Nintendo Media Summit: Hands On With Boom Blox
I didn't know what to expect from Boom Blox given my aversion to everything Spielbergian. It was on display at last week's Nintendo's Editor's day so I figured I'd just let go of my previous feelings and check it out.
Boom Blox is a sort of reverse Jenga with a little bit of baseball physics thrown in for good measue. players are presented with a stack of "Blox" all built up into various formations. There are special crystal Blox dotted throughout the towering structures and your goal is to take down the tower, and in turn the crystal Blox, in as few throws as possible using the balls provided. Using the Wii remote to can move up and down and rotate the camera until you find the portion of the structure you want to take down and then aim with the A button. Then simply "ptich" the ball (I used baseballs and bowling balls) at the targeted area with the Wii remote and start knocking things down. But that's not all there is to Boom Blox, read on to find out more!
It's an extremely physics based game and how hard you throw your ball and what type of ball you use greatly effect how much of the structure you can take out at once. The block physics are also very impressive and watching them tumble to the ground can be enjoyable just to see how it's going to happen. With over 200 levels that encompass individual and multi-player, there will certainly be plenty to do here. And not only that, but by using the create mode, players can build their own levels that they can send to friends. Despite this interesting addition, there is no online play. Existing game levels can also be de-constructed and changed if you so desire.
To keep things interesting, there are few types of themed blocks (besides the defaults) that can be used to build your custom structures such as Medieval, Western, Tiki and my personal favorite, Haunted. There are also special blocks that can be used to make it easier or harder for players to destroy the structures including bombs, glass and vanishing blocks. As an added bonus there are also thirty characters (made from blocks of course) that can be collected throughout the game.
I tried the single player and one of the eleven multi-player modes in my time with the game and quite liked both. The single player mode was pretty straightforward as described above. The competitive mode that I played was against two other players and this time each blck in the tower was marked with a number. The number not only added to your overall point score when you knocked that particular block down, but also clued you in to that blocks "weight." A higher numbered block would be larger and therefore more difficult to knock down. And yes, how hard you swing that Wii remote has an effect on how hard your virtual ball hits your virtual blocks.
Boom Blox (as all things Spielberg) is meant to be a family game and will likely apeal to that set of players as well as those who just enjoy the physical nature of the game itself. I quite enjoyed it and will be looking forward to playing more in depth when the final game hits stores on May 6.
Fruit Brute
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 15 April 2008
Other stuff like this: boom blox, nintendo, nintendo editor's day, steven spielberg, wii
Name: Dave