Bash Party is the definitve Boom Blox experience
Boom Blox Bash Party doesn't completely change its prequel's basic concept – after all why throw such a wonderful addictive formula out the window for no reason - on the contrary the premise remains the very same, it has only been widely expanded in order to add a few new features and gameplay tweaks that open a surprisingly huge amount of new possibilities for both developers and players to incorporate into their levels.
As its prequel the game uses blocks with different properties to build either massive complex or small simple structures. On the single-player mode you will find a range of five differently themed worlds each one presenting three or four unique ways to interact with the blocks on some of them your goal will be as simple as throwing a baseball at a huge tower in order to knock down as many point blocks as possible, on others you may have to pull a certain block out of a structure without making it collapse. The list of creative uses for the blocks goes on and on with a unique way of golfing, bombing stone strongholds to harvest for treasure and even going to outer space in order to blow some blocky planets up.
Despite the huge number of ways to interact with each specific level the controls are not hard to work as they are very intuitive it doesn't take a lot to discover that in order to throw the ball all you need to do is make a throwing motion and releasing the A-button when you want to let go of the ball, or that you need to pull the control away from the screen to make your slingshot gain power. These kinds of simple yet effective controls will certainly make casuals very comfortable around the game creating some quite fun multiplayer moments as it is easy to gather people interested in the game since it will attract almost everyone that watches people play it.
The game presents extremely realistic physics, hence its quite simplistic – but effective – visuals, if throw a ball in the corner of a block expect it to react in a spinning manner, throw it in the block's lower area and it will go upwards. The physics also applies to the reaction structures have when crumbling down which is absolutely necessary for a game with such a heavy focus on removing or protecting a certain part of a structure without destroying it completely.
One of the main additions the game received is the new outer space and underwater environments. One would certainly expect those themes to be mere backgrounds to vary on the game's atmosphere but EA put so much detail into this game that levels that receive such a theme will also present very precise specific physics so expect outer space levels to feature lots of gravity changes and underwater levels to make blocks feel floatier than usual.
The game's single player presents a huge amount of levels (possibly over 200) that vary in theme, objective and difficulty. Adding to the replay value is the fact each level will award players medals according to their performance, for example on point-based stages players will have to reach a certain, very high, score to acquire a gold medal but getting a bronze medal most of the times doesn't require too much trying, once again proving that Boom Blox Bash Party has great offers for both casual gamers and hardcore gamers who are looking for nearly maddening challenges.
While the single-player mode is indeed a lot of fun the best aspect of the game by far is its multiplayer mode, gather a bunch of friends around and in a few minutes Boom Blox Bash Party will turn from a great game to one of the Wii's finest titles up to this day. Just like the single-player mode the game's multiplayer presents a huge amount of levels. Some of those levels borrow goals from those of the single-player mode such as golfing or throwing a baseball at a tower of blocks so you score tons of points, but some exclusive level goals appear on multiplayer such as a battle between two blocky castles where one player must destroy the other player's fortress as quickly as possible.
If by some chance you happen to think that 400 levels are not enough to make you a happy gamer EA has the perfect solution for your problems which is a deep level creation tool. As you progress through single-player new parts will be unlocked for level creation and sooner or later players will be able to come up with outstanding levels with nearly as much depth, detail and options as the game's developers had when they were producing the game's original levels.
The tool is very easy and simple to use and offers copy and paste features in order to multiply your structures and other useful buttons such as undo, delete and etc. Players will also have the ability to transport any interesting structure found on the game's levels into their own with the click of a button therefore giving players a huge array of possibilities. All the different types of blocks seen on the already created levels are available such as the green ones that explode when they touch each other, the purple blocks that vanish when touched by a ball, the orange blocks that infect and destroy nearby blocks and many others.
The original Boom Blox also presented such a mode but it also featured a very big flaw that made level creation slightly less compelling which was the lack of an online server to share your levels with other players, fortunately that issue has been addressed and the results are just great. While on EA's quick to access servers players can share their user created levels and even try a huge amount of new user created content. Finding levels with a specific goal is made quite easy by the wonderful menus and subdivisions presented online. Players will also have the ability to check the highest rated levels, those that are most popular and the newest additions.
However if you are worried your Wii's short storage capacity won't be able to handle all the awesome levels you want download you should not worry because you can play levels right from EA's servers without having to transfer them into your system. Unfortunately while a big deal of work and time was put into developing a great online system the game still doesn't present any kind of Wi-Fi competitions which is a shame considering how much fun this game is when playing it with other people.
In spite of the game's undeniable awesomeness Bash Party still presents some flaws that may bother a lot of players during gameplay. On all of the game's levels the camera rotates around a fixed axis simply spinning around so chances are you will eventually come across some very weird and uncomfortable camera angles when trying to make your play. The problem could be easily fixed by adding some Nunchuck controls but perhaps in order to keep things simple EA decided not to do so.
Some occasional slow downs will also occur but they aren't very serious, at least when it comes to single-player levels, since a few user created assets are so exaggerated the game will barely be able to run smoothly.
Overall Boom Blox Bash Party is a game every Wii owner should have. It won't blow your mind like the original did for it follows the same basic premise but the additions made by the developers make Bash Party the definitive single-player and multi-player Boom Blox experience. It is hard to find a Wii game that brings together both experienced gamers and newcomers but Boom Blox does it better than any other game possibly could.
Actual Score: 8.8