Hands On: Boom Blox Bash Party

19 May 2009 at 16:32:31 by

When I spoke to Amir Rahimi a couple of months back regarding the next installment of hugely popular Boom Blox, Boom Blox Bash Party, there was one thing that kept niggling me.  You see, Amir had told me that the original Boom Blox “hadn’t even touched the surface on the depth and number of ideas [this] team and Spielberg have.”

It’s quite a claim, especially for a game which was not only fun, but probably the only game you could consider to truly have something for everyone.  I’m not going to lie to you, Boom Blox was my favourite game of last year, more so because it was a game that I’d never considered playing, but when I did play it, I wouldn’t let it go.  My personal qualm with Boom Blox was the level editor, or create mode.  I found that finickity, frustrating and generally flawed.  It didn’t bother me though, because I had enough stuff to get on with and didn’t feel like I was missing anything.

That is somewhat of a lie though.  The only other thing I felt I was missing was the gold medals on all levels, but unfortunately that’s the failing of a perfectionist rather than a failing of the game itself.

So, the long and short of it, I was dubious, anxious and slightly concerned that, when Boom Blox Bash Party arrived, I wouldn’t recognise it, I wouldn’t be able to cradle it to my bosom because it had changed like a child turned rowdy teenager.  I was worried and confused, because Amir had also told me that the game had finished up with over 400 brand new levels, more than the first game.  So now I was scared too, and feared getting lost in the worlds that Boom Blox had to offer.

But I needn’t have been, because it’s in these worlds that the magic happens, and you realise that, actually, Boom Blox hasn’t changed at all.  It’s just upgraded itself, it’s scrubbed itself up and it’s now the game you feared to whisper it should have been.

Let’s talk about these worlds.  For those of you in the know, the Boom Blox Bash Party (which will be referred to as BBBP from now) will feature solo, co-op and versus modes which were available in the previous game.  There were no worlds per se, it was just a seamless story of some sheep trying to make sure no one stole their treasured gems.  With varying game modes, such as chemical blox for massive explosions, vanishing blox for maximum confusion and, what I like to call Jenga blox, for complete obliteration, Boom Blox required your help to save the sheep.

However, in BBBP, the worlds themselves - Space, Showtime, Pirate and Heroic -  all offer different game play modes, puzzles and feature new tools.  Not only that, but each level has different physics, so underwater you have floaty physics, in space you have zero gravity physics and so forth.  In addition to this, there are new features such as the virus blox, a block that infects other blocks around it.  You also have a slingshot, which will allow you to fire any block you are inclined to, regardless of whether it’s an animal character or not, for the little characters are now fair game people, and act as “if they are actually blox” claims Rahimi.  And he’s right.  There is nothing more fun than using the slingshot to fire screaming and wailing animal blox around the screen, even if you aren’t completing the mission.  And if you’re not interested in doing the missions in order, then there is a hub at the centre of the psychedelic Boom Blox park where the worlds are on offer, and in there you just play a random selection of games, levels and worlds.

Oh, and it’s not just blox anymore.  There are now cylinders and wedges in the game, which may not seem like much, but make a complete difference to gameplay, especially the levels that require high multipliers.

Yes, I said multipliers.   Some games will only award you a medal if you get those multipliers, so it’s imperative you’re precise with your throws, and patient after.  With shapes like cylinders and wedges, the physics becomes much more interesting and anything can happen.

And it’s not just the shapes that make a difference to the gameplay, it’s also the various tools and balls.  I’ve mentioned the slingshot, but I’ve said nothing about the paintball, which is a ball that changes the colours of blox, causing them to disappear when you score three of a kind.  There are also the aforementioned virus blox and balls, as well as canons and laser guns.  You see, when Rahimi said there were over 400 new levels here, he really wasn’t joking.  And you know what, having sunk over 25 hours into the single player mode of this preview code, it still feels like there’s a lot more to come.

The multiplayer game looks to be as expansive as the single player mode, with all of the worlds having tweaked versions of the solo campaign games in there.  For example, the Space level offers a Space Battle, which sees you chucking bombs at your opponent’s spacecraft until it disappears.  The Pirate level features Pirate Ship Battle, which is exactly what you’d expect.  Cannons firing away to sink your opponent’s ship.  On Heroic there is a Heroic Point Jackpot where you have to topple as many point blox as you can with one shot and in Showtime there are a games such as Colour Domination, where you fire your coloured balls, or paint bombs, to acquire territory as you destroy your enemy’s blox.

Co-operatively, there is as much depth as the versus mode, and if that isn’t enough, Rahimi told me that there will be continuous support and DLC from the team as well as the community.

“We as a dev team are committed to providing free content post launch.”

And if you’re not happy with the free content they provide, then you can always make and upload your own content, which can be easily done by selecting the last block on any level which is the create mode block. 

A final bit of knowledge?  Well, this iteration of the game was built entirely on the level editor in game because, according to Rahimi, the team needed to know how easy it was to build a game in the editor.  So for level creators, I have a feeling you’re going to have a blast.  I know I did, and I can ‘t wait to get my hands on the final product.  I’ll see you in Puck Attack.

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