Review: World of Goo (PC)

First off, you just need to know that I love physics-based games. The Incredible Machine, Garry's Mod, Fantastic Contraption, I love them all. Therefore, I went into World of Goo (PC version, I haven't played the WiiWare version, but I expect them to be the same) expecting a great game. Somehow, this game met every one of my expectations. This is a damn good game. Sure, it's frustrating at times, but even then you don't want to give up, you want to go back and try again.

If you're looking for a game with a deep storyline or fast-paced action, look elsewhere. While World of Goo has a story of sorts, it's not very deep. There are a handful of cutscenes, but nothing epic or groundbreaking. Throughout the levels of the game, you'll find signs which narrate the game. They are all signed with some variation of "The Signpainter", and they can be pretty funny at times.

The graphics are simple, but they're stylized and look very good. It's completely 2D, but don't let that put you off. This game may not have the best graphics ever, but it doesn't need them. These simple graphics get the job done quite nicely.

The sound is very good, like the funny little Goo Ball shrieks. One of the biggest things that shocked me, was that the music didn't make me want to rip my ears off. It's actually good, and fits the situation pretty well.

One of my favorite things, however, is the World of Goo Corporation feature. Whenever you finish a level with any extra Goo Balls, any extras get sent to the World of Goo Corporation, where you can try and build the tallest tower you can. The cool part is that if you're connected to the internet, you can see how tall other players' towers are in the form clouds.

Now for the bad. There is no options menu. That's not a very good thing for people like me who have widescreen monitors, much less a 1440x900 screen resolution. I'm guessing that the game runs at 1024x768 (that's a guess. I don't know the real resolution, but it's definitely not 1440x900). Another thing I would've liked to see is an option to run the game in a Windowed mode. Neither of these make the game unplayable, but it wouldn't hurt, at the very least.

This is a fantastic game. Yeah, it can be a little frustrating, there are no options to change the screen resolution, and it's pretty short (I beat it in about 6 hours, but if you go back through and try to perfect everything, I'm sure the game would be considerably longer), but it's just so great. The graphics, sound, and especially gameplay are all very stylized, and I love it.

4 out of 5 (5 out of 5 if they add an option to change screen resolution)

EDIT: After lurking on the forums for a while, I happened upon a thread about the screen resolution, and this is what an Admin had to say about it:

hey guys, if you go to the directory where the game is installed, inside a directory called properties is a file called config.txt. you can edit that file to specify the resolution you want the game to run in. it doesn't work for all resolutions because we didn't have time to fully test this feature, so use at your own risk, and if it doesn't work right, return the values to 800x600. we'll probably fix this feature in a future patch.

I tried it, and everything works perfectly except for the "Continue" button that pops up after you complete a level. If they can fix that and put it in a patch, it's a 5 out of 5.