Maybe an unpopular opinion, but this is a step-up from the original Tasty Planet. With more interesting environments and more forgiving gameplay, it just got me way more engaged and left me always curious to see what awaited me in the next level.

The most important thing in a game is obviously GAMEplay, so let's talk briefly about it. The most important thing: no more instakill enemies. One of the MOST frustrating experiences I had in Tasty Planet was sprinting towards an object that looked almost identically big to another object I had just eaten, then getting killed five minutes into the level and having to start from zero. I know, there's an outline and an arrow that points to the biggest thing you can eat, but considering the grey goo moves faster than a mouse on cocaine, it really didn't feel like it was my fault. And you can't stop to inspect objects for too long in Normal mode, because of the very strict time limit...

Which takes me to my next point: Tasty Blue finally removed the god-forsaken time limit. Now sure, Tasty Planet had a casual mode you could play, but you didn't get any medals for it. In Tasty Blue, you can take as long as you want, with the amount of stars you get (ranging from zero to 3) depending on how fast you beat the level.

About aesthetics: Tasty Blue absolutely has my favorite art style from the whole saga (admittedly, I haven't PLAYED Back for Seconds and Forever, but I've seen pictures). First of all, the sideways view provides much more interesting environments and the option for having different "layers" - instead of the same type of object being across the whole level like in Tasty Planet, you have planes and birds in the sky, kayaks and canoes on the water, small fish near the surface, sea stars and sea shells on the shore, whales and krakens in the depths... it just makes for a way more rich and lifelike world.

Additionally, the background just looks way cooler, instead of the Tasty Planet style of just having a single texture spread across the entire map, only populated by eatable objects. And honestly, just think about it - the side view makes a lot more sense for a sea theme. The proof of this are the sea levels in Tasty Planet. Visually, they looked extremely bland, which I suppose is one of the reasons the sea stage only lasted three levels in that game.

Tasty Blue also has overall better effects. The water looks quite good, and so does the carnage setting.

Another major step-up introduced in Tasty Blue is the zooming out. Where in Tasty Planet the playable area always remained the same size as the grey goo got bigger, in most levels of Tasty Blue the screen will zoom out when the player reaches a certain size, introducing larger animals/objects and the smaller ones eventually fading out of view. This contributes to the layers effect I mentioned earlier, as well as introducing larger threats later into the level, rather than having to avoid huge, dangerous enemies right off the bad. Also, it gives you that satisfying feeling of growing bigger and "leveling up", which is really important in a game like this.

I found that the levels were quite more interesting than Tasty Planet's. While Tasty Planet was "a lot of the same" so to speak, occasionally interspersed with a "eat X amount of this or that" level, Tasty Blue had a lot more of "gimmick" levels that kept the gameplay fresh. The final level of each playable character (the "Tale of a ---") levels are the most fun; they are basically a "recap" of the character's story, starting with the environments from the first level and growing all the way to their biggest size.

Being fair, this is not to say that Tasty Blue is the perfect game. Some levels (particularly some of the "gimmick" levels) aren't that good. Off the top of my head I can name the coconuts level, where you have to eat 100 coconuts that periodically fall from some palm trees, and the oysters level, where you have to wait for three oysters to create pearls and eat them until you're big enough to eat the oysters themselves. But with most of the levels being more interesting, having more enemy variety, and just being less repetitive than the ones in Tasty Planet, I find it a more engaging game.

If I had to name another downside, it would be the relatively early end of the game. Whereas Tasty Planet went on to space and had the grey goo eventually eating the fabric of reality (not even kidding), Tasty Blue ends with the shark eating Earth from the inside, and then the Moon. It was still a satisfying experience regardless, but it makes me wonder how space levels would have looked like with Tasty Blue's "upgraded" gameplay.

I'm gonna be leaving comments on in case anyone wants to discuss or write a rebuttal (I know that many Tasty Planet fans thought that Tasty Blue was a letdown), but I'm gonna ask y'all to be civil about it. This is a silly little game that's not worth getting angry over.

An entry in the 'Tasty' series that consists entirely of water levels... Surprisingly still made for a mostly enjoyable experience! Other than the 'Jets and Helicopters' level on Deadly difficulty, that was ridiculous lol