{"id":1032,"date":"2008-06-25T09:25:05","date_gmt":"2008-06-25T15:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamingwithchildren.com\/?p=1032"},"modified":"2008-06-25T09:25:05","modified_gmt":"2008-06-25T15:25:05","slug":"boom-blox-with-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/25\/boom-blox-with-children\/","title":{"rendered":"Boom Blox with Children"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It took a commercial. I’ve had Boom Blox sitting here and I’ve heard the game is good but for some reason, other game have gotten in the way during GamerFamily playtime. Then a commercial came on and I saw my wife’s reaction and smiled, saying: “Uh, I’ve got that one you know. . .” In it went and up we came, here’s a full report.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Game<\/strong><\/p>\n

Boom Blox (reportedly from Stephen Spielberg but I think they mean “We told Spielberg’s people what we were doing and he contributed money to help”) is a simple game. Simply use the Wii-mote to throw a ball to knock block towers down (blocks are worth points and the throwing is as simple as Wii bowling), or use it to grab blocks in a Jenga style games, or use it as a light gun (fires with the A button) for some target shooting. The game couldn’t be simpler, the art is pleasing and amusing (mostly animals in rectangular shapes), and the music is fantastic. The physics work; things bounce, fall, collide, and ricochet convincingly.<\/p>\n

Ages<\/strong><\/p>\n

Henry is 5 and Maggie is 8. Both could handle the throwing games but shooting got hard to follow with four people playing (we also had incidences of Wii remote failure that I haven’t seen with any other game). Henry had a really hard time with the grasping, his first attempt was the equivalent of grabbing a bottom block in Jenga and moving it up and through the remaining blocks.\u00a0 The resulting explosion was hilarious – game over man! – but it reduced poor Henry to tears. The throwing game has you lock on with the A button (then swinging the remote gives it velocity and releasing “A” throws the ball) and both kids had a sometimes irritatingly hard time pinpointing a throw (irritating because you feel the frustration from watching).<\/p>\n

Bottom Line<\/strong><\/p>\n

We’ve had a grand time and a lot of laughs. Chain reactions happen all the time and are hilarious, the kids were annoyed at one level where the middle of the blocks proved too resilient until Henry’s throw made him go from 50 to 200 points. It was like a slot machine and it happens often enough to make anyone feel cool.<\/p>\n

The game is a great party game for non-gamers too. All three playstyles are easy enough to grasp for newbies and combine enough luck and skill to please both camps. Sadly, I hear the game isn’t a big hit. That’s too bad because any family burned on “almosts and not quites” like Decca Sports, EA Playground, Wii Carnival, and many, many more, would love this latest blockbuster from Stephen Spielberg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It took a commercial. I’ve had Boom Blox sitting here and I’ve heard the game is good but for some reason, other game have gotten in the way during GamerFamily playtime. Then a commercial came on and I saw my wife’s reaction and smiled, saying: “Uh, I’ve got that one you know. . .” In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-reviews","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}