Spielberg's Wii game "Boom Blox"

Couscous

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/36524/Steven-Spielbergs-Boom-Blox-Announced

EA has announced that BOOM BLOX, the first game developed in collaboration between EA and director and producer Steven Spielberg, is set for a May 2008 release for Nintendo Wii. This high-energy game features more than 300 levels, a cast of more than thirty wacky characters, and an easy-to-use in-game editor that allows players to express their creativity.

“I am a gamer myself, and I really wanted to create a video game that I could play with my kids,” said Steven Spielberg. “BOOM BLOX features an enormous amount of fun challenges and cool scenarios for your kids to solve or for you to master together.”

Fun for kids and the entire family, BOOM BLOX offers action-packed interactive activities that takes Wii play to a new level of creativity and fun with single player, co-op, and versus gameplay. Players can experience the visceral gameplay - perfectly suited for the Wii’s interactive motion-sensitive controls - through brain-twisting challenges. They can interact with entertaining characters such as the block-laying chickens or baseball-throwing monkeys across four themed environments - Tiki, Medieval, Frontier, and Haunted. Additionally, players can remix any level of the game in Create Mode using props, blocks, or characters that have been unlocked during the game. Players can also virtually build anything they can dream up. Plus, their designs can then be shared with friends or used to challenge others to solve their newly created puzzle via WiiConnect24.

"We developed BOOM BLOX with endless combinations of gameplay in mind,” explains Louis Castle, executive producer. “With over three hundred levels, built upon a full real-time physics model, your experience can be as easy or difficult as you want it to be - there really is something for everyone to enjoy.”

“My inspiration for this game came while I was playing the Wii for the first time,” added Spielberg. “From the initial concept to what the game is today, it’s always been built around the innovations the Wii brings to playing games. BOOM BLOX plays on the enjoyment of building and knocking down blocks, something that can appeal innately to kids and adults of all ages.”

BOOM BLOX is also in production for mobile phones and will be widely available this Spring. The mobile version puts innovative BOOM BLOX gameplay on phones everywhere -- delivering engaging, fun, and groundbreaking action. For the first time in a mobile game, players will be able to create custom levels and share them with their friends directly from the phone, enjoying a rich, interactive community experience.

Developed at EA Los Angeles, BOOM BLOX has not yet been rated by the ESRB and PEGI.

Spoiler:

The 360 and PS3 are getting a more expensively developed game instead of this.

other, currently untitled, is far more ambitious - as indicated by the sole screenshot shown to the audience gathered for EA's games presentation.

According to the presenter, the goal of the game is to truly generate an emotional response in the player and even "make them cry."

The shot showed a figure in a dark grey hood, back turned away, with his outstretched hand holding a brown sparrow lying dead on its back. To the figure's right was a thick green fern frond, and a simple building and courtyard take up most of the background. It had attitude, but very little else.

Hopefully Boom Blox will be good enough for me to ignore the X in the title.

Drunk_caterpillar

FUCK Spielburg. And his sparrows.

Cyrixd

That sounds really interesting. I love the idea of more co-op games on the Wii, especially of the puzzle variety (I wish Zack and Wiki's co-op was a little more involved). I'm worried it'll turn out to be a kids game, and not provide much of a challenge to anyone over 12, but we'll see.

DodgeBlan

I find it hilarious that a videogame that looks like completely run-of-the-mill shovelware is also being touted as Steven Spielbergs first foray into gaming.

darleysam

Peter Jackson can do it, so can I!
It may turn out to be one of the best mini-game compilations out there, but I absolutely fail to understand the Speilberg connection. Where's Paul Newman, I've got questions.

edit: It's Jenga. Steven Speilberg is making Jenga.

Ztribal

So I just read this article and was browsing the forums to see if anyone had posted a topic.

The thing is, I'm a DigiPen student and I'm sitting not 3 yards away from a Toblo kiosk. For those of you who don't know, Toblo is a game some of my upperclassmen made and won some awards at the PNW game conference in 2006.

Now EA might have picked up the rights of the game and hired on the students like Valve did with Portal and "Narbacular Drop", but really now...

They're just making it seem like EA and Spielberg shat out this wonderful thing...

I digress...

Your thoughts?

Couscous

darleysam wrote: »

Peter Jackson can do it, so can I!
It may turn out to be one of the best mini-game compilations out there, but I absolutely fail to understand the Speilberg connection. Where's Paul Newman, I've got questions.

edit: It's Jenga. Steven Speilberg is making Jenga.

It isn't a mini-game collection.

darleysam

I'm sure I read something earlier on Eurogamer that said mini-game in it, so that's where I got that from.

It's still Jenga.

Xaquin

The backgrounds look like recycled Rayman Raving whatevers Backgrounds only crappier.

It seems like it could be fun though if they gussy up the graphics and make the controls nice.

I'm sorry, I know the Wii can put out nicer looking stuff than those screen shots. They're blocks for gods sake. It's not like there's too much magic to them.

Couscous

darleysam wrote: »

I'm sure I read something earlier on Eurogamer that said mini-game in it, so that's where I got that from.

It's still Jenga.

It looks more like you build towers and then blow them up in order to topple other towers. That isn't that much like Jenga other than the blocks.

templewulf

Xaquin wrote: »

The backgrounds look like recycled Rayman Raving whatevers Backgrounds.

It seems like it could be fun though if they gussy up the graphics and make the controls nice.

I'm sorry, I know the Wii can put out nicer looking stuff than those screen shots. They're blocks for gods sake. It's not like there's too much magic to them.

It worked for Katamari?

bongi

titmouse wrote: »

The shot showed a figure in a dark grey hood, back turned away, with his outstretched hand holding a brown sparrow lying dead on its back. To the figure's right was a thick green fern frond, and a simple building and courtyard take up most of the background. It had attitude, but very little else.

?

TubaFrog

bongi wrote: »

titmouse wrote: »

The shot showed a figure in a dark grey hood, back turned away, with his outstretched hand holding a brown sparrow lying dead on its back. To the figure's right was a thick green fern frond, and a simple building and courtyard take up most of the background. It had attitude, but very little else.

?

I can't decide whether to cry or to drink a Mountain Dew...

Rami

I wonder how he's going to work aliens into this.

Figgy

The concept says "Oh neat," but the screenshots say, "We're not even trying."

Mashalot

Wow that looks really bad. Maybe the game is fun but shit. Not even trying.

Steven Speilberg presents Camp Lazlo's Seahorse Adventure Sudoku

LewieP

I don't know what to think.

His name is connected to some pretty bad games -
Jaws, Back to the Future, Men in Black, Hook, The Land Before Time and worst of all E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial

I expect as much of him as I do the Wii version of Star Wars Unleashed. Hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised on both counts.

Couscous

The trailer makes it look pretty fun.
http://www.ea.com/boomblox/

Edit: Here is the trailer from last year's E3:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/21816.html
It talks about the 360/PS3 game first.

Cherrn

LewieP wrote: »

His name is connected to a pretty good game -
The Dig

Yeah.

Gihgehls

I thought his first foray into gaming was The Dig.

Cymoro

Ztribal wrote: »

So I just read this article and was browsing the forums to see if anyone had posted a topic.

The thing is, I'm a DigiPen student and I'm sitting not 3 yards away from a Toblo kiosk. For those of you who don't know, Toblo is a game some of my upperclassmen made and won some awards at the PNW game conference in 2006.

Now EA might have picked up the rights of the game and hired on the students like Valve did with Portal and "Narbacular Drop", but really now...

They're just making it seem like EA and Spielberg shat out this wonderful thing...

I digress...

Your thoughts?

Shit, I remember when they [Toblo] were forced to pull out of IGF by us because, if I remember correctly, they tried to disassociate themselves with us. That or they tried to sell it.

Boom Blox was shown at the last E3 too, so there's little chance that it has anything to do with the Toblo team.

Xagarath

So, the Wii gets this from Spielburg, and the other formats a presumably serious attempt at an action adventure.
Hmmmm.
Overwhelmed I'm not.

DarkPrimus

DodgeBlan wrote: »

I find it hilarious that a videogame that looks like completely run-of-the-mill shovelware is also being touted as Steven Spielbergs first foray into gaming.

No, it is "the first game developed in collaboration between EA and director and producer Steven Spielberg".

Spielberg's first foray into gaming was the classic LucasArts adventure game The Dig.

Nimble Cat

That looks cool and fun. It looks much better in motion than the screenshots, and the physics look well done too.

Resident0

How comes the Wii game has pics, and the more expensively developed game has a description of a guy with a dead sparrow.

Does the other game even have a name yet? I wonder if it will be Assassins Creed 2.

-SPI-

Wow, nice N64 graphics there Steve.

Randall_Flagg

was toblo the game where you played as a box man and beat up other box men to reach the top of a room

that game was awesome

Randall_Flagg

whoops, never mind; that's not toblo

anyway, this game looks pretty chill

Couscous

http://wii.ign.com/articles/854/854102p1.html

You may have seen the tech demos floating around the Internets demonstrating head tracking on the Wii. The concept reverses the typical Wii Remote and sensor bar setup so that the sensor's infrared lights are in control of the player and allows for a 3D camera to be manipulated by the user's movement. Until now the technology had not been used in a licensed Wii game.

During a session given by Electronic Arts discussing the development of Boom Blox at the Game Developers Conference today it was revealed that head tracking will be included in the game as a hidden Easter Egg. A video demonstration was shown in which a brick structure was exploded and then paused. The player was able to move around the event in 3D and get an up-close look at the destruction.

Boom Blox players will be able to use any method they choose to control the head tracking. All that is needed are two infrared light sources in their hands or on their head. This can be accomplished by holding two Wii Remotes, or they could wear common safety glasses equipped with lights.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd296bxdi30

This game keeps on getting more interesting for me.

Here is an explanation on what headtracking is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw&feature=related

Nimble Cat

That's pretty cool.

Psycho Internet Hawk

From seeing the trailer on Youtube this looks vaguely like a combination of The Incredible Machine, dominoes, and Jenga. Interesting.

Crashmo

titmouse wrote: »

The trailer makes it look pretty fun.
http://www.ea.com/boomblox/

The create-a-stage segment 3/4ths of the way through this sold the game for me. A built castle being "seiged" by knights and blasting it with a "cannon".

There's no way I'm paying more than 20 bucks for this, though.

Couscous

You can break glass and blow things up, which would be sufficient to spur a purchase, but there's a couple twists on multiplayer evident in the video as well. They've essentially "fixed" Jenga. Partial collapses are possible, and the towers are made from multicolored blocks - a color dice tells you what kind of block to choose, which steers the game away from some of the classic outcomes. You might notice that when a target is selected for a thrown ball, there's a slight pause before anything happens - but since the clip is direct feed, it doesn't show the action. Essentially, you "throw" the ball with the controller. That's what's not being shown, and when I've seen it performed by other people it looks like something I really want to do.

I'm now convinced that I would play Boom Blox in any environment, and under any circumstances. In a house, in a boat, with a mouse, I would even play Boom Blox in a goat's presence. I would play the tabletop version, and be destroyed.

Watch this, damn it:
http://uk.wii.ign.com/dor/objects/892269/boom-blox/videos/boomblox-leveledit-4.html

Darlan

Bakow

What a weird onomatopoeia.

LewieP

Needs more Dogoon!

slash000

I'm definitely getting this game, it will be great.

TheSinisterMinister

Cyrixd wrote: »

and not provide much of a challenge to anyone over 12

Sounds perfect for you!

Zilart

I'm kind of .. bored just watching that video. It's a nice concept but it looks abit bland in "action".

Cyrixd

I think it's going to be awesome. It seems like such a complete package- tons of game modes, multiplayer, create-a-stage, and a lenghty campaign. I'll be picking it up ASAP.

Nimble Cat

I want it, but having picked up GTA recently, I don't think I'll have enough scratch for awhile.

Definitely on my list of games to get though.

Viscountalpha

I think this will be a fun party game. The level creator might be neat. 50$ seems kinda steep for jenga remake but, It could easily be worth it.