Archive for the ‘Wii’ Category

Personal Thoughts by my husband Justin Lowmaster…

When I first heard about Boom Blox Bash Party, I was very excited. I’m a big fan of the original Boom Blox game. We bought the original the day before my daughter was born and played it for hours and hours that day. It helped us relax.

Boom Blox Bash Party has all the same things that made Boom Blox great, and so much more. The main game play modes all revolve around blocks of some sort. In some levels you must carefully deconstruct towers (ala Jenga), while in others you win by throwing balls to knock down towers. Bash Party adds stacks of new modes and ways to interact with the blocks. New modes include paint levels where you color blocks to match them, space levels where the goal is to explode blocks outside an area floating in the void, and undersea levels where you have to toss blocks up to the surface without letting them touch the ground. New interaction ‘toys’ as they are called include a cannon you light and aim, a slingshot where you grab blocks (or the block animals) and fling them, and a new kind of ball, the Virus Ball.

In Bash Party there are also a few new block types aside from the standard bomb blocks (explode when hit) and chemical blocks (explode when two or more of these touch). The new blocks include Book Bux which add in-game money to your total (more on this later), Change Blox which morph from one block type to another, and the new Virus Blox. Virus infect other surrounding blox when exploded or when they are hit a Virus Ball (or touch another virus block). Infected blocks can spread like zombies in a crowded city under the right conditions. Activated virus blocks go poof and chaos ensues as whatever they were supporting collapses (like modern society when zombies run around biting people).

The Boom Bux allow you to unlock various items in the level building mode as well as unlocking levels. One of my complaints in Boom Blox was if you couldn’t beat a level, you were stuck (in that area at least) until you managed to get past it somehow. This happened and until a friend visited and we managed to beat a certain level. Before that, whole sections were unplayed. With Boom Bux you can unlock the next level in any given section after the currently unlocked level. No longer will you spend hours cursing at the skeletons attacking the kitties that you just can’t quite defeat. You can skip that level and move on, and take on the challenging level later.

The multiplayer levels are just as solid as the single player ones, but you get to have fun with your friends. Knock down each others towers, remove blocks hoping that the tower stays up just a little longer and crashes down on the next player, or work together to get a gold medal on all types of levels. Whether single player or multi-player, there are a lot of levels shipped with this game.

Now, the most important part of any game is: Is it fun? Just like Boom Blox, Bash Party is hours and hours of fun that anyone can enjoy. In fact, Bach Party, with the addition of connecting to Nintendo Wi-Fi, can provide a nearly unlimited number of levels. Played all the levels that came with the game? Just click the button and choose from the highest rated, newest, or random levels other players have created. Once you finish that level, you are given a chance to rate the level. This lets the best levels rise up, while still giving the new ones a chance to see the light of day.

I think Boom Blox Bash Party is a fantastic game for anyone. It’s easy to grasp the controls and concepts of the levels and I’ve never played any Boom Blox game with a single person who has said they disliked the game (and yes, everyone I played with had the ability to speak). There’s no need to play Boom Blox before playing Bash Party, but they are both great games. If you get one, get Bash Party because of the new features, but you’ll get the benefit of lots more levels if you get both.

Boom Blox Bash Party retails for 29.99 and is rated E for everyone.

Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of Boom Blox Bash Party for review from Electronic Arts . This review is 100% my opinion and has not been edited or reviewed by anyone. I was not compensated in any other way for this product review.

My Baby First Steps is a follow up from the popular My Baby Boy and My Baby Girl Nintendo DS games. What’s this game about?  In so many words, you’ll be able to learn the do’s and don’t in the world of virtual parenting!

Fun Game Features

My Baby First Steps is available for the Nintendo DS and the Wii.

Personal Thoughts by Justin Lowmaster…

NERF N-Strike Elite is a rails light-gun shooter by EA Games. It is an decent alternative to the more violent and bloody rail shooters such as Dead Space: Extraction or any of the House of the Dead games. While it isn’t a game I enjoyed a lot, it will do well for certain audiences.

Key Game Features

* The NERF: N-Strike Elite Game – Enjoy a classic rail shooter packed with arcade style shooter action where your path through the game is laid out in advance so you can concentrate on having fun.
* NERF Switch Shot EX-3 Blaster Included – Bundled with the game is the NERF Switch Shot EX-3 Blaster, which is compatible with other games utilizing the Wii Remote, and as a standalone NERF gun with a three NERF projectiles capacity.
* Decoder Lens Attachment – Your blaster includes a detachable decoder lens through which special codes and enemy weaknesses can be seen in-game.
* Multiplayer Support – NERF: N-Strike Elite features 2-player off-line. multiplayer co-op functionality for twice the fun.
* Multiple Available Characters – NERF: N-Strike Elite features access to four different characters, each with their own arsenal of NERF blasters
* Weapons Selection – Weapons available in NERF: N-Strike Elite include 16 different NERF blasters, both real and fictional, each with their own specific strengths and weaknesses.

This games enemies are robots who shoot NERF darts and the weapons the players use are also foam NERF projectiles. I have not played the first game in the series, but I believe that in that game the players are in a training course. In the second game, the robots have gone awry and are in ‘real’ danger.

I myself enjoy games like House of the Dead, so when I started the NERF game, I wondered how it would compare. While I hoped for a similar game that was just geared for a younger audience. I was, sadly, a little disappointed. While at its core, it is like any rails shooter. The camera moves around and you fire at whatever enemies pop up. My biggest complaint is the fact that enemies take many hits so sometimes you just stand there holding the trigger, waiting for a robot to explode, then going to the next one. I’d call it slow-paced. There aren’t enemies popping up all over forcing my to quickly blast them. Some robots show up, I hold down the trigger, and wait. Even on the harder difficulty, the only difference is that you take more damage and the rockets you blast from the sky move faster.

Another issue is that there is very little ‘feel’ to the game. The robots will move somewhat when hit, but there is little to no feedback to know you are hitting one. Obviously they are getting hit with foam darts, not shotgun shells, but still, some reaction would be nice. There isn’t much in the way of impending danger. Your shield is the only ‘health’ meter you have, and when it drop to zero, you simply are asked if you want to return to the previous checkpoint or to the menu. Also, to reload you have to shake the remote. This is awkward and I kept wondering if I’d shake something loose, but I didn’t. Shooting off-screen to reload, like most games like this, would have worked just fine. It auto-reloads when you run out of bullets though.

In game you can shoot canisters that you spend to upgrade your weapons. This makes them stronger, hold more ammo, bigger scopes, the normal things in this type of game. I did not find any bonus modes or options, but they could be there.

The game is short, beatable easily in just a few hours. That’s not too uncommon for any of the rails shooters I’ve played. There are three difficulty modes, but playing on Hard didn’t make it much more a challenge as nothing changed that I noticed besides the amount of damage I took and the speed of one enemy. Basically I just had to replay more often. The levels appear to be the same for every character, you just have a different set of weapons to choose from.

The game comes with an actual NERF gun that you can remove the firing mechanism from and insert the Wii Remote into to play. Attached to the top is the Red Reveal scope. It’s a red bit of transparent plastic that will sometimes reveal a specific target to hit. I believe you could play the game without it, but it is meant to be played with it. For me it was kind of a gimmick and didn’t make the game better. Didn’t make it worse though.

Final Thoughts…

All in all, Nerf N-Strike Elite falls short for me, but if you’d like a rails shooter that isn’t full of zombies and blood spattering everywhere, it is a viable alternative. I could have been better with faster paced game play. I worry the younger audience it is meant for will also tire of the repetitive times when the same few robots show up and you just stand there waiting for them to explode. It’s not a bad game though, just could have been better.

This title is rated Everyone 10+ for fantasy violence and can be purchased at various locations as well as Amazon.com .

Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of NERF N-Strike Elite for review from Electronics Arts . This review is 100% our opinion and has not been edited or reviewed by anyone. I was not compensated in any other way for this product review.