Probably the best video game in the world

I just finished World of Goo -- and it's brilliant! It's definitely one of the best computer games I've ever seen, maybe even the best (I still have to decide between it and Curse of the Monkey Island). World of Goo has everything I could ask from a game -- puzzles, humor and simplicity. And adds sugar on top of all this with a good ol' dose of physics.

The mechanics of the game is astounding, thing that sometimes causes a good deal of frustration (after seeing your goo tower or goo bridge give up and crash in spite of having spent some good minutes meticulously crafting it). The puzzles are quite smart, and never repetitive. I had to work my brains on some of them, finally giving a big A-HA! after figuring out what had to be done. Major A-HA! moments:

• Last level chapter one -- the eyes are usable


• Last level chapter four -- burning the goo-support for the undelete button. Unfortunately I have to shamefully admit didn't figure it out myself, a friend tipped me as he was watching me play


• That controlled explosion level -- in my opinion it's the hardest level in the whole game

The game is not long, yet again another plus, for it makes the World of Goo relaxing and also allowing each level to be unique in its own way -- otherwise the game would have gotten quite repetitious after the kzillionth level.

Another thing I liked a lot in World of Goo was the soundtrack. It's freely available, and you can download it from here. I am listening to it as I am writing this post -- and it's good music. It's one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard (and by that I don't mean just video game soundtracks). Really, download it! And listen to the Red Carpet Extend-o-matic song.

The graphics are 2D bliss. I think 3D is way too overrated. And that's how Lucas Arts messed up the Monkey Island series -- by making it 3D. Graphics ought to be judged by the colours and design rather than pixel shading and other such useless crap (when it comes to gaming).

Official trailer -- notice the 2D graphics!

The difficulty curve is non-linear, meaning many early levels will be tougher than ending levels. However this did not bother me at all. Also the very last level was a ludicrously easy -- and somehow made the whole thing more fun.

Saving the best for last -- it's been ported to Linux. I played it on Mint and it ran without any problems, even though I didn't deactivate compiz or did any tweaking. It's great to have cool games ported on Linux, and considering the game costs little (around 20$) and it's 100% DRM free Linux users should flock to purchase from here. You can also download a demo from the 2D Boy (the developers) webpage.