Boom Blox, Army of Two, and Bully.

Been playing a few different games over the past couple weeks. First is Boom Blox. This is the one I’ve probably had the most fun with. The idea behind this game is to interface with stacked Jenga style blocks in different ways. Only two of which really matter. You got the Jenga pulling mechanic where you pull out as many pieces as possible without making the stack fall. Then there’s the throw-various-types-of-balls-at-the-stack style of gameplay. Basically the game just presents you various configurations of stacked blocks and you throw the ball at it in an attempt to knock down the most blocks possible. There’s also a shooting range thingy which feels a little like holodeck phaser training, but it’s pretty much a throwaway mode.

The reason Boom Blox is fun is because of how it feels to interact with the gameplay system. Pulling pieces feels precise and realistic, which cannot be said about the actual Jenga game. There’s not much explanation needed for why chucking balls at stacks of blocks is fun. Knocking stacks of shit down is fun, obviously. The amount of inertia you exact onto the wiimote’s magical inertia detecting thingy actually matters. Strapping up is absolutely mandatory. Throw in a fleshed out co-op and competitive mode and Boom Blox equals an 8½ in my book. There are downsides, such as a lack of easily doable puzzles. The difficulty quickly ramps up to an intimidating level once you graduate to expert mode.

Also rented Army of Two since I had someone to play it with over the weekend. That didn’t go so well. The game is essentially Gears of War minus the slick graphics and gameplay. The cover system consists simply of ducking with the R3 button, or you can hit Y and slide into cover but that mostly results in leaping over the object you’re trying to take cover behind. There’s no lock-on targeting so every battle boils down to spraying bullets in the general direction of the enemies until you’ve built up enough agro for your teammate to get in behind them. The game is seething with bro love, mock guitar playing, Iraqi suicide bombers, and inappropriate fist bumping. The A button actually activates a slap-on-the-butt style props system wherein you can walk up to your partner while he’s firing at the bad guys, push A, then watch as he stops shooting, slowly turns around and rambles off something like “ladies lift your shirts!” or “props all around”. Somehow I managed to beat the game, probably because I’m a sucker for earning cash and buying shit. The fact that it’s about 4 hours long helped, too. 6/10.

The other game I’ve been playing, and thoroughly enjoying, is Bully for the 360. I missed it the first time around on the PS2 and always regretted not playing it. Turns out the game is really, really good. I’m still playing through it so I won’t give my full opinion on it yet but I will say the combat system is about 4 times better than GTAIV.