Boom Blox Bash Party

When EA announced a while ago that they were going to work in conjunction with probably the most prolific film director of out time, Steven Spielberg, a great many of us waited eagerly for the game.  When the game arrived, Boom Blox, a great many felt cheated and ignored it, this wasn’t what Spielberg should be doing.  Luckily though I didn’t ignore it and indeed played it to death, more than I played Mario Kart Wii.  The basic premise of Boom Blox was to destroy blocks by throwing balls at them using your Wiimote to re create the ball throwing motion.  Hidden in the blocks were gems, that gave you points and tactical throwing was essential to maximise your score.  I really am shortchanging the first game here but I want to talk about the new one a bit more.

Boom Blox Bash Party was a bit of a surprise to me as it has come so soon after the first game, I didn’t even know it was coming out but I am pleasantly surprised by what I have seen.  Building on the original without spoiling the easy game play must have been a tricky task but EA have done wonders and trumped the first game in so many ways.  The most noticeable addition this time is multi player aspects to the game, these include versus and co-op.  Here you can play through plenty of levels based on the games themes with or against your friends.  One small thing that annoyed me here was that you can play the versus with one controller but not the co-op, a shame because I can’t be the only person with only one Wiimote.

For me, the single player mode is where it is at, simple, colourful, varied and most of all…FUN.  The main hub has you in a fairground scenario where you can choose from the four themed levels- showtime, pirate, space and heroic.  You can also play samples from all of the levels in the central hub, a nice wee taster of what to expect.  Each themed level has six stages to clear and each stage awards you a medal based on your performance, going for gold on each level can be an obsession!  There are different methods to knock down the blocks and different blocks to destroy.  You can fire slingshots, bombs, baseballs and bowling balls.  You can destroy bricks, exploding bricks, chemical bricks and virus bricks.  The trick is to do all this in as few throws as possible or to get the biggest score possible.  Some levels see you removing point blocks in a Jenga way without disturbing penalty bricks, great stuff. 

As you play through the levels you are awarded Boom Bux, the currency for the game, a stroke of genius is offered through your Bux collecting.  If you get to a level and get really stuck you wont be able to unlock the next level, after a few tries you can use some of your Bux to unlock the next level.  So as long as you have enough Bux you will never be stuck on the same level for too long.  As you progress you also unlock various in game items to use in the create mode, yes that’s right there is also a create mode.  In this mode you can make your own levels from scratch or using pre-made levels that you can tinker about with and then play on them.  Not only can you make your own levels but you can also upload them to the EA servers for others to play and rate, of course you can also download and play other users levels too.  I found the downloading and uploading to be really quick and easy, a joy to use.  There is a nice and easy tuition to get you started and in no time you can have great levels to play on, the scope here is going to be vast.  One last thing to tell you nearly had me marrying my Wii.  As I was playing through the game a box appeared on screen with an achievement message, I almost had a heart attack.  The game has 34 achievements to unlock, mostly consisting of hit 50 of this or destroy 500 of that.  Alas the achievements are in this game only and don’t have the 360’s implications, drat.