'Boom Blox' throws 'Bash Party'

— -- If you own a Nintendo Wii and didn't get last year's Boom Blox, arguably the best puzzle game on the Wii, now you've got a shot at a new version. Boom Blox Bash Party has just been released and once again Steven Spielberg and Electronic Arts have collaborated to create a fabulous game that all ages can enjoy.

At its core, the Boom Blox franchise is all about knocking down virtual block structures by aiming balls and other items at them, using movements made while holding the Wii remote. And while there is great satisfaction in toppling a block structure, the genius of the game is in the variations on that theme.

This sequel offers 400 new puzzles and creative rifts on the core game play. You can explore block destruction alone in Solo mode, or with friends and family in Versus and Co-op modes. Within each mode, the puzzles are grouped by themes and accessed by choosing from five rides in an amusement park setting. For instance, if you choose a space ship ride, you get to play a puzzle set in outer space.

A typical puzzle opens with a large structure of different colored blocks in the center of the screen. You are challenged to knock it down, perhaps by using three throws of a ball. Where this challenge gets interesting is that the different colored blocks have different properties. If you hit a red Boom Blox, it will explode, taking down a portion of the structure with it. And if you hit a purple Vanishing Blox, it will disappear, perhaps causing the green Chemical Blox above and below it to touch, react to each other and explode.

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The variations in the puzzles derive from a variety of factors. Location is one, with some of the puzzles set in outer space with no gravity and others underwater where gravity is different than on land.

Another way the puzzles vary is by the types of tools that you are given to solve them. In some, you throw things; in others you are allowed to grab blocks to push or pull them out of structures in game play that resembles the popular game Jenga. And in others, you are given a slingshot or cannon.