A Fish Named Bloop
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- Author(s): iplaydink
- Categories: D-Mod, Romp
- Downloads: 462
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Imagine my surprise to find that today saw the release of the second D-mod of 2014. We're not even done with February and we've already received more D-mods than all of 2013. This will be an interesting year for Dink. But I digress...
Bloop the Fish was an arguably bad D-mod from the first years of Dink. Iplaydink made it his goal to remake the D-mod (for some unknown reason, probably insanity) with new bells and whistles, but staying true to the original D-mod. And true to the original is exactly what this is.
Story
Wait...there's a story to this? I mean, it's not much, but it exists. Basically the story is a shark stole your friends' uncle's treasure, and you need to get it back. Simple and straight-forward, no need to get complicated when you're playing as a fish...who can talk. And seems to have near-human intelligence. The original had just about no story, so having anything is kind of nice.
Gameplay
This is also very simple, and true to the original. You swim around, you accept a short quest to collect worms to unlock the bubble attack (acts like throwing axes), which is used to kill urchins and such. There are no save machines in this game, (but then again, I doubt they would function underwater), but the game automatically saves when you enter certain screens which is a nice feature. There really isn't much else to the gameplay. It's simple, the game is short, and that's just fine.
Difficulty
There isn't much in terms of combat to this D-mod. Killing the urchins is completely optional. The shark boss wasn't hard in any way. It didn't appear to have the dragon attacks like the one in the original had. I was never in danger of dying. This D-mod was really easy overall.
Aesthetics
Okay, I have to admit, the first impression this D-mod had on me right after it loaded up was something like "Holy S%!t this actually looks pretty good." The graphics were completely remade, making Bloop actually look like a fish, the water gets darker the farther you go down, sand and rock on the bottom of the ocean looked good, and the kelp and seashells were pretty cool. Even the shark looked like a shark. The map had defined borders, either with the sandy ocean floor or formations of rocks, and the layout was small but easy to navigate through. Definite thumbs up for all this effort, it really pays off.
Sound
The original was completely devoid of music. That has been rectified in this remake. The music was nice and peaceful, and I like that the main music was taken from a Pokemon game (at least, I think that's what I recognized it from). I'm pretty sure the battle theme was also taken from Pokemon. All in all, the small music selection (2 tracks) was pleasant and enjoyable.
Flaws
There are a couple of minor annoyances in the D-mod, at least to me, though there were no obvious bugs that I found.
-The fish look derpy, with how their eyes are positioned
-When Bloop takes a hit, it still plays Dink's grunting noise, which is odd. Unless Bloop is an odd mutant fish (which is likely), he shouldn't make those kinds of sounds.
-When talking to NPC's, most of the time there are really long waits between pieces of dialogue (as much as 3-5 seconds), and at random points in conversations, the dialogue can't be skipped with the space bar. Honestly, this was where most of the play time came from.
-The bubble attack suffers from Sudden Random Acceleration Syndrome, which pops colliding bubbles meaning you get fewer hits in.
-There is no ending to the game, just like the original. After the boss fight, the screen doesn't unlock, and you can't do anything. This was intentional (probably), but still. Being a remake, some sort of ending would have been nice.
Reflection
So, I'll be honest. I had never played either of the original Bloop the Fish games before. I played through this and got to the "ending" where the screen stays locked, and in my confusion, I decided to download and play the original game. And it did the exact same thing. Slightly less confused, I decided that this was a very true remake to the original Bloop the Fish. It plays just about the same, but it looks a hell of a lot better, and subtle improvements have been made all over the place. While still having flaws, some being homages to the original, I rather enjoyed playing through all of the 10 minutes this D-mod takes to "beat", though I probably won't come back to this any time soon.
Verdict
7.8
Bloop the Fish was an arguably bad D-mod from the first years of Dink. Iplaydink made it his goal to remake the D-mod (for some unknown reason, probably insanity) with new bells and whistles, but staying true to the original D-mod. And true to the original is exactly what this is.
Story
Wait...there's a story to this? I mean, it's not much, but it exists. Basically the story is a shark stole your friends' uncle's treasure, and you need to get it back. Simple and straight-forward, no need to get complicated when you're playing as a fish...who can talk. And seems to have near-human intelligence. The original had just about no story, so having anything is kind of nice.
Gameplay
This is also very simple, and true to the original. You swim around, you accept a short quest to collect worms to unlock the bubble attack (acts like throwing axes), which is used to kill urchins and such. There are no save machines in this game, (but then again, I doubt they would function underwater), but the game automatically saves when you enter certain screens which is a nice feature. There really isn't much else to the gameplay. It's simple, the game is short, and that's just fine.
Difficulty
There isn't much in terms of combat to this D-mod. Killing the urchins is completely optional. The shark boss wasn't hard in any way. It didn't appear to have the dragon attacks like the one in the original had. I was never in danger of dying. This D-mod was really easy overall.
Aesthetics
Okay, I have to admit, the first impression this D-mod had on me right after it loaded up was something like "Holy S%!t this actually looks pretty good." The graphics were completely remade, making Bloop actually look like a fish, the water gets darker the farther you go down, sand and rock on the bottom of the ocean looked good, and the kelp and seashells were pretty cool. Even the shark looked like a shark. The map had defined borders, either with the sandy ocean floor or formations of rocks, and the layout was small but easy to navigate through. Definite thumbs up for all this effort, it really pays off.
Sound
The original was completely devoid of music. That has been rectified in this remake. The music was nice and peaceful, and I like that the main music was taken from a Pokemon game (at least, I think that's what I recognized it from). I'm pretty sure the battle theme was also taken from Pokemon. All in all, the small music selection (2 tracks) was pleasant and enjoyable.
Flaws
There are a couple of minor annoyances in the D-mod, at least to me, though there were no obvious bugs that I found.
-The fish look derpy, with how their eyes are positioned
-When Bloop takes a hit, it still plays Dink's grunting noise, which is odd. Unless Bloop is an odd mutant fish (which is likely), he shouldn't make those kinds of sounds.
-When talking to NPC's, most of the time there are really long waits between pieces of dialogue (as much as 3-5 seconds), and at random points in conversations, the dialogue can't be skipped with the space bar. Honestly, this was where most of the play time came from.
-The bubble attack suffers from Sudden Random Acceleration Syndrome, which pops colliding bubbles meaning you get fewer hits in.
-There is no ending to the game, just like the original. After the boss fight, the screen doesn't unlock, and you can't do anything. This was intentional (probably), but still. Being a remake, some sort of ending would have been nice.
Reflection
So, I'll be honest. I had never played either of the original Bloop the Fish games before. I played through this and got to the "ending" where the screen stays locked, and in my confusion, I decided to download and play the original game. And it did the exact same thing. Slightly less confused, I decided that this was a very true remake to the original Bloop the Fish. It plays just about the same, but it looks a hell of a lot better, and subtle improvements have been made all over the place. While still having flaws, some being homages to the original, I rather enjoyed playing through all of the 10 minutes this D-mod takes to "beat", though I probably won't come back to this any time soon.
Verdict
7.8
