Controls
The controls are could've been a lot better. It requires you use the nunchuck or classic controller even though it's totally superfluous. There's a lot of unnecessary buttons--buttons to hug the blob and to yell at him, even though neither seem to affect the gameplay at all. You select jellybeans by holding 'Z' and rotating the analog stick and you throw jellybeans by holding 'B' and rotating the analog stick--both my boyfriend and I kept getting these two buttons confused well into the later half of the game. The game really could be played with with the sideways Wii remote and it's annoying that it's not even an option.

Gameplay
From what I understand, the gameplay is pretty different from the original NES game. The NES game was more of an adventure game, whereas this is more of a puzzle platformer. The NES game featured treasure, points, a store, a limited supply of jellybeans that would transform the blob into useful objects, the discovery of new jellybeans, mnemonic puns to help remember what each bean did ("tangerine trampoline") and an open world with possible back tracking. Most of those features are gone in this version of the game.

in this game you have an infinite supply of jellybeans, the paths go straight forward in one direction, you're not really able to back track (other than through stage selection) and the there are three optional treasure chests per-stage that act more like achievements than something that contributes to a running total of points. The sense of humor (and puns--this game features no text) of the original is gone and replaced with a more sincere tone to match the beautiful visuals, which is okay I guess. One of the biggest differences is that your choice of jellybeans are arbitrarily limited depending on the stage. You'll be arbitrarily given new jellybeans in later stages, but they're not 'discovered' by the player or treated like a reward. The arbitrary limitations can become frustrating and feel a little cheap. For example, if the game wants you to use a ladder to solve a puzzle that could be solved with a trampoline, it'll just take away your ability to use the trampoline for that level. This makes puzzle solving more straight forward, as rather than choosing between a variety of objects (a la Scribblenauts) you only really have one or possibly two choices to solve a puzzle.

There is basically only one solution to every puzzle and any alternate solution is usually an accident. The jellybean you need to use to solve each puzzle is usually immediately obvious. So it really becomes more about executing a plan than making a plan. You'll understand the situation immediately, and recognize the series of jellybeans you have to use in order to clear the puzzle. Then it's just a matter of making it happen.

That's sort of where the game enters a weird grey area where I wasn't really having any fun. The execution of the 'puzzles' usually falls somewhere between dull and frustrating. It ends up kind of feeling like a series of road signs telling you which jellybean to use (in fact, there are literally signs telling you which jellybean to use in front of most puzzles, even at the later parts of the adventure) and all you really have to do is select that jellybean and throw it. Because the actual act of executing an obvious solution to a puzzle isn't that fun, and there are never really any "ah-ha!" moments from figuring out a difficult solution on your own, most of the game ends up feeling kind of boring.

There are also occasional boss fights. These boss fights are basically just puzzles in the form of boss fights. The first one is a snake monster that requires you to use three specific jellybeans in a specific order to defeat him. It's basically a matter of trial and error to find out which jellybeans you're supposed to use in which order. The only real evasion you have to do is make sure you're standing on the opposite side of the screen as the monster, which is too locked into its hand-drawn animation to really respond to most things the player does.

The second boss was similar in that it just asked you to solve three specific puzzles to deal damage to it while also not getting hit. This boss's arena had three bombs floating above the area the boss walked around in, and you're supposed to go to the top and drop the bombs down on him. This one was 'harder' because the boss didn't really broadcast his attacks well enough for you to do anything with the slow moving protagonist. He'd shoot 1-hit-KO blobs of black goo out of his back (which blended in with the dark background) that moved way too fast for you to be able to actually dodge them. You just have to hope the boss's attacks will miss. One of the jellybeans you're allowed to use during that fight transforms the blob into an impenetrable barrier, and you can literally just wait in that barrier for the entire fight because the boss would eventually accidentally hit the bombs without you doing anything. One of his jump attacks can actually cause him to hit the bomb without you even solving the puzzle. In fact, if you watch this developer video of the boss fight, you can see this happening on the second bomb. When I finally beat the boss, I only landed one hit intentionally, and then he hit the other two bombs on his own while I was still running around in the barrier. Not very satisfying.

Overall
This game was a little bit disappointing. It's not bad, but it's not great. It takes about 10 hours to beat, and you can theoretically extend the play time by going back and finding all the chests, but I got all of them on my first play through of more than 75% of the levels without much extra effort. The only chests I really missed were the ones I was forced to skip because I explored a branching path in one direction and wasn't able to back track to check out the other, which likely lead to the chest I was missing. Either way, I really have no desire to go back and get all the chests or play the challenge levels (which aren't much more challenging than the main game except for their lack of checkpoints).

At 10 hours, you'd think this game would be too short, but it's actually too long. It's far too expensive for the type of gameplay you get out of it, and adding more stages wouldn't really solve this. If this were a WiiWare or DSiWare game (which it easily could've been) for $10, it would've been great and well worth it. But even at the relatively low MSRP of $40, it doesn't feel totally worth it. If you were on the fence about this game, I'd suggest renting it, because you can beat the entire thing in an evening and there's not much here that you would really want to revisit a second time.

7/10