The Maw

The Short


Pros
- Silly little adventure about eating stuff to get bigger and than eating more stuff
- In that way, it's kind of like Katamary Damacy, only with a giant purple blob
- Charm and humor completely sell the game, and hit all the right notes
- Has a bizarre wit about it that will appeal to both kids and adults
- KING YUM.

Cons
- Short
- Gameplay is repetitive and a bit insubstantial
- DLC feels like it was cut from the game

HELLO. 

The Long

The Maw is the first game by the most excellent Twisted Pixel, maker of such fine products as The Gunstringer and not so fine products as The Adventures of Captain Smiley. They also sent me a Christmas card a few years back, so they are a-ok in my book. And that means this review is going to be totally biased. Whatever. 

Anyway, The Maw is a simple game with a simple goal: feed the Maw. Feed him until he grows, than feed him some more. It's essentially Katamari Damacy, only with eating instead of rolling. And I'm fine with that.

The characters are very expressive, selling the cute and silliness of this whole thing. 

The game is broke up into stages, wherein you have to feed the Maw to get him to a certain size, and when you do the exit magically unlocks. Yeah, that part is a bit...contrived, but the rest of it works quite great. The Maw takes a page from Kirby's book and can steal the powers of certain enemies he eats, turning into altered Maws with a wide range of abilities. He can float for some levels, breath fire, shoot lightning, and more. All of them incorporate into the simple puzzles and platforming the game has, and while it never gets very difficult it does tax you a little bit, so it strikes a good balance. 

You drive the Maw around with your remote (and if he gets too far you can call him to you), directing him to the food because he can't seem to manage that himself. Controls for jumping and eating are decent but not particularly refined, but they work because the game is simple. This ain't Mario or anything; it's a game about feeding a purple blob until he eats the entire world. Literally.

Flame on!

But enough boring stuff; here is why The Maw is awesome: it's hilarious. The Maw is a fat, greedy purple blob of joy, who will not hesitate in consuming even the cutest creature from the main character's mouth. He's also a massive coward, despite the fact that he could just eat anything, so he'll often run screaming from anything intimidating (in cutscenes), which is also entertaining. Even if he's bigger than them. Oh, Maw.

Both the Maw and the alien who has a name but I forgot have an excellent range of exaggerated emotions, which also goes a long way in selling the zany, silly humor. It's clearly a game aimed at kids, but plenty of the jokes also work for adults (or adults-in-progress) which makes the character endearing, entertaining, and hilarious. 

We liked him so much we got a plushie and put him on our Gingerbread house last Christmas. 

This is pretty much a perfect kid's game, with nothing offensive to be found and the humor being more silly than crude. The gameplay is simple and runs into repetition after just a few stages (though the stages with the most variety seem to be hidden behind DLC...which is a shame) but the draw of watching the Maw eat everything and get bigger and bigger to the inevitable crazy finale is worth it. It does depend a lot on your enjoyment of silliness, but if you play the demo and laugh at least once (love the Kill Bill reference in the opening, by the way) you should probably give the whole thing a spin.

Waaaaaaaaaah!

On a more self-indulgent point, that plush Maw is awesome (even if the plastic around his collar is starting to get worn). We have a truckload of video game plushies, but the Maw is still the favorite. Mostly because he eats everything (the red Angry Bird fits perfectly in his mouth) but he also has a tendency to attack my wife's face when she's sleeping. Bad Maw!

It's also worth noting that the bad puns ("You're MAW-some!") were another thing my wife latched onto, and we still make horrible Maw jokes nearly all the time. It's been like three years since we bought this game, and it's still going. I don't know if that says more to how endearing we found this game, or how pathetic we are as human beings. Um...the former. Has to be the former. 

Nothing good can come of this.

As it stands, I'll admit The Maw is not for everybody. It's very simple, repetitive, has only decent graphics (though the art is nice) and relies a lot on its charm to sell it. But for us, it really hit a chord. I still boot this game up and replay the first few (and then last few) levels and revel in the immense stupidity and insanity that is The Maw. It's an extremely charming game that should be a no-brainer to pick up if you have kids, but even us "hardcore gamers" who spend our days blasting noobs in Call of Duty might need a brief respite from that now and again. And The Maw is perfect for that.

Also, "MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWW!"

Four out of five stars. 

PS: Twisted Pixel: MAKE THE MAW 2! Seriously! With Kinect support! It would be awesome!

Plus, somebody should buy me this statue. For um...science. Or something.