World of Goo

I just finished World of Goo, and while it was fun, I can't help but feel there's a lesson trying to be crammed down my throat. World of Goo at its core is a puzzle game. You have goos of varying abilities that you use to build goo structures across the level so that they reach a pipe. All goos that are not part of your structure will be sucked into said pipe. To complete each level, there is a minimum number of these unused goos that have to be collected. In each level, you have to balance building a structurally sound goo tower/bridge/blob while leaving enough goos to be collected at the end.

Throughout the levels, there are signs present with both thinly veiled clues for how you should tackle the level and also subtext peppered in of the overarching themes and, let's say, lessons of the game. Mostly, this felt like throwaway text that I didn't really enjoy. The level design and text, though, were clearly meant to make some statement about our society. It touched on things like our ever present need for more energy, the fact that we as a society are overly obsessed with physical appearance, the destruction that is required in the name of "progress", and the fact that our online habits are constantly monitored and personal information sold in the service of marketing. That's awful deep shit for a game I just thought was a neat playground for goo physics.

I enjoyed the puzzles. They were difficult at times. They were confounding at times. The puzzles were fun.

However...

World of Goo was like a box of assorted chocolates. The puzzles were the tasty chocolate coating hiding the kinda gross center of underlying subtext. "Kinda gross" or no, I still ate the whole damn box.