I never got around to playing the original Boom Blox, which is a shame, because I love physics-based wanton destruction.
The critically acclaimed Wii game, developed by Electronic Arts in collaboration with film director Steven Spielberg, was an inventive and fun puzzle game that appealed to hard-core gamers and casuals alike.
I recently had a chance to get my hands on the sequel, Boom Blox Bash Party, and got a small taste of all that I've missed, and some of the new features in store when the game ships in May.
Bash Party is chock full of new things. There's a new hub world, adding a bit of color to the comparatively plain Boom Blox
menu of yore. The sequel also adds four new environments, with new objects and rules to complement them. I saw Space, which lacks gravity, and a Pirate-themed level where I wrestled with a squid for sunken treasure.
One of the new block types is the Virus block. Toss a
Virus ball at one and it'll explode, infecting its neighbors to create more Virus blocks.
If you prefer toppling towers the old-fashioned way, you'll have a few new tools and game modes at your disposal. Using the slingshot, grab objects and launch them to wreak havoc. One new game mode loads the slingshot with a hockey puck, which you'll need to fire to push blocks into scoring zones – trickier than it sounds, with conveyor belts and mischievous critters mucking up the works.
In another new mode, Color Topple, four players are assigned a color, and tasked with hurling bowling balls to clear their blocks from a board. The blocks are all arranged in a tower, so it takes a bit of clever camera-maneuvering to avoid inadvertently knocking off a friend's blocks, improving their score. A large neutral block worth quite a few points is buried in the middle of the level, which might tempt players into looking for a quick lead – and making a few costly mistakes along the way.
Yet another new mode I saw was a Boom Blox take on the match-three genre. Armed with a ball of paint, the goal is to create groups of three or more by splashing shapes in a multicolored tower. It looks simple enough, but after a bit of practice I was able to hit objects right on the seam, coloring them and their neighbors in one swoop.
There are over 450 new levels, spread across single- and multi-player modes. If you've somehow managed to play them all, or just want a sampling of the Internet's collective monomania, Bash Party also packs an improved level editor, and makes sharing levels easier.
EA has circumvented the onerous Friend Code system by allowing users to upload their creations directly to the publisher's servers for moderation. When you're ready to try a few user-made levels, just enter in a bit of search criteria and you'll get a handful dumped directly onto your Wii's onboard memory. Save the ones you'd like to keep, and the rest will be wiped from your console the next time you search. I wasn't told how much space the levels consume, but the entire process was fast, and effortless.
To sum up: EA has tossed in plenty of new levels, trimmed some of the annoying bits (I was told that the shooting segments wouldn't be as prominent), and made getting access to the wealth of user creativity a mere button press away. Here's my prediction: If you liked the original, then Bash Party is going to be an easy sell.
Images courtesy EA
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