I first got to play Majesco and WayForward's A Boy and His Blob at E3, so please check out those impressions for the basics of the game. In these impressions, I'm going to jump right into some of the new stuff I saw recently.

I got to play a few levels from the game's first world, The Forest. All of it was beautifully animated and fun, but two areas in particular were very amusing.

One level introduced the hamster ball jellybean, which transforms the blob into a hamster ball that the boy can go into and roll around the level in. This basically transformed the gameplay into something out of Sonic the Hedgehog as I rolled around in my indestructible ball. I could boost by pressing the A button, and also easily stop and get out and use other jellybeans to explore the level and look for hidden areas. It was a lot of fun, and like the rest of the game, looked great in action.

I also played the game's first boss battle, which happened at the end of the final level of The Forest. I battled against a giant serpentine blob creature that dwarfed the boy and his blob. For anyone who doesn't want the game's first boss battle spoiled, avert your eyes from the paragraphs that follow. All you need to know is that it is inventive, challenging, and fun.

The boss first remained on one side of the screen, and I noticed that whenever the boy got close to him, the evil blob would slam his head down to the ground. So I fed the blob a jellybean that turned him into an anvil, and pushed him over to the area where the blob slammed down. I then ran like hell and watched as the boss got wounded and went into a different attack pattern.

Next he would start at one side and then go off the screen and slink onto the other. I noticed there was an exposed power line above me, so I used the trampoline jellybean and jumped up safely onto a platform. The boss then leaped up to another platform near the power line and slammed his head down again, this time onto the exposed power line.

After that damage, the boss proceeded to repeatedly jump into the air and then slam down onto the ground. Noticing the shadow he made on the ground, I used the fruit punch jellybean, which transforms the blob into a hole in the ground. The boss then went right through the blob and landed into the water below to meet his end.

I was very impressed by the boss fight, as it was a lot of fun figuring out how to defeat the boss, and extremely rewarding to see my plan come together. It was a little more nerve-wracking then most other bosses I've faced over the years, since the boy has no powerful attacks and dies in one hit. As long as WayForward doesn't make the other boss fights too long, they should be a wonderful part of what is shaping up to be a fantastic game.