Gish is a blob. More specifically, a 12-pound blob of tar. With eyes. And a little bit of a mean disposition. Seems someone has stolen his girlfriend and he needs to figure out whom, and of course, travel through six different worlds to get there. While the foil is the same as practically every game about a little Italian plumber we know, Gish plunges ahead and grabs your attention anyway. Playing the role of Gish you slide, slurp and slam through six worlds, each with six to seven levels.

The worlds are pretty standard platformer fare, although bordering on the bizarre, it never really goes too far over the edge. Gish's main enemies are basically little round dog-like guya with big teeth, and "human" shaped wierdos with big eyes. Both of these are "dressed" depending upon the level. For example the mask guys are dressed in robes, black leather masks, and gold crosses on the "The Rapture" level, which takes place in a church. Each world has a boss, be it a ghost, a cat-like creature, or a pair of freaks that spit the dog guys out of their innards to attack you. I think this pretty much sums up the dark comedy comic book style of the game.

The most compelling aspect of this new generation side-scroller is the entry of real-time physics. Being a blob of tar, Gish can literally throw his weight around the map - ramming enemies, blocks, and walls, which react in (mostly) real-life ways. In addition, Gish has four abilities he can call on: stick to things, become slippery, jump, or become heavy. So, Gish might jump off a ledge, turn heavy and crash through blocks and enemies below. Or, Gish might stick to the ceiling to move above a pit of boiling lava. Slipperiness helps to get through tight spaces, such as pipes. Certain maneuvers, such as a high jump, take timing and dexterity to shift Gish's weight on the downstroke so that he can rebound with greater speed and go higher in his jumps. This means that to get around all but the most basic levels, you have to consciously think about how you move, and do a little bit of planning. All of this together leads to an amazing amount of control, and gives the designers a huge new world to practice 2D level design.

Luckily, the designers used these new abilities for good and not evil. Instead of just focusing on the "look how cool our 2.5D engine is" they used this new power to design a great puzzle platformer. The levels are very well laid out, and must have gone through months of play testing time to get every little detail in place. For example, there are a few "leap of faith" jumps, where you just have to go pedal-to-the-metal and leap off into thin air. Most of the time, the designers put a ledge or a wall in EXACTLY the right position for Gish to grab on to. They also had fun putting danger in the right place too, with enemies right where you'd most likely land, or a nicely placed spike trap to perforate yourself on if you don't pull the move off perfectly.

Gish is, at its heart, a puzzle game. You don't battle hordes upon hordes of enemies at once. In fact, in some levels you might not even meet a single adversary. You don't notice this as you are too busy trying to work out the exact right path through the traps, pits, ledges, walls and ramps in your way. When you do run into an attacker, more often than not the level is designed so that the enemy and the map work against you in combination. In many places, especially with the world bosses, you have to learn how to use the surroundings against the enemy as a direct "blob on" attack is fruitless. For example, you might need to use Gish's sticky ability to pick up and hurl a block against a ceiling at just the right time, to drop a larger block down on top of the enemy. While this sounds easy, the real-world physics do make the job harder as nothing works exactly the same way twice. One toss may send the block hurtling the wrong direction, another with just a slight shift in timing, may place it right on target. Most of the time, with trial and error and a little luck, it's fairly easy to pick out what needs to be done to get past the current obstacle.

That is not to say that Gish isn't hard. In fact, it's damn hard, but hard and frustrating in the way that gives you great satisfaction in the end. I found myself missing a jump and falling into lava time, after time, after time, and had to get up and take a breather lest I pitch the monitor out the window. Thankfully, you basically have unlimited lives because Gish restarts the level in the same place, regardless of whether he still has lives or whether he's starting over. Most levels seem to be designed at exactly the right length to push for a near perfect game, as I found myself making one or two mistakes and dying right before the level ended. Realizing this, it became a lot harder to put Gish down when I was having difficulty, because the end of the level (and a brief celebration) could be "just this close!" These types of well-balanced games are extremely rare, as you really have to find that thin line between total humiliating defeat of the player, versus a boring level crawl. Chronic Logic seemed to have pulled it off nearly flawlessly.

With Gish I was reliving the glorious "platformer rage" of my youth, and if I had a gamepad, it probably would have gone into the wall. After the last level, with a cold sweat of adrenaline seeping away, I sit and think back to all the other great platformers I've played in the past and realize that Gish is right there near the top. In fact, if Gish was repackaged with more levels and just a little more commercial game polish, it could probably sell as a title on most console systems. In any case, its definitely an indie game that you should check out if you have an open mind and want to relive some of your best platformer moments from your youth.

Minimum system requirements:
# Windows 98/ME/2000/XP, Linux or OSX 10.1+
# AMD,Intel or G3 1000+ Mhz processor
# OpenGL video card with 32 mb of memory
# 256MB of memory

Recommended system requirements:
# AMD, Intel, or G4 1500+ Mhz processor
# OpenGL Video Card with 64+ mb of memory
# 256MB of memory