Review - Boom Blox Bash Party

Sherry bought me Boom Blox: Bash Party for my birthday. How did she decide on that? It's a good story. She walked into Best Buy and when a couple of employees asked her how they could help she said

"You could tell me what my husband wants for his birthday."

So, the two of them discussed the kinds of games we like to play (Mario, Pikmin, Zelda) and one of them suggested "the Steven Spielberg game." It turns out they didn't have it in the store, but they helped her order it. And "it" is in fact the sequel to Boom Blox.

In the game, each level is a puzzle of some sort, constructed of blocks. Sometimes you have to knock blocks down, sometimes retrieve them, other times stack them. It's a game of puzzle solving mixed with hand-eye coordination skills.

Well, we've been playing it quite a bit since she gave it to me. Initially, I played and she watched. Then we learned that there is a two-player co-operative mode, and we've been playing that almost exclusively. Our kids also have played some of the 2-4 competitive mode.

This is a game that makes wonderful use of the Wii motion controls. Sometimes you throw things at the blocks. Sometimes, you carefully lift blocks with something like a sticky rubber band. Sometimes you use a slingshot. Each of them has a natural interface with the Wii-mote, and with only a few exceptions, the physics of the 3-D world seems to be exactly what your mind expects. (The "building" interface -- at least in the "levels" where you have to build -- seems to overtax the Wii processor, so the motion is jerky, sometimes the blox visuals disappear when you're holding them, and they get placed where you don't expect.)

I'm reviewing this before being completely "done" with the game, because I'm not sure I'll ever be "done." Even if I am able to achieve a gold medal on all the levels that come with the game, I will gladly pick it up again, and there is the ability to create levels and get levels created by others over the Internet. This is one fun game, with decent replay value, and multi-player modes that make it a nice group event for an hour at a time.

Thanks for the gift, Sherry!

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