Back in 2004, Namco's Katamari Damacy proved that the videogame market was still safe for a certain type of playful, nonthreatening game. Amidst the metal walls and gray skies of countless first-person shooters and Grand Theft Auto-style crime simulators, this quirky Japanese game -- with its simple graphics, bright colors and basic roll-around-and-pick-up-stuff gameplay -- managed to become a minor hit. But Katamari's success didn't really ripple across the gaming market, and the dark and gritty games it stood against continued to dominate.

Now, in 2008, de Blob injects a similarly fresh, carefree experience into a depressingly realistic gaming space. While de Blob never quite rises to the level of Katamari's unique, intensely memorable experience, it ends up being an enjoyable way to spend some time.

See that one gray building there? If you don't color it, you are a failure as a human being.

Like Katamari, de Blob is, at its core, about rolling an oversized ball around simple, brightly colored environments. Well, I should qualify that "brightly colored" description, as the despotic "Inkies" have transformed the once-vibrant world into a depressing grid of nondescript, gray buildings and stark, empty squares. It's up to you, as the titular Blob (with the aid of some freedom- and graffiti-loving cohorts) to infuse yourself with canisters of paint and glom onto every piece of the scenery, dripping life-granting color as you go. As you bounce around, flowers sprout from empty fields, inky pools turn to clean, clear water, and the ink-black, Gestapo-style police are replaced with brightly colored aliens dancing to catchy, improvisational jazz. The slow transformation of each city from dull metropolis to bustling, vibrant bohemia is endlessly intriguing to watch, and makes up a good deal of the game's appeal. The color infusion sticks with you, too -- for hours after a play session, I would look at the white walls of my apartment and imagine a small blob blotting them into a Technicolor rainbow.

As your mom might say, "I hope you don't think I'm cleaning that mess!"

Unfortunately, there are a few annoying touches that get in the way of this, er, transformative experience. One is the controls, which never feel quite as precise or tight as they should be. Each jump requires a quick, sharp shake of the Wii remote, a move that quickly turns into a pain in the wrist. Ledges constantly seem just out of reach of your highest possible jumps, although some frantic shaking while on the edge will occasionally net wall-jump salvation. Even then, the slowly panning camera and some floaty physics make it hard to guide a precision landing, leading to many frustrating and undeserved falls. Add a lock-on targeting system that consistently chooses an undesired target and a slide-along-the-wall move that's never quite "sticky" enough, and you're left with a control scheme that, while not awful, feels just short of perfect.

Unsurprisingly, this satellite only gets black-and-white TV signals.

While the control problem never rises above a dull roar, the game is full of frequent pacing interruptions that mimic the effect of a screaming baby at the symphony. Invariably, just as you're getting into the flow of the game's gentle, low-stress coloring rhythm, the whole thing screeches to a halt, fades to black, and then slowly fades back in to display some bit of trivial information -- a newly unlocked door or a new color-granting bauble, for instance. Worse, the action is constantly -- and I mean constantly -- interrupted by "Challenges" that necessitate stopping the free-wheeling gameplay for seconds at a time to read some explanatory text. These missions are made more galling by the fact that they're the kinds of things you would inevitably have done even without specific instruction: destroying enemies, painting buildings, and racing through areas. These might sound like minor annoyances, but they happen with such frequency that the compound effect is hair-tearingly frustrating. If the game would just get out of the way and let the basic bounce-around-and-color gameplay shine through, it would be a much more satisfying experience.

Don't look so satisfied, Blob ... I had some problems with your game.

Not that the experience isn't enjoyable as it is, mind you. In between interruptions, the gentle paint-by-numbers gameplay is extremely carefree and satisfying -- almost cathartic. The flipside to that positive, though, is the negative that the challenges are never all that difficult. The game is littered with extra time-granting power-ups, ink-cleansing water spouts, and helpful precision jumping targets that make even the hardest "challenges" relatively easy to complete on the first try. Enemies get increasingly more imposing as the game continues -- progressing from Keystone Kops to ink-blasting tanks -- but even the largest are easy enough to avoid with constant movement and easy enough to defeat with a quick targeted smash. There are a few unlockable secret missions that are obviously meant to add some challenge for expert gamers, but they are short, two-minute affairs that aren't actually much tougher than the main game (with a few exceptions). The only real difficulties in the game come from the aforementioned annoying controls and, oddly, from managing the Blob's color-mixing abilities (Do red and blue make purple? Or is it red and green? Argh, I accidentally touched the water; now I have to start all over!). It feels like the learning curve peters out just as the challenges begin to reach a level that experienced gamers might find interesting.

Even for experienced gamers, though, this general easiness is not a death sentence. Like Katamari Damacy, an endearing, original concept and some top-notch presentation carry the game even when the core challenge can't. In the end, though, playing de Blob made me feel a bit like the rube that Huck Finn tricked into whitewashing a fence. I was promised fun, but what I got was just something simple with which to occupy my time.

This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.