The Charge
のびのびBOY!

Opening Statement

The newest invention from Keita Takahashi, creator of the Katamari Damacy series comes Noby Noby Boy, an unconventional, unorthodox experimentation in… well, eating your own butt. No, seriously. Less a game than a visual art piece, Noby Noby Boy eschews conventional gaming elements like leveling up, death, achievements, and simply allows users an open sandbox experiment to, umm… grow your body, and ah.. wrap it around things?

Okay, could this game sound any more filthy?

Facts of the Case

You are BOY, a four-legged snake…thing. Your goal is to do anything you want. You can walk around the earth, stretching and contrasting your body in long, snake-like configurations, you can grow and eat everything in your path (farting it out with the push of a button) or you can do nothing at all. By growing your body, BOY can submit his “growth” to GIRL, a gigantic snake-like creature who stretches through the cosmos, linking together the planets.

The Evidence

Anyone who has played the Katamari Damacy series of games for the Playstation 2 and Xbox 360 will know immediately that absolutely nothing in Noby Noby Boy will be conventional gameplay. In fact, except for the most barest of elements, it’s hard to justify Noby Noby Boy as a “game” at all—it’s more of a visual metaphor for how bizarre Japanese culture can be.

Using the two analog sticks of the DualShock controller allows control over the front and rear ends of BOY respectively. By eating inanimate (and animate) objects and moving body parts in opposite directions, BOY will elongate like an elastic band. Popping the shoulder buttons allows one, or both ends of BOY to rocket into the air, where they can glide safely to the ground. Through combination of these simple actions, BOY can flip, stretch, curl, unfurl, stretch and even tear. Hence the butt-eating, but more on that later.

The point, of course, is that there is no point; no levels to beat, no points or achievements to gain (save for the obligatory PS3 trophies). Just you, your snake-man-creature-thing and a playground of randomly-generated creatures, landscapes and odd things to crawl over, into and around. A central house provides users a place to regenerate (if you fall off the map) and change levels, which is one neat element of the game. Despite the game being a solo player affair, users united by the PlayStation Network can upload their “scores”, or BOY lengths to increase the size of GIRL traveling from the Earth to the Moon to Mars and through the galaxy. Once the world at large gains enough points to move to the next location, the new levels unlock for all—a neat feature and one that unites the seemingly random gameplay into a collective goal. More zealous gamers can use a built-in video function to record their in-game BOY actions and upload them directly to YouTube, which is a neat feature, though not one I ever plan on utilizing myself.

Graphics are very stylized, similar to Katamari Damacy, cartoonish and simplistic, colorful and eye-catching. These are hardly the best graphics you’ll see on the PS3, but it’s a kitschy experience all the same. The score isn’t quite as dynamic and musical as Katamari but it will have you whistling and tapping your feet all the same. The pleasure of Noby Noby Boy is infectious, down to the low sine wave rumbling of BOY as he stretches and distorts.

As for the butt-eating? Well, if you stretch yourself so long, physics eventually take over, and BOY can tear in half. Don’t fret. All you need to do is steer your front half towards your back end and… umm… eat it. Then you get it back. Pure genius.

How much enjoyment you get out of Noby Noby Boy depends almost entirely on your style as a gamer. If you don’t mind the lack of structure and goals, and are tickled at the idea of a genuine sandbox world to explore in, then the game should provide some genuine, wacky entertainment value. I spent a good hour stretching myself impossibly long, looping my body through a cloud, and using the weight of my body to drag the cloud back down to Earth, knocking over trees and houses in the process, with a cat riding on my back. Pointless, absolutely—but the fact that I can even do this in a game earns it my five bucks. It’s a zen thing.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

It’s cute, but there’s not much game here. You’ll probably be sick of it in a week or two. But for five dollars, it’s hard to expect much.

Closing Statement

Noby Noby Boy is fun, undeniably charming and beautifully eccentric, but the absence of gaming structure will no doubt cause most to tire quickly. Luckily, the reasonable price point easily justifies the purchase. It’s too weird and wonderful not to experience firsthand.

Platform: Playstation 3
Developer: Namco Bandai
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Release Date: February 19, 2009
Rated: E for Everyone