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Wot I Think: WattamWattave I just played?
Wattave I just played?
Spoilers: it did not.
In its favour, Wattam definitely has that Takahashi weirdness. It’s there in the childlike squeals and giggles, erupting from the sentient shapes, toys and assorted grocery items which gradually come to populate Mayor’s strange, empty world. It’s there in Mayor’s signature party trick, where, with a lift of his black top hat, he sends himself - and anyone in his vicinity - shooting up into the air in a big, laugh-fuelled explosion. The rubber ducks, pencils and party candles of Wattam’s world absolutely adore this sort of stuff, and I’ll admit to a few grinning snorts myself - at least thefirstcouple of times I was asked to do it.
The weirdness extends to other characters, too. My favourite is the jiggling, over-excited mouth called Beth, who just stops herself from devouring every last one of her food friends and turning them into big emoji swirls of multi-coloured poop. She also has a… toilet as a pal. She’s called Emma, and can flush these stink-line-emitting poops (or indeed any other character you want) down the u-bend. Then they pop back out of her mate Alex (who is pipe), turned into golden versions of themselves.
Anything goes for Masahiko the ice cream cone.
There are many such moments to be found in Wattam. But after four hours of fetch quest after fetch quest, the joke does start to wear a bit thin. It’s all a bit ‘bring the sentient onion to the sentient, landlocked island so they can cry a sea’s worth of tears to make themselves a proper island’ and ‘stack enough poops on top of each other to appease the golden bowling pin who’s obsessed with being the same height as everyone else’. At no point are you ever in doubt as to what you need to do, since every objective is spelled out in big letters or glowing circles for you. Instead, all you’re really left with is fitting quest objects of appropriate shape into corresponding quest holes.
You’d be confused too if you just pooped from your mouth.
So much of Wattam feels underutilised. As you gradually complete each island’s objectives, for example, new buddies are bussed in on all manner of aircraft, from giant rubber ducks to beds, tables and even - yes - flying toilets. The aircraft are also people. Sadly, these larger buddies are only good for ferrying smaller objects/people between islands (yet another missed opportunity for silly mayhem, if you ask me), and even most of the passengers they bring to the party have no purpose whatsoever. They’re just there, giggling and generally getting in the way.
Wattam doesn’t even really make you engage with the chain reactions that get set off over the course of its strange adventure, which just makes the characters involved feel all the more superfluous. Trees, for example, can gobble up practically every object available and burp them back out as fruits, vegetables, or even twinkling Christmas lights. The pillow can send things to sleep, while the onion forces everyone to break out in tears as soon as they get near it. There’s even a cute ruler that can tell everyone how tall they are. But at no point will you ever need to call upon these special powers to help anyone out. Instead, it’s just constant fart jokes and making things go ‘kaboom’ with Mayor’s hat.
You and me both, mate.
