The developers of World of Goo had an interesting promotion: download the game and you set the price! Always the cheapskate, I bought the game for only $4.99 (couldn't make myself only pay $0.01, no matter what my shoulder devil encouraged me to do). This game more than paid for itself at $4.99, and could easily go for $14.99. Although I enjoyed the game, there were some serious wallbanger parts, where I was glad I'd spent the extra money a year ago on the heavy duty mouse. The game is based on a physics simulator, and this is both the game's charm... and the reverse "blessing" which will cause you to curse like a sailor.

The concept of the game is simple enough to be fun.  You are the ultimate master for a pile of semi-intelligent squeaky blobs of goo who's only joy in life is building structures and getting sucked into pipes.  The controls are equally fun and easy:  click and drag to place goo balls, hold the left mouse button to blow a whistle to suggest a location for goo balls to move to, and left click on a timebug to go back in time, Omega 13 style, and hopefully recover from one simple mistake.

Some of the puzzles are fiendish, some are complex, some are simple, and quite a few are headscratchers.  And I must say Chapter 4 was my favorite set of puzzles in the game.

The dialog is witty, and the graphics are very unique.  The sound track is fun and encouraging.  And you'll enjoy looking for the notices from the Sign Painter.

But like I mentioned previously, the element of this game that gives it the simplicity and charm is also it's greatest weakness:  the physics engine.  (A side note:  I'll have to hear from the developers to know for sure, but I'm thinking that the physics engine from the Wii and the PC versions must be slightly different, because my experience on the PC doesn't seem to match the experience of other Gamium reviewers...)

THE GOOD:  Building bridges, swinging ropes, scaffolds and webs, attaching to hinges, managing momentum, all extremely fun.  It's also fun to build towers and structures to solve a problem by failing.  By which I mean you build a giant structure specifically so it collapses catastrophically whilst also solving the puzzle.

THE BAD:  Goo Physics are not real physics.  The struts are almost, but not quite, like stiff girders.  The joints are almost, but not quite, like welded joints.  The best thing I can compare it to would be a gridwork of springs with no damping function.  In other words, once your structure starts oscillating, there's no going back.  Sitting back and waiting for the structure to settle down is a useless proposition.

THE UGLY:  As if oscillation management wasn't already fun enough, the goo balls are constantly marching around on the structure, subtly modifying the center of balance for your structure.  And because you are usually building toward the pipe, and the goo balls are so excited to see the pipe, they'll happily congregate the the outermost (and usually less reinforced) portions of your structure while you attempt to build.  There are ways to manage this, but there were many times when I felt cheated.  If only the goo balls had stayed over there for one more second it would have worked, but they jumped on the springboard and started an oscillation that sent the tower into the spinning wheel of death.  (NOTE:  This is where having the heavy duty mouse with the heavy duty cable and cable management weights are key.  Glad I wasn't playing this on the Wii.  Bye bye flat screen!)

Don't get me wrong: as much as I wouldn't have admitted it at the time, the wallbangers were "fun" wallbangers... which is why I give this game the tag "old school hard."  It's like that level from Megaman 2, where you KNOW it's possible to make it all the way down the shaft without dyng, but despite your best efforts, you get that thumb spasm after the fifth jump and keep dying.

...except that unlike Megaman 2, the dynamics of a goo tower are not under your control.  Because the goo balls are constantly shaking the tower.  Combine that with what feels like the lack of a damping function and you get cusswords and flying mice.

Now, a word on the time bugs.  These little bugs fly around and allow you to "Omega 13" a mistake.  Fun concept... but irritatingly implemented.

• Time bugs fly around your mouse, and more often than I'd like to admit a stray click landed on a time bug when one was not intended, warping away all my painstaking work... because naturally it only happened after a tricky piece of construction.
• Time bugs don't roll back time in discrete chunks, so you can't be sure that the time bug will actually roll back far enough to solve your problem. 
• Time bugs don't seem to reset the momentum of your tower, so if your tower is falling, it'll still have that falling momentum after warping back in time to a point where the tower WAS structurally sound... or at least would have been if it didn't have the excess momentum. 

Then again, perhaps I was expecting too much from the time bugs.... it appears they were designed mainly to allow you to backup from a non-catastrophic error of goo placement, not as an emergency stop button.  Unless you have three or four time bugs handy, you won't be able to "back up" far enough to save yourself from a game reset. 

And so my conundrum... to say I enjoyed the game would be the understatement of the year... but to say that the experience was 100% satisfactory would be a lie.  Here's a few features I would have found extremely useful which would have given World of Goo the slight tap needed to push it over AWESOME and right into EPIC WIN:

1. A strain gauge.  By which I mean, if the goo balls changed color depending on their strain it would be really nice.  A ramp, from black to red, letting me know when I've pushed a goo ball too far and it will collapse would be awesome.
2. A goo meter, which lets me know how many goo balls I have available for building would have been nice.  There were many times when I tried too hard to solve a puzzle with a weak structure and ended up with two or three times the amount of goo balls needed to win.  Had I known that that swirly miasma of goo was so ... surplus, I would have built a bit stronger and had less catastrophic failure and restart. 
3. A different "Omega 13" system.  The time bugs are a neat idea, but does nothing for a catastrophic failure.  Here's an idea for Galaxy of Goo:  the time bugs take a "snapshot" of your structure which you can rewind to at any time.  Provide me with less total time bugs, but more useful bugs.
4. A minor annoyance, but something which was just added mustard on top of the hotdog of my discontent when something broke:  trying to hit the "reset" button in the bottom left also activated the "scrolling" motion, as the button is within the "scroll zone."  Minor motion sickness ensues.  Especially on the PC version, I would have preferred a "push the screen" method, where the mouse can reach the side of the monitor, and then any additional "push" input moves the viewport.  This was also a minor annoyance when trying to salvage a nearly catastrophic tower... trying to not only find usable goo balls elsewhere on the tower, AND properly position the new goo ball WHILE also shoving the screen around inaccurately... AARGH!

Please do not get me wrong.  I've sliced and diced World of Goo a bit, but it's out of love.  I eventually beat every single puzzle without skipping a single puzzle (out of sheer Old Skool Cussedness).  I think it's excellent fun.  I love the art and music, and there isn't another game like it out there.  It's right on up there with The Incredible Machine for my favorite games of all time.  But at times I felt like the game was punishing me for things that were out of my control, either because I lacked information (like the number of goo ball surplus I had on hand), or because some random number generator had been talking to my shoulder demon ("March all the goo balls to that point right there before I have a chance to shore it up!  Jericho, when the walls fell!").  And too many times to count, I didn't notice a catastrophic failure in the making until I was past the point where even Natural 20 time bugs couldn't save me and I'd have to wipe the slate clean and restart the level... which would be when the cussing and mouse throwing would start.  But that's because I'm an unstable little crazy guy.

It's physics fun for everyone!  I highly recommend you get a copy, even with my nitpicks, because it's the most fun you'll have until they come up with real world goo balls and you can make a tower of 'em in the front yard.  And, besides.... Chapter 4 is comedy gold.  Big high five, 2D BOY, and can't wait to see your next game.

Finally, I'd like to give a shout-out to the folks over at the World of Goo Video Blog, which you can find here:  &$^#% HOW CAN THIS EVEN WORK?!  There were a few times where I saw the solution in my head but just couldn't get myself set up right to solve it... and seeing that it was indeed possible on a video would keep me sane and let me work through the issue.  I wouldn't have made it all the way through the game without skipping a puzzle if I didn't have the video blog handy.