Direct from the 2009 Game Developers Convention, here’s someone demonstrating how to play the new Wii version of Punch-Out!!
The person playing Punch-Out!! in this clip is making it look rather easy, which is a relatively good thing. Considering how badly motion controls have been implemented in another recent boxing franchise revival, ease-of-use is a definite plus.
The original Boom Blox may have been a critical hit, but it never quite sold up to expectations.
This time around, the developers appear to have focused most of their efforts on beefing up the multiplayer and making it a faster, more engaging experience.
What It Is
The next iteration of Steven Spielberg’s Boom Blox increases the focus on group play, highlighting the ability for gamers to play together or against one another in a series of challenges and mini games.
Boom Blox Bash Party has about twice as much multiplayer as the original title and a bit more single player, with close to 450 levels shipping with the game. The game also has four new worlds with different environmental affects on the blox and supports the ability to create and share levels without the need of friend codes.
What We Saw
I played several games with three others using a variety of new tools like the virus ball, canon and slingshot.
How Far Along Is it?
The game is beta with the team concentrating on fixing bugs. The Wii game is do out in spring, likely May.
What Needs Improvement?
Box Art: Wow, that’s some ugly box art. The attention diverting yellow band is augmented by a single sentence pitch in the middle of the box. Let’s sex it up, maybe get Spielberg to whip something up for you.
What Needs to Stay the Same?
The New Modes: My chief complaint with the last game was that there weren’t enough ways for me to play it with my son. In fact, the multiplayer modes felt so lacking that we ended up charging through the single player levels by passing the remote. With more than twice as many ways to play together and tons of new modes, I can’t see that being a problem this time around.
Interactive Characters: The characters are stackable, and when stacked their frozen like blocks, but once freed some of them get up to mischief. The monkey, for instance, will start whipping things at other characters in the game as you play.
Environments: The introduction of setting in space and underwater add a whole new facet to the game. When playing in space you have to knock floating blocks out of a transparent grid. While playing underwater you have to knock your blocks to the awaiting pirate ship on the surface.
New Blox and Balls: The virus ball infects the blocks it touches, which explode and infect other nearby boxes causing a chain reation. The cannon can blow apart walls of blox and the slingshot turns anything, including characters into a projectile.
Boom Bux: With the addition of collectible Boom Bux hidden on every level, players can now unlock the game in any order they’d like. Just spend the cash to go and play how you want.
Final Thoughts
The developers seem to have concentrated on trying to maintain everything that was good with the original game, while beefing up the areas that were dinged the first time around.
While I love that they’ve doubled the multiplayer, something that makes this a must buy for me, I’m still doubtful that the single player experience will deliver the story and action that so many felt was lacking the first time around.
First, we want to pass on World of Warcraft lead game designer Jeffrey Kaplan’s apologies. He’s very sorry about Stranglethorn Vale’s 19-piece fetch fest Nesingwary’s Expedition. But it’s clear WoW players adore questing.
How do we know? Kaplan says that the legions of players inhabiting Blizzard’s massively multiplayer online game are completing more than 16 million quests a day on average. Perhaps the more staggering figure was the time slice from July of 2007 to March of 2009, when World of Warcraft players racked up an impressive 8,570,222,426 quests.
Kaplan noted that one of Blizzard’s design goals with World of Warcraft was to ship with 600 in-game quests. That would have been half of what Sony Online Entertainment’s EverQuest offered over the course of it’s existence and many expansion packs.
That quest count would eventually increase to 2,600 in the original World of Warcraft, with the Burning Crusade add-on more than doubling that to 5,300 and the Wrath of the Lich King expansion bringing it to a staggering 7,650.
That figure makes my brain hurt. But you kids have fun storming the castle!
Corny early 80s public service announcements will be rearing their kitschy head in the modern GI Joe video game, but not the ones you really want to see.
Speaking with some of the development team earlier this week they said that the already have four public service announcements built into the game which can be unlocked by players. They’re the serious ones from Hasbro.
But they also love the silly PSAs that have appeared on the Internet over the years.
They like they so much they’ve actually recorded some voice over work for both Body Massage and Pork Chop Sandwich. They haven’t, though, received permission from Hasbro to include them in the game.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be waiting around for that phone call.
GDC is still going strong. Expect our coverage to do the same, as we catch up on all our interviews, previews and session mining. But we’re making time to play some games this weekend too.
Personally, I’ve got a copy of Rhythm Heaven burning a hole in my backpack, ready and waiting to find its way into my Nintendo DS. There are also rumors of review copies of Burn Zombie Burn and Ninja Blade that need some attention. After sitting in on last night’s Listen Up podcast for 1UP, the desire to return to Ninja Gaiden Sigma and Left 4 Dead is also building. We’ll see which game wins.
Oh, yeah. What are you playing this weekend?
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