Spielberg's 'Boom Blox' offers charm, challenge on Wii

— -- Steven Spielberg is more than just an Academy Award-winning film producer and director — he's a video game creator as well. On the eve of the release of his next blockbuster Indiana Jones movie, Spielberg and Electronic Arts have rolled out Boom Blox, a charming puzzle game for the Nintendo Wii.

"I am a gamer myself, and I really wanted to create a video game that I could play with my kids," says Spielberg. '"Boom Blox' features an enormous amount of fun challenges and cool scenarios for your kids to solve or for you to master together."

Not only did Spielberg come up with the idea of having puzzles based on the building and knocking down of blocks, but he also supervised the art, the character development and the game play. He even named some of the characters after three of his daughters.

Boom Blox can be played in three different modes: Play, Party and Create. The Play mode offers two sequential paths of exploration for one player. The Party mode gives up to four players a chance to compete or cooperate through 120 levels of puzzles. The Create mode provides a creative sandbox in which to fashion puzzles to share with others. In all, there are almost 400 puzzles to solve.

By starting in the Play mode, you can unlock more content to use in the Create mode. The Play mode provides you with two approaches to the puzzles: the Explore mode, in which you work through a series of progressively harder puzzles, and an Adventure mode, in which you are presented with ministories that give you a reason to solve puzzles set in four different worlds. The puzzles found in the multiplayer Party mode are variations of the puzzles found in the Play mode.

Every puzzle features block structures that need to be altered. You are presented with an objective and the means to solve it. The beauty of these puzzles is that you can attempt them an infinite number of times, so with experimentation, you can figure them out.

One of the simplest puzzles involves figuring out how to hit a structure with a ball to make it tumble down. The game uses a realistic physics engine that makes blocks, balls and other objects behave in anticipated ways.

There are more than a dozen block types built into these structures, and they respond in different ways when touched or moved. For example, bomb blocks explode when touched. If you throw a ball at one, it might collapse a whole structure or at least part of it. Likewise, if you knock over a block tower containing a special chemical block and that chemical block happens to touch other chemical blocks in another tower, both towers will explode. You will find yourself wondering, "What if I ..." and then trying it to see the result.

Boom Blox makes excellent use of the Wii controller, as you interact with the block structures in three different ways: throwing, grabbing and blasting. Many of the puzzles provide you with a limited number of objects to throw at the blocks, including baseballs, bowling balls, bombs, coconuts and more. The key to these puzzles is to figure out where to hit the structure and with how much force. That force is determined by how hard you mimic a throwing action while holding the Wii Remote.

Other puzzles require you to use the Wii Remote as a grab tool, where you slide blocks out of structures, as if you were playing a Jenga-type game. You can also pick some blocks up and swing them to knock over things. In the blasting puzzles, you will be given fire hoses, lasers and other gun-like objects to use to blow up blocks.

In addition to using stationary blocks, the puzzles also contain character blocks. There are more than 30 types of character blocks and, in addition to moving, they have programmed behaviors. For example, if the chicken-shaped block, Marion McCluck, is in the puzzle, she will lay eggs that are bomb blocks. And if the beaver block named Boots is in the scene, his behavior is to blow up bomb blocks, so he will follow behind Marion causing mayhem.

Boom Blox is a fabulous family game. The puzzles are challenging without being daunting and they will appeal to kids, teens and adults. They can be explored individually or with others. And even when doing the puzzles alone, you never feel lonely, because the game characters join you and observe your progress from the sidelines. They cheer for you and set off fireworks when you succeed.

This game will appeal to all types because of the different ways you can play it. For the kids who love LEGOs and building, the Create mode will be right up their alley because they can build from scratch or remix puzzles from the game. For kids who want to play games to be social, there is the Party mode. And for kids who like the intellectual challenge of puzzles, there is the Play mode.

If you own a Wii, don't miss this one. And if you were thinking about getting a Wii, this game makes it worth the effort and the cost.

Gudmundsen is the editor of Computing With Kids magazine (www.ComputingWithKids.com). Contact her at gnstech@gns.gannett.com.