamari Damacy, and updated them with a little bit smoother corners.
Story
This is where you’ll need to bear with me as I attempt to explain this. Let me just be brief: There is no plot to this game. I’m not even sure if I can truly call this a game, because there is no real point to playing it. There is no endgoal to be accomplished, only a tally of your points which is added to the cumulative total of everyone in the world who has logged into the game online. However, this is where the interesting part comes into play. You as “Boy” stretch and grow, then give the points of how many meters you grow to a sort of highscore. The visual representation of this is “Girl”, a giant pillar jutting out of the Earth. As of right now, there is only one playable planet within the game (with 50 some odd maps), but when Girl becomes the length of the distance between the Earth and the moon, Takahashi has stated that he would release an expansion containing “moon levels”. This will continue on as Girl grows and reaches more planets within the solar system as well. Considering I couldn’t make out what is going on within this first version of the game, I have no clue what to expect from an expansion or further updates.
The Bottom Line
7.6/10
This is a great way to waste time without truly thinking at all. It is mindless fun with a creepy and quirky worm-like character that defies physics. The lack of structure in the game hurt it a little in the end, but the main thing that took away from this PSN game was the camera. This is quite possibly the worst camera in a game I’ve ever seen to date (yes, worse than Lair). Very hard to control, it is supposed to follow the Boy around the map, yet having it do so can often be more trouble than its worth. There are some obvious flaws in the game, but for the price of $4.99, it is definitely worth downloading this title to see what all the fuss is about.
