Noby Noby Boy review

You would be hard pressed to find gamers who admit they did not at least crack a smile when they saw the Katamari Damacy games. You roll a katamari (ball) around and collect stuff to make it larger; it was simple, quirky, and weird, but most importantly, a load of fun. So when I heard the creator of Katamari Damacy was making a brand new original game, I, along with plenty of others, planned to buy it regardless of how ridiculous the concept may have seemed or look.

So the famed creator of Katamari Damacy along with Namco Bandai, released his latest creation for the Playstation Network, known as Noby Noby Boy. Not to be confused with actually being a game, Noby Noby Boy is best described as an original interactive experience, which may be why it holds that $4.99 price tag; it’s low enough to take a risk on, which should be good enough for many intrigued PS3 owners.

So what is Noby Noby Boy exactly? To put it simply, you play a four-legged creature, Boy, that will stretch, eat things and, well, poop them back out in the same manner they were originally consumed. You can combine different objects together as well, like eating a fruit and a creature and eventually ejecting a creature with a fruit head; this experimentation is meant to give you something to do as you attempt to build up your growth. As simple as the premise may be, there is more to Noby Noby Boy from my hours of meddling around the past few days with this “interactive experience.”

You control Boy who eats and will comically poop out what he eats. Control of Boy takes place through a randomly generated flat environment where people, creatures and objects exist solely to interact with. Boy’s house is placed somewhere in the environment and will be the only consistent thing you will ever see throughout the game. Boy’s house allows you to change to a new map giving you a new random assortment of people, creatures and objects to interact with.

You control the front two legs with the left analog stick and the hind two legs with the right analog stick. Jumping and flying are both controlled by L2 and R2, while shrinking is controlled with L3 and R3.You can move both parts in opposite directions with the analog sticks to cause Boy to stretch. The longer Boy is means more space in his worm-like body for consumed objects to stay. Otherwise, if no space is available, Boy will automatically (insert favorite euphemism for bodily functions here) out the objects.

Boy will stretch and report his lengths to Girl, who is like Boy but on a much larger scale. Girl will consume your length data and grow longer. As she grows she is actually moving away from the planet Earth to reach other heavenly bodies. In the days since Noby Noby Boy’s release, the combined length of all the PS3 players in our real world was able to help Girl reach the moon! This opened up, literally, a whole new world to play around in. This brought about exciting times for all who have been delving into the Noby Noby Boy experience, as they now had new environments and objects to interact with and experiment upon.

We, meaning the Noby Noby Boy community, now had a brand new set of people, creatures and objects at our disposal. This time all the humans and dogs were now in space suits. You would see people driving around in satellites. There were yellow moon crescents with legs walking about–I assume this was a bad joke showing what moon people would look like. Flying fish would now be floating about, and mushroom tops floating around like flying saucers.

This was whole lot of weird but also a whole lot of new. The physics on the moon appeared to have less gravity but with more experimentation I was able to create some awkward situations for Boy.

The level of Noby Noby Boy’s fun will be determined by the player. You will find endless supply of creatures like dogs, cats, camels, flying fish and even people ranging from all kinds of professions. You can choose to eat them, or at times they will jump on Boy’s body for a free ride throughout the town, and as mentioned you can also experiment to create new objects through digesting multiple objects.

From my experimentation, I was able to make Boy stretch so far that his body snapped into two. This created two separate bodies no longer restricted by Boy’s elasticity. I enjoyed eating animals and sadistically hearing the animal’s last echoing cry as entering Boy’s body. Also there were the numerous failed attempts to tie Boy in a knot or entangling him in a cloud, but it’s certainly possible to get tangled up, as you are harder to control the larger you get.

As expected by the type of gameplay, the overall music is very soothing and calming. It has yet to get irritating as more time was invested.

The most important question: Is Noby Noby Boy worth your time and money? For $4.99, you bet it is! This is one of those casual time waster games, similar to that of Wii Sports or Nintendogs. You would end up jumping back into it every time and again to see if there is anything new, and with the community pushing Girl ever forward, chances are good that there will be. Noby Noby Boy is charming, silly and will give you a smile, and for $4.99 that’s all you can ask for.