Boom Blox

Boom Blox

Take a moment to imagine what a Steven Spielberg videogame might look like. Perhaps you can see the muddy trenches of a World War 2 First Person shooter in the style of Saving Private Ryan? Or maybe you’re thinking of a pulp action Indiana Jones adventure game. Giant sharks, dinosaurs, aliens and Nazis: these are the big and brash themes one associates with the creative output of movie making’s most prolific director.

But Boom Blox, a game Spielberg has worked in conjunction with EA to design couldn’t be further from these larger than life dramas. Rather, it’s a game that has you throwing balls at your TV screen in an effort to knock down Jenga style blocks in return for high-scores. And if all this weren’t extraordinary enough, it turns out it’s one of the Nintendo Wii’s very best games to boot.

Boom Blox reportedly emerged from a meeting between Spielberg and Nintendo's master designer, Shigeru Miyamoto. The director was inspired to create a game based around building towers of blocks, and, with childish glee, physically breaking them down again. It’s this theme of harmless destruction underpins the whole experience.

To begin with you’re given a limitless supply of baseballs and tasked with knocking down blocks of bricks topped with the eponymous gem Blox. This is done by pointing the Wiimote at the screen, holding down the A-button to hold your target cursor in place and finally making the action of throwing a ball.

Where the ball hits the tower and the strength with which it’s hurled dictates what happens next as the tower either crumbles under the force of the blow or simply trembles a little. The game’s chaotic physics feel believable and the resulting blocky carnage is immensely satisfying.

The game awards you a medal based on the number of balls it took to achieve a level’s goal. The fewer balls you use the higher your medal and, while clearing stages is pretty easy throughout, earning gold rankings is far from it. The central premise is soon given breadth by way of different challenges such as trying to pull blocks out of a tower without it crumbling and so on. There are literally hundred of levels and they grow and develop in scope and imagination beautifully as you progress. Levels can be played in co-op or competition with other players and there’s a powerful level editor to allow for user generated content to e shared amongst friends.

The game does what so many Wii titles have tried and failed at: bringing together the casual and hobbyist gamer. Like Popcap favourite Peggle, it’s a game that unites those who have never picked up a joystick before with those who rarely let go of one. The presentation is a little lacking and the story seems hardly worthy of Spielberg’s name, but the game still emerges as one of the best titles on Wii, a shining example of how to properly do casual, mini-gaming.

5 out of 5