Boom Blox for the Nintendo Wii is the first game born of the recent partnership between EA and Steven Spielberg. But does this stellar collaboration give us a great game, or is it a cheeky ploy to buy more games.
When this partnership was first mentioned I was interested as to what was going to be made, half expecting an adventure game. The last thing on my mind was a puzzle game involving blocks. Even when I first put this into the Wii I was not expecting much, after all it is yet another puzzle game for the Wii, but after about 10 min of play I could not put the game down, in fact I have been on this solid for a few days, it’s really engrossing.
Boom Blox is physics based puzzle game involving Blox. There are numerous types of Blox that you can interact with and each one has its own properties. There are 14 Blox types in total including a Gem Blox, Points and Penalty Blox’es, Bomb Blox that explode on touch, Chemical Blox that explode when two or more are touching and Vanish Blox.
The game itself is split into a few areas, first off is the training are which gives you the basic controls and the different Blox. At first you will feel the cursor is too sensitive, however this is actually really necessary, especially in later levels where quick reflexes and pin point accuracy are essential, however the twitchiness will take some time to get used to. The rest of the controls are very simple, B to pan the camera and A to aim. Once you have locked on to a target, keep holding the A, flick your wrist like you were throwing and release A, depending on the speed of your flick a ball will fire with varying degrees of speed.
The main play modes are Explore and Adventure. In Explore there are 6 categories to play through, one for each of the following Blox types, Gem, Point, Bomb,Vanish, Chemical and Grab. There are over 10 tasks in each to complete with bronze, silver and gold medals awarded, and as you progress through the levels you will unlock extra items and power ups. In Gem you have to topple stacks with Gem Blox on top by throwing a tennis ball, once upgraded this becomes a bowling ball. In the Point area, you have Jenga like stacks to dismantle with your tennis ball, the aim is to hit your point Blox onto the floor whist avoiding the penalty Blox There is also a shooting range area where you have to hit the Point Blox with your upgraded laser. In the Vanish area you are able to upgrade your ball into a rubber ball the ricochets all over the place, enabling you to get to harder areas and the Grab area allows you to grab bricks to demolish areas by swinging them around and also more Jenga puzzles.
In the Adventure mode you are taken through some cut-scene stories involving numerous Blox-animal characters like The Duke of Woolington and Gorilda Gert. These puzzles involve a mix of each Blox, so different tactics will always be required as these make for some really hard puzzles.
There is also a party play option for up to 4 players in the competition mode and 2 in the co-op puzzle solving. These are just as fun as the single player mode.
A surprising addition is the create mode, where you can either create a level from scratch or edit an existing one. You start with a healthy but basic supply of items to use, however as you play the single player games more of these will open. The controls are very simple, with the tool bars on either side of the screen so not to clutter up the screen. Here you are able to stretch, stack and build with any of your Blox, and you are only restricted by your imagination. There is a training area to show how to use this and it is well recommended to view this a few times first to get the most of the custom area. The icing on the cake is that once you have finished you are able to share levels with your friends. This is a great idea but is let down that there is no area where anyone can post levels, but that is more to do with the WiiConnect24 structure.
There is plenty of variance in the puzzles in Boom Blox, some are timed, some require all Bomb Blox to be destroyed, all Gems to be collected or simply for you to demolish everything. Each puzzle is well designed and most will not take long to complete, however getting gold in each is a real challenge. I really enjoyed the physics of each item, towers will fall as you would expect them to and the feel of the game is really satisfying and one of the reasons why you come back for more.
Boom Blox really is a stylish, fun, addictive puzzler and one which you will come back to time and again, for puzzle fans this could be yet another great reason to own a Wii, as if there wasn’t enough reasons already.
