Wii and Spielberg Create Family Gaming

There’s that old saying, "you can’t please all of the people all of the time". Well, that statement’s true for everyone except Steven Spielberg. Time after time, the legendary director has delivered blockbusters with undeniable cross appeal. The eyes of adults were as wide as their children’s when Eliot’s bike flew past the moon in "E.T.", and grandparents gasped right along with the kids as Indiana Jones nearly got run over by a giant boulder in "Raiders of the Lost Ark". Now, the legendary director is applying his skills to a different medium.

Just last week, the EA Casual Entertainment Label released "Boom Blox™", a new game designed specifically for the Nintendo Wii. "Boom Blox" is the first game produced by Spielberg, and also the first of three he’s agreed to create for Electronic Arts (EA). Perhaps what’s most notable about "Boom Blox" is how un-cinematic the game is. Unlike "Grand Theft Auto IV", which features developed characters, a story line better than most Hollywood films and a soundtrack filled with notable tunes, "Boom Blox" seems more like, well, a video game. It’s a puzzle game - more in the vein of "Tetris" than "Halo" and its characters are cartoons. But what really differentiates Spielberg’s game from a lot of the other games out there is that it’s designed for parents and kids to play together. And that aspect came directly from Mr. Spielberg.

"I am a gamer myself, and I really wanted to create a video game that I could play with my kids," Spielberg said. "‘Boom Blox"' features an enormous amount of fun challenges and cool scenarios for your kids to solve or for you to master together."

In the game, players get to play the role of both creator and, probably more enjoyably, destroyer. Players travel through different levels, attempting to solve puzzles involving blocks – which, of course, get progressively harder as you go. For example, on one level, a player has to figure out how to hit a structure of blocks with a ball to make it fall down. To complicate matters, some of the blocks are bombs that explode when touched while other blocks are characters like Marion "Fluffy" McCluck, a bomb-laying chicken, and Boots Beaverton, who likes to make the bomb blox explode.

Because it’s for the Wii, players swing the controller to grab blocks, throw balls (including bowling balls) and partake in other activities. The game can be played in three different modes: "Play", "Party" and "Create". The "Play" mode allows for single player destruction, while the "Party" mode is designed for multiple players (up to four) to compete or cooperate through 120 levels of puzzles. In "Create" mode, players have a chance to make their own puzzles that they can then test on others (the fact that every game now makes users programmers has to be one of the best gaming advancements of the past few years).

Spielberg’s penchant for playing to all audiences is certainly apparent in "Boom Blox". Goofy-looking block characters with funny names share equal screen time with addictive puzzles sure to consume adult minds (much like "Tetris" did back in the day). So far, most of the buzz on the game has been pretty positive. The only question that remains is whether Spielberg will have another blockbuster on his hands – his first in the video game world. If not, he can always fall back on "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", the fourth installment in the wildly popular movie series due to hit big screens this summer.

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