Stex Toys

Last night was our first night playing Boom Blox. After both undertaking the training we side stepped the single player story, and hence any unlockables and headed straight for co-op play. Co-Op options seem to finally be coming to the fore in console gaming, I think perhaps due to the increasing number of couples that play. When you are with your mates the chance to whoop their arses is always favourable, however when with your partner the ‘two of us against the world’ factor is a far more pleasing and relationship friendly one. It’s for this reason that Lego Star Wars is currently sitting top of our favourite games at present, high hopes that Lego Indy and later Lego Batman will achieve the same goal!

However back to Boom Blox…

The game headlines by the name Steven Spielberg at every opportunity they get to put it up on the screen, but then who wouldn’t! There are several games types we came across in co-op play; ball/bomb destruction; blox pulling; blox punting and shooting .. the first level involved the shooting which I wasn’t quite expecting in the game. Here you just point at the screen and click B to shoot the flying/rolling golden Blox, whilst avoiding shooting any ‘penalty blox’ quite a fun concept and I can imaging being total mayhem in four player mode!
Blox pulling was a Jenga like trick of having to remove Blox from a tower without dropping the penalty blox at the top of the structure to the ground. This proved somewhat tricky at times, and the occasional random ‘crazy’ blox which appear to go absolutely flying when you drop them added to the random factor. Taking it in turns we managed to score quite well on most levels, however the gold rated results seems quite hard to come by.
Blox Punting involved lobbing a ball at the Blox and attempting to hit them into multiplayer areas.. or score normal if they just hit the ground. Score Blox are interspersed with penalty Blox to heighten the tension. This was probably the levels where we had the most fun as the required scores to get gold where often quite low and you could resort to hit and hope shots where you know about 5 Blox at a time into the air and hope the final score comes out positive. This was the level that really showed of the physics engine the best, it really is very impressive for the Wii in my opinion, and puts the ‘flying spanner’ effects in BioShock to shame, if not quite hitting Half-Life 2 levels.
Finally ball/bomb throwing completes the mix, at least as far as we have seen to this point, where you attempt to bring down structures using as few balls as possible. Some good fun here too, with plenty of ‘Oh No’ moments when things go badly off plan!

So all in all a very positive start for the game, although to be fair most games will hit you with all their good points on first play, and if they don’t there is a fair chance the game, in PC Zone parlance, is a Dump. However I can see this getting some air time during our 4 player sessions and will report again on the product further down the line.

Placed a couple of pre-orders yesterday for some upcoming sure to be classics for the Wii.

First off is Boom Blox a game created under the guidance of one Stephen Spielberg! Only found out about the game at the weekend watching an episode of playr2 on Bravo, and lo and behold it’s out on Friday. Order placed with play.com as usual, so hopefully they ship it to arrive in work on the Friday ready for some weekend play.

Second up, the no-brainer of Lego Indy.. after our double run through on Lego Star Wars this was always going to be on the cards. It’s another month yet before release but already we’re sooo ready for it!

This will be my list of titles that really need converting to Wii for use with the WiiBoard

Katamari Damancy – I can’t be the only one thinking this!!

1080 Snowboarding – There’s snowboarding in WiiFit as it is, easy shoe in.

Tony Hawk’s – Controls have to be close enough to snowboarding, using the remote for tricks.. or remote plus stances for combo tricks!

I’ll keep adding as I keep coming up with them, and will link in anything hinting at possibilities.

Anyone have other ideas?