A closer look at the director's new project ... a puzzle game for Nintendo Wii.
by Libe Goad on Monday, February 18, 2008
From the man responsible for such film school fodder as Indiana Jones, E.T. and the original summer blockbuster, Jaws, comes a new puzzle game for the Wii, which revolves around the deceptively simple act of manipulating 3-D blocks, aka Blox, using the Wii's motion-sensitive controller.
Hollywood writer/director/producer Steven Spielberg was driven to create a game around the universal, "compulsion to build something up and knock something down," an EA producer tells us. "[Spielberg] would talk about when he got a train set as a boy; he'd spend hours building it up just to cross the tracks and watch the trains explode."
One look at Boom Blox and it's easy to see that inspiration under the hood. The game's training, single-player, multiplayer and create-a-level modes all center around using the Blox by knocking them down with projectiles, triggering nearby explosives or grabbing and manipulating the Blox themselves (as in the Jenga-like game where you pull single Blox from a stack, careful to not topple the entire tower).
A game wouldn't have that Spielberg vibe without a little drama, and the single-player Adventure mode uses mini-stories to propel players through different collections of puzzles in themed areas. In a Medieval themed area, you're introduced to a kingdom of sheep that need help collecting jewels. The player helps the Lego-looking sheep by knocking down piles of blocks to collect jewels, starting out with simple puzzles and continuing with more challenging ones. Similar scenarios play out in the other themed areas, which include Tiki Island, Haunted and Frontier, adds up to about 70 levels.
Since it's on the Wii, Boom Blox naturally includes a 'Party' multiplayer mode where up to four players can go head-to-head or play cooperatively to solve puzzles. The Tiki Tower Topple multiplayer levels require you to use the Wiimote to hurl a ball at a stack of blocks labeled with point values. The goal: whoever gets knocks down the most points wins.
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