Review: Noby Noby Boy

Noby Noby Boy is a game that comes from the same mind that created the Katamari series, Keita Takahashi.
I have been asked recently by a lot of people "What is Noby Noby Boy?", which is a good question in itself.
Recently released on the Playstation Network, Noby Noby Boy can, in some ways, be described as a community effort of weird potential, it has one basic premise for which the game revolves around, stretching.

You play Boy, a small pink character that is controlled in two half's, the front and back each with the left or right analogue stick and aim to stretch Boy as far as possible, twisting around the simple environment like a tree, building or wrapping yourself around a climbing frame or even looping through a couple of doughnut shaped clouds.

L2 and R2 triggers are used for a multitude of abilities, holding either one will have Boy grip the ground with either end, tapping will have an end jump into the air and glide back to the ground, and can also be used to fly high into the air.

Pressing L2 will let Boy consume whatever is in front of him at the time as long as the said object isn't too big compared to him, R2 will force whatever object, person or even animal that you have eaten out of your rear end, some creatures and people will even be merged together.

The controls are fairly simple up this point before you come across how to move the camera which is linked to holding either L1 or R2 depending on what you want to do and rotating the controller till you get the view you require, unfortunately it doesn't always work as well you might hope and a lot of the time you might find yourself zoomed in too far or at an angle where you can barely see anything.

Boy over time, while stretching and eating things, will grow in size and will eventually be big enough to eat objects like a tree or a small building, though I haven't myself been able to consume a cloud.

Once you have stretch Boy to what ever length you feel comfortable with, or if you were like me and started wrapping him around the whole map, you can report your length to Girl, which uploads your cumulative stretch length with everyone else who has already uploaded theirs adding to the grand total.

Girl is a universal being with one purpose, to connect Earth to other planets, with each new planet reached new levels and objects will appear in the game for people to stretch their Boys around.

Her first task was joining to the moon which happened in a mere 4 days after the game came out, she is currently heading towards Mars. Lengths between planets are done in realistic game terms, the moon required 384,403,000 meters to be stretched, the journey to Mars however will 56,000,000,000 meters at least, which will no doubt take a long time.

The game itself doesn't serve much of a purpose or give you hours of spine tingling story, your purpose is to stretch, but it is far more enjoyable than you would first think. The playground of a world you are dropped into is reminiscent of being a kid with an active imagination, creating your own goals and ideas.

Can you wrap yourself around a tree and stretch through a cloud? or eat a large amount of objects and get get your rear end stuck in the window of a house?

These idea's will come naturally as you first start wrapping your Boy around some objects pondering as to what the point is of it all.

As for myself, I find the game interesting enough to waste a few hours on when I'm not doing anything, the game might not have the best graphics out there, in fact they are considerably simplistic compared to a lot of games you can find on the Store, but as one of the oddest games to appear on the Playstation 3 for a while I would pick it up.

And with a price of £3.19/$4.99 from the Playstation Store I would suggest a purchase along with something else you might already be buying, and take the game for a spin when you are feeling up for doing something random or have nothing else to do.