Spirited Prince Ray isn't without his own set of tools, and anyone that's played Mario Sunshine is going to feel like certain mechanics in this game are instantly familiar. The black ooze that covers everything can be wiped away with the various liquids that Ray has at his disposal, thru little creatures that accompany him in the game. You can switch out your liquids by pressing left or right on the Wii remote D-Pad, and there are five different liquids all together, two of which you start out with. The black stuff also spawns the basic enemies that Ray has to fight against, which can also be taken out by the various liquids. Later in the game, you'll come across different obstacles that will require the specific use of one liquid, like water to take out fire, or the vomit projectile to show you invisible paths and steps that you can take to various places.

On the surface Spray actually looks like a decent 3rd party platformer for the Wii, but the more and more you play of it you'll start to realize that it feels really repetitious, and the overall level design is pretty bland. Puzzle solving feels limited by the gimmick of the liquids, and after a while you'll easily start to figure out what you're supposed to do as soon as you run into a problem. There's a few other mechanics that make particular use of the Wii controls, like drawing symbols into gates to open them, but at the same time it's hard to nail down exactly what the game wants you to make, and even though you have the shape on display that you're trying to draw, the recognition feels kind of random. The very first one that I came across in the game, which was an hourglass design, I had to draw nearly 10 times before it finally took, and I couldn't tell you what I had done wrong the previous nine times compared to the one that worked.

The game is also stunted by the camera, which you have no direct control over other than being able to re-center it. It tries to pan around and come behind Ray when he's moving, but it's oftentimes a lot slower than the action on screen, and when you're stuck on a small platform or near a wall, it'll often go out of whack, making some of the jumps pretty difficult. However, it's also kind of hard to really die in the game, and it's pretty forgiving with the checkpoints.

Another annoying aspect of the game is the ridiculous amount of forced backtracking. You have a hub world, which is basically the center of town, and from there you can jump into portals for the various worlds. Once you go into the portal, you're tasked with finding a crystal, but once you find the crystal you'll be kicked back into the hub. The problem is, you'll typically need to work your way thru the town (which is populated with bad guys) and go back to the very same portal, and then start into the new section of that portal that's unlocked. It's a really aggravating method, and I wish they would give you the option to just start the new part off after gathering the crystal. There doesn't seem to be any real payoff to re-exploring the town after a level, so I'm not sure why the game wants to kick me back there every time.

Also, Spray isn't exactly the best looking game on the Wii, and we've seen better out of the platformers that have shown up, even with something recent like deBlob. The color scheme in particular looks really muted, and while there's a lot of color to the game, it all feels washed out, which made the game look muddy and hazy to me. Not at all enjoyable to look at for extended periods of time, and it's a shame a little more work couldn't have gone into it.

The soundtrack isn't bad though, and while it's not something that stuck with me after playing, it's probably one of the better aspects of the game. It's not memorable, but at least it's not something you'll want to switch off halfway thru.

Still, Spray comes off as a pretty big disappointment, since I'm generally a big fan of platformers. The mechanic of using different liquids to overcome obstacles and puzzles isn't necessarily a bad one, but it doesn't feel all that fresh considering what Super Mario Sunshine had done previously (and awhile ago). Sure, it's different here in the sense that there's no jetpack or physics propelled stuff with the liquids, but the fact that you're strictly limited to just hosing down black gunk, freezing sections, and a few other covering mechanics, really makes the gameplay limited in the end. I was expecting a lot more out of Spray, but unfortunately the game didn't deliver for me.