Boom Blox is the kind of third party game that Wii owners have been waiting for. Created by Steven Spielberg and published by EA, it is clever, totally original, and perfectly suited to the Wii.
I say perfectly suited in that it utilizes the Wiimote and shows its power and flexibility as least as well as any game I've seen including Wii Play. In fact, I don't think the game would work nearly as well with any other type of controller. The basic game play is you have an elaborate pile of blocks (blox) of several types: positive score, penalty, exploding, and chemical (explodes if it touches another chemical blox) plus blox that are inert and used for construction. You throw a baseball, a bowling ball, or shoot with a laser and I'm sure many other things I haven't gotten to yet. It's a puzzle game in that you have to hit the exact spot on the exact blox to do a great variety of things like knock the whole thing down with one shot, or knock out scoring blox without knocking down penalty blox in over 400 different puzzles. Unlike most puzzle games, it also has a great physical side in that the speed at which you throw the ball also affects the outcome.
It's depth is impressive with an endless variety of challenges starting very simple and getting very challenging indeed. I imagine a very young child would enjoy playing this game simply by knocking down, and blowing up stacks without worrying about a score. What makes it so challenging, and addictive for an adult is figuring out and hitting the correct spot and the results playing out with as beautiful a physics engine as you have ever seen this side of Half-Life. These blox react, move and fall like real physical objects.
The real genius also is reflected in the perfect integration of the Wiimote. Pressing the B button ( the one on the bottom) allows you to freely move the camera three dimensionally to examine the stack and to line up the position and angle you want. Then the A button provides crosshairs to allow you to pinpoint the spot. Once you have the spot you hold down the button and throw the ball (how hard is crucial) letting go of the A button at the point of release. That's it! All other buttons are used strictly for housekeeping chores. After a few minutes the control becomes so automatic that you can concentrate strictly on the game play. The controller gives you exactly the control you need without ever distracting you and its unique nature seamlessly integrates the physical act of throwing. Playing on a traditional hand controller would in comparison, how shall I say this? Well it would just plain SUCK, because it would totally take you out of the game and replace a full arm and wonderfully gratifying throw with wiggling some stupid little analog stick or hitting a button. In fact, this game really drove home to me why traditional hand controller, even the Sixaxes, are the past of gaming and motion controls are the future. It's just taken a while, especially for 3rd party developers to learn how to really use it.
Boom Blox has three different modes: Play, Party and Create. The Play mode gives one player two different paths, one after the other. In Party four players can choose to compete or cooperate through 120 levels. Create mode allows you to create new puzzles to share with others via the internet. That's the limit of its online function but that's OK in this case. While I think it's nice that they included a Party mode for when you want to hang with friends, this is really a one person game.
It is also the kind of unique and perfectly executed 3rd party game the Wii needs and I believe it is the vanguard of new games that will be showing up at the end of a development cycle that only began when game developers realized that instead of a GameCube also ran, Nintendo had created a whole new type of machine that would end up dominating the console world.
IGN gave it a decent, but modest score of 8.1 but its members gave it 9.2.
XPlay gave it 5 out of 5 but more amazingly, Adam Sandler said it took him away from GTA IV.
USA Today gave it a great write up and 10/10 http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/jinnygudmundsen/2008-05-08-boom-blox_N.htm
The Boom Blox Official site: http://www.ea.com/boomblox/
