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Version: 0.93-2
License: GPL2
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You are a blob. A round yellow blob named Bob. And you’re out to save the world — once again.

Welcome to the second episode of Blob Wars, an epic conflict in which the kindly yellow blobs struggle to wrest control of their homeworld from the evil alien invaders, and their evil assimilated blob minions. Only this time around, it’s in 3D!

Blob and Conquer is Parallel Realities’ third game for Linux, and they’ve done an excellent job of it. Its prequel, Metal Blob Solid, was a platform-style game, in which the mighty warrior Bob hopped about from ledge to ledge, shooting bad guys and rescuing captured allies. The sequel has very similar gameplay and graphics (only better!), but with the addition of the third dimension, which adds to the fun.

While you can compile Blob and Conquer from source, the Parallel Realities website offers RPM and DEB packages for the game, making installation quicker and easier. If you’ve got a Red Hat or Debian based distribution, I recommend installing it the latter way; I do, and I did. And as for dependencies, pretty much all it needs is the SDL library! Because it’s 3D, though, you also need to have 3D acceleration unless you want really low framerates. The open-source graphics drivers for ATI cards weren’t good enough for it on my computer, which necessitated installing the proprietary drivers from the ATI website.

If a menu item for Blob was added to your application menu (it wasn’t, for mine), you can click on that to start it. If not, the game can be run in the terminal by typing the command blobAndConquer.

You will first be greeted by a screenshot of the game, with a rather frightening warning: This game contains scenes of blood and violence. However, there’s no need to be alarmed. The only violence is that of round blobs shooting each other; and while a stricken blob will bounce around for a bit and then explode in a shower of redness like a squashed tomato, it’s really not graphic at all. Compared to a lot of modern games, in fact, it’s really quite mild. You’ve got to admit that it was nice of the creators to warn those of us who are squeamish, though, and the blood effects can be turned off in the game options.

Then comes the main menu, where you can click on buttons that will let you start playing the game, go through training, load a saved game, change the options, or quit. It’s a good idea, when running Blob and Conquer for the first time, to do the training mission. It plays just like one of the game levels, except for the fact that it’s impossible to die.

The game is played using a third-person camera. Moving the mouse rotates the camera around Bob, and Bob himself is moved using the arrow keys. The two most important actions in the game are controlled by the two mouse buttons: Left-click to shoot and right-click to jump. Gameplay is based on objectives, which must (or, for the optional objectives, should) be completed before exiting from the level. These usually involve unlocking doors, collecting items, jumping over lava, and doing a lot of shooting.

Most of the interactive things you’ll encounter, whether they be Information Points, switches, or lifts, are used by pressing the Action button (which is by default the Enter key). The game can only be saved at a Save Point, which are found in various places in a level, and are also activated by use of the Action button. And then there’s also walls to be blown away, teleporters, and energy barriers to keep things lively.

Blob and Conquer requires nearly as much jumping as a 2D platform game, which, at first, can be difficult. More often than not, missing a platform means landing in deadly lava. Judging depth can be rather difficult, even with the aid of Bob’s shadow (which sits directly beneath him, and is of great assistance in such things). With a little practice, though, you can get pretty good at it, and before long be leaping from pillar to pillar with ease.

Bob has four types of weapons to choose from — his trusty unlimited-ammo pistol, an Uzi, a shotgun, and grenades. Each has different advantages, and can be switched between by rolling the middle mouse wheel. The latter three all can run out of ammunition, and must be replenished by running over weapons that can be found laying around within the levels. Enemy blobs eject their weapons (and on occasion, cherries and first-aid kits) when they die, as well, which comes in handy when your arsenal is running low.

Fights are generally short and fast-paced, and it’s not uncommon to be entirely surrounded by enemies. Aiming your gun can, in such situations, be rather difficult; so, happily, Blob and Conquer contains an auto-aiming feature. When Bob nears an enemy, the aiming system picks it as his target, and all subsequent shots will automatically be fired in its direction until the enemy is dead. Then, if there are multiple enemies around, a new target will be selected.

On occasion you might not want to shoot at the target that was selected for you. The aliens themselves are much more dangerous than the assimilated blobs, being able to fly and usually having more powerful weapons, so you may want to take them down first. So, if a nearby blob was automatically chosen as your target instead of the alien you really want to shoot, you can click the middle mouse button, to cycle through the available targets until you get the one you want; and then, BLAM!

If you want even more control, and a bit of a challenge, it is possible to switch to manual aiming mode, in which you aim by moving your mouse, just like in a first-person shooter. This also comes in handy when there are crates or windows around that need blasting. A shortcut to toggle this is not defined, by default, but you can do so yourself in the options: I picked the right Alt key.

You will also eventually encounter allies, who are recognizable by the fact that they’re yellow, just like Bob (but lack the determined facial expression and the red band around the forehead). These will follow you around, and help fight the enemy. Unlike yourself, your allies cannot die — when a buddy gets low on health, he’ll simply teleport away for a while, and come back a little later, with a slightly better medical state of affairs. Your friends will also attempt to pick up cherries and first-aid, to heal themselves, but they’ll leave all the ammo to you, because they never run out. You can give your allies orders, too. Pressing the 7, 8, 9, and 0 keys on your keyboard will, respectively, tell any friends you might have to follow you (what they do by default), wait where they are, use something, or retreat from combat. The Use command can at times come in extremely handy, like when two switches must be pushed simultaneously to open a door.

Parallel Realities views their games more like products rather than projects, and therefore their programs eventually attain something almost unheard of in the Linux world: completion. This being the 0.93-2 version, Blob and Conquer is fast approaching that milestone as well. The game is fully playable, and contains all the levels that the final version will. There are a couple of bugs (on rare occasion dead enemies will get stuck in walls, and there’s one point in one of the levels where you can become trapped under a ramp), but overall it excellent. I encountered one rather odd and frightening thing, though: a few times while playing the game, the computer would freeze up. Not just X, but everything, right down to the kernel (I could tell this, because Raising Skinny Elephants didn’t have any effect). This hasn’t happened while playing any other 3D games so far, but I’m hoping that this is just some weird freak of my computer/graphics driver — I haven’t heard of anyone else encountering this. Anyway, give it a try (and let me know if you encounter the same problem)!

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 3:25 pm and is filed under Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.