Boom Blox, the collaboration between Electronic Arts and Hollywood legend Steven Spielberg, appeals to our destructive natures. At its simplest form, it is a puzzle game that allows us to throw objects at towers made of blocks, the goal to send them crumbling. You do this by pointing the onscreen cursor on a block, pressing the A button to lock it in place and then bringing your arm forward (similar to throwing a baseball). But to our surprise, Boom Blox is much more complex and as a result, immensely entertaining, potentially making it one of the Wii's must have games.

At first, we considered this game as a lame excuse for Spielberg to throw his hat into the video game arena. But Boom Blox is irresistibly addictive. You get over 400 levels, a mix of tower tumblers and puzzles in which you must slide pieces in order to complete objectives. Not only is there a multiplayer mode for up to four players (offline only), but also a single player mode with cut scenes and storylines, as well as a very impressive toolbox that lets you create your own puzzles and share them online via the system's WiiConnect24 service.

On the single player front, there's Explore Mode, a 70 level component that tasks you with knocking down towers of blocks using a specific number of throws, the goal to earn bronze, silver and gold medals. So, for example, you may have to destroy a mountain of blocks in four throws or less. To do this, you'll obsessively maneuver the camera around the structure, analyzing the angles and trying to find the best area to chuck the ball at, all in the hopes of starting a chain reaction that'll bring the tower to its knees.

Then there's Adventure Mode, a single player campaign with four very distinct themes: medieval, old west, tiki and haunted -- each of which features signature characters with unique abilities. Boom Blox contains over 30 cute characters that interact with each other in various ways. Chickens, for example, lay bomb blocks, which explode after a few seconds. Menacing skeletons, on the other hand, will attack and kill the chickens. Meanwhile, the dogs will protect the chickens, so part of the fun comes from seeing how each character type interacts.

Multiplayer comes loaded with 200 levels and 11 modes. In Tiki Tower Topple, up to four players take turns dislodging blocks from a tower. Each block has a numerical value, so the goal is to wrack up the most points.

Boom Box's toolbox, dubbed Create Mode, sets players free to dream up a near limitless amount of puzzles. Yet they can also change the rules, types of characters populating the game board the types of special blocks and the types of objects you can hurl at your creation including baseballs, bowling balls, those sticky hands you get from capsule toy machines and a super bomb, among other toys.

Make no mistake about it; Boom Blox is a potential killer app for the Wii. EA and Spielberg have something special, and unless they somehow screw it up between now and May 6, this should be one of the system's premier offerings, the type of game you may even buy the machine for. Our only concern is the force needed to throw the ball at high speeds. It was no problem for us, but we have our doubts whether grandpa will be able to put some mustard on his throw. There are workarounds, from jabbing the remote forward to performing a side throw, but it remains to be seen how many sore arms will crop up from extended Boom Blox sessions. Based on our early praise, we're willing to bet quite a bit.

Related Links

Boom Blox Game Guide