Ibb and Obb (PS3) - Review

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Ibb and Obb seems like a game that exists to punish the friendless. Oh, sure, there is a single player mode but good luck trying to coordinate all that crap by yourself.

You play as two little blobs with legs called Ibb and Obb, though I'm only assuming this based on the game's title. In truth, nothing is ever explicitly stated about who these characters are, or why they're doing what they're doing. When you're playing with a friend this isn't a big deal because you don't need any reward for playing beyond your communal satisfaction of a job well done, but it's a bit rough when you finally master a single player challenge (which in itself is usually much more difficult to accomplish) and then only have another challenge awaiting you. That's not to say that the presentation is bad by any means - the visuals are pretty damned adorable and the tunes playing in the background are pleasant, if not memorable.

What really makes playing by yourself rough is just how much these two little guys depend on one another. Ibb and Obb can't do much of anything on their own, so almost every puzzle requires some level of coordination. When you're playing with two people the controls are a fairly simple case of moving and jumping with the analog stick and the X button, but when playing by yourself one analog stick controls Ibb and the other controls Obb. Jumping is performed by pressing the analog stick towards the sky. This ends up not only confusing those of us not used to multitasking, but it's less precise than the two player control scheme, which makes things even more difficult.

You may have noticed that I said you jump by pressing “towards the sky” and not just “up”. That's because Ibb and Obb exist in a world where the floor to one world, with the gravity pointing down, is also the floor of another world where gravity points up. This comes into play for enemies as well, because every enemy exists in two forms. On one side of the partition is a spiky black ball that will kill your heroes with a single touch, while on the other side is a white “shadow” which dies just as easily as the main form kills. When you kill these enemies they produce a shower of crystals that quickly disappear, so if you want the maximum “score” you have to make sure you have a character on each side of the partition when you kill an enemy.

Puzzles require mastery of things like momentum through portals in the partition, portals that only allow either Ibb or Obb to go through, bubbles of reverse gravity, and places without a floor where falling brings you right back to the top of the screen. There's a good mix of mechanics and a difficulty curve that is infuriating at times but never feels unfair. That said, there I found that a couple of the challenges were made more difficult than they should have been due to the slightly imprecise nature of the characters and how they land on platforms.

Taking these difficulties into account, as well as factoring in that a good number of puzzles had me stumped for some time, my total play time came to about five hours. This will, of course, vary wildly depending on exactly how long you personally get stuck on certain puzzles or whether just breeze through things that took my buddy and I ten solid minutes of thought. There are also secret levels to unlock, if you're yearning for even more content.

Ibb and Obb is a deceptively cute platformer with some devilish cooperative puzzling that either requires a good friend that you don't get mad at easily or some crazy single player skills. Don't expect a narrative to push you forward but if you're looking for a sometimes mind bending puzzle platformer to play, preferably with a friend, then look no further.

This review is based on a digital copy of Ibb and Obb for the PlayStation 3

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