Hands On: Episode 5

Boom Blox Bash Party is the sequel to the innovative Boom Blox for the Wii.  Boom Blox Bash Party is a very unique game.  While it is mainly a puzzle game, it has its action aspects as well.  This game has a lengthy single player, a substantial two player cooperative campaign, a robust four player multiplayer, and a fantastic level creator.  Players can even share their custom built levels online through EA’s server; no friend codes involved!  I hadn’t played my Wii for over a year before this gem came out, but boy was it worth dusting that hunk of plastic off!  Did I mention it costs a mere $40?

But what happens when you have mastered every single player level, beat each cooperative world, and played every versus level to death?  Boom Blox Bash Party has you covered, don’t worry.  There is a wonderful, easy to use, and robust level creator that allows players to build anything they can dream of!  Want to build your own Jenga level?  You can do it with ease!  Want to make a mini golf course to challenge your friends on?  No problem!  The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

When you start up the level creator you can choose any of the areas you can play on in the single player, versus, and cooperative modes (15 areas total, from outer space to skyscrapers).  Each setting is gigantic with PLENTY of room to build on.  Before your start placing blox like crazy, make sure to plug your, otherwise unneeded, Nunchuck in.  There is a limit to how many blox you can place, but you will rarely hit it.  There are a wide variety of blox available to place including: regular blox, immovable blox, vanish blox, chemical blox, bomb blox, virus blox, point blox, cloud blox, breakable blox, and more.  Any block can be scaled to the size of your choice, which makes building things very easy.  Blox can be rectangular, triangular, or circular.  You can place conveyor belts, see through blox pushers, and blox that keep spawning as well.  Plus, you can place various characters that interact with the blox and each other like cows, UFOs, robots, squids, and more!  After you make a level, you can choose any of the game modes that are already in the game for single player, co-op, and versus mode to be used with your level.  You can change the tool players use for each mode, what scores are needed for medals, and a few other things depending on the mode you use.

When you finish creating, naming, and describing your level, you can upload it to EA’s server.  It has to first be approved, which takes about 24 hours, before it can be played by the public.  You can, however, show your levels to friends before they are approved if you wish.  Once you level is on the server, users can play, rate, and download your levels.  There are four different types of levels to browse through: solo, versus, co-op, and freestyle.  Freestyle is for levels with no particular objective like a Rube Goldberg Machine or a drawing of Mario using blox.  Within each category you can sort levels by highest rated, most downloaded, and most recent.  Also, you can search levels via keyword, creator, or level ID.  The level sharing system as a whole works very well, which is unusual for a Wii game.   Jaw dropping levels are made daily, and the community is currently very active.