Boom Blox

Very rarely am I impressed by a puzzle game. Tetris is still the greatest puzzle game ever made. It's been a long time since that game came out and it has yet to be topped. It has extremely simplistic game play, but it's extremely addicting. Plus the score to that game is incredible. Obviously there are just three songs to choose from, but "Type A" is by far the best song in the game.

Boom Blox is not very similar to Tetris. The only similarity is that they're both puzzle games. Boom Blox has more in common with Jenga than any video game. My wife and I love to play it together. She's not a fan of first person shooters, so this is a great way to play games with her.

The game is extremely addicting. All you're doing is knocking blox off of platforms, but it requires a lot of thought. It's very rare that you actually have to do a lot of thinking in games nowadays. You have to consider the angle at which you're throwing baseballs, bowling balls, or whatever else there is to chuck. Then you have to factor in which way the block is going to fly after you hit it. You have to determine whether or not it will bump into a negative points block and send it flying as well, thus negating your score. You are alotted a certain number of throws to get a gold medal on some levels.

There's a game mode where you grab blox with a hand tool. Once you grasp a block you have to carefully maneuver it away from the other blox. Some of the platforms are set up in such a way that if you pull the wrong block, the weight of one side will tip the other. In some cases the platforms will cave in one themselves. It's not a bad thing for the platforms to fall, but you have to get a certain amount of points or remove a certain number of objects before that happens.

Once you have had your fun with the story and co-op, there's the level editor. You can design your own puzzles in whatever manner you choose. You can then play those levels together or share them with other Wii owners online.

Hopefully we can expect more creativity like this from EA and Steven Spielberg in the future. It seems like good things happen when EA and Spielberg collaborate. The first time they did it, Medal of Honor was born. I certainly hope they continue to push the perameters of puzzle gaming. That way I can have another game to play with my wife.