Boom Blox (Wii)

Boom Blox
Electronic Arts

Review by Anthony

Okay EA, I’m confused. Steven Spielberg is a movie director, not a game designer. You make games, not movies. Further, you’re making a puzzle game, not a game with a storyline. Does Steven Spielberg love puzzle games? It’s just such a strange thing to do, to enlist a movie director, and then paste that fact prominently all over a puzzle game. Anyway, more to the point, Boom Blox was a game I had a quick experience with. And overall, I think it was better that way.

Here’s the thing. Boom Blox is occasionally a very fun game. Boom Blox is occasionally an average game. Boom Blox is also occasionally a really dumb game. In two dedicated sittings I was able to play through (and achieve gold medals in) almost the entirety of the game. And in that time, I went through a very diverse range of emotions depending on the type of level I was playing.

What’s good:
- When the game has you strategically blowing up, dismantling, setting off chain reactions, and causing mayhem to various elaborate structures, the game is a lot of fun. From simple things like annihilating a stack of blocks to finding the right throw needed to start a big chain reaction, the game manages to be both brain tease-y and visceral at the same time. Completing puzzle games of old didn’t mean you could see a 3-D representation of blocks exploding and flying everywhere, so it’s nice to see it take an admittedly more dull genre and make it look fun too.
- There’s a good bit of variety to the types of things you’ll do in levels. Some have you just annihilating everything in sight, others have you clearing a path for a character to cross, another may have you defending an area from an onslaught of enemies, others may have you strategically picking off blocks to leave a specific structure intact... etc. etc. There are enough different things going on that you don’t have to feel like you’re doing the same thing constantly.
- All levels have a bronze/silver/gold system for the completion of different goals, though bronze is necessary to complete a level. Between that aspect, two player modes, and two single player modes with different types of challenges, technically there’s a lot to do.
- They didn’t charge $50 for it. That’s appreciated, especially when there isn’t $50 worth of gameplay to be found.

What’s neutral:
- They added a lot of unlockable blox-style characters and items throughout that you can use for level creation. Well uh... cool I guess. Except this is the majority of things unlocked, and is there really that big of a population looking to do level creation and editing?

What’s bad:
- The controls are not particularly good at all. Sure, swinging the wiimote to hurl a bowling ball seems fun at first, until you’re having to do it constantly. Trying to get that mid-power throw is also kind of a pain, especially when you need to be very careful with your tosses. Further, you hold B on the wiimote and turn the wiimote to scroll around. That’s all well and good for normal stage navigation, but when you get to a fully 3-D level where you have a limited time to fight off guys surrounding you in all directions... having to hold B, turn, then release before attacking is a very poor design.
- Remember when I said the game can have you doing things that are a lot of fun? Well, it can also have you doing things that are not fun... or are say, the opposite of fun. When the game has you using the “Grab Tool” to play overly complex and highly sensitive games of Jenga, it’s challenging, but there’s virtually no fun to be had doing that. When it has you pointing and shooting a hundred+ bad guys, it’s mildly fun. When it has you whipping your arm to throw balls at a hundred+ bad guys, it’s horrendous. I’m sure they were all having a grand time in the test room, but didn’t someone bother to mention that these levels were not entertaining?
- Very strange and/or annoying mechanics happen during gameplay that, whether intentional or not, can significantly mar the experience. In a stage where you make a path by clearing enemies for a mother gorilla to get to her kids in a time limit, she can inexplicably get stuck in the tiniest of floor indents for several seconds, ruining your time. When you build a blockade to protect a tiny kitty from monsters, she’ll sometimes spin around from her destination path to destroy the blockade you just put up for her! When gently pulling point blocks out, if positive ones fall as a result, you lose those points, yet if you just tug them gently as they’re already plummeting to the ground, you earn the points? Gah.

So I mean, the game’s got personality and it has some excellent and smart moments. I thought stages such as those that had you trying to strategically place bomb blocks to collapse structures were great, and it was pretty cool seeing things in action when they have you throw a rubber ball into a house of coin blocks to create havoc. I’m throwing things, stuff’s exploding everywhere, and hey, I’m enjoying this game.

Then I’m playing some overly simplified “defend the fort" game by whipping my arm 150 times per attempt. Next I’m monotonously trying to pull out one block after another from a big structure. Now I’m trying to save things that apparently don’t want to be saved. Then in two sit-downs, I’ve done almost everything there is to do aside from level editing and co-op. Oy. Great production values simply won’t make me overlook stupid gameplay choices.

I guess it may require ‘multiplayer mayhem’ to get the real value out of this. Otherwise it’s a decent game with some very serious concerns that I hope have been worked through for the sequel. Buuut the chances of me getting the sequel anytime soon are of course slim.