Game review: Boom Blox

Give a kid a patch of carpet and a carton of Legos, and he'll spend an hour locking together a perfect plastic fortress. Give a different kid 10 seconds and a Godzilla action figure, and he'll level the living room with the same tower of colored bricks. Who had more fun?

If you ask "Boom Blox," they'd say it's the latter child. EA's original puzzler promotes playful destruction in ways that suit the Wii's motion-controlled peripherals perfectly. Through hundreds of unique levels, players lob bowling balls, bombs and baseballs at columns of stacked blocks -- usually for points, but other times in cooperation with a second player or in defense of a block-walled fort. This content sits on the shoulders of solid physics that capture collisions, weight and velocity very well. Clip a narrow support beam holding up a stack of others, and the tower will fold fluidly like a house of cards.

All in all, it's excellent execution: if you could melt down the mechanics of Jenga, dominoes and a snowball fight into a handy, DVD-shaped package, it'd look like this. The game constantly retools its concepts as you progress, reshaping its physics-focused package to form creative puzzles, fun battle modes, or a shuffleboard variant played on ice ramps. "Boom Blox's" multiplayer capabilities makes it an ideal party game for up to four, a mode that's ripe with watercooler moments. Laying siege to someone else's pile of blocks doesn't get old, and you'll find yourself holding your breath, hoping a wobbling wood block will give enough to send the load it's supporting to the floor.

Levels that put players behind symmetrical cube castles to see who can scatter their opponent's structure fastest were our favorite, but the more strategic, Jenga-like point-based stages are equally good. Here, you'll take turns knocking down a single spire of bricks, with blocks assigned separate point values and properties (steel blocks are hard to budge; colliding green "chemical" blocks triggers an explosion; picking off purple ones makes them disappear). Nailing the right weak point can set off a high-scoring chain reaction, but you'll need to take care not to set up your opponent to do the same.

It's simple and accessible any way you slice it, but the pick-up-and-play appeal doesn't resign "Boom Blox" to being a disposable experience. Grab-and-pull puzzle sections in single-player mode demand more patience and a knack for predicting how physics will play out. Maybe you'll guide a cubed gorilla across a ledge to meet its young by carefully clearing away bricks that block the way, or pull gems from a see-sawing platform without pushing the cartoon sheep off the top to fall to their doom.

Only a handful of levels don't succeed, namely shooting gallery stages that mimic a tedious carnival game. The flat visuals might be a more significant sour point for some. Rendering realistic physics on the Wii means graphical compromises: basic blocks and cardboard-cutout backgrounds are about the best you'll get. Still, these shortcomings are all but made up by "Boom Blox's" creation space, allowing assembly of whatever massive brick palace you can put together (only to watch it tumble down, of course). Created levels can be shared online, too.

Effortless controls are the other appealing aspect. With the Wiimote and analog stick attachment, players aim an on-screen crosshair with the remote to fire, locking in their target by holding the A button, then swinging in an overhand motion to execute a toss. Swing force also gets measured, and there are more than a few levels where you'll need to arc a ball softly at the right spot. A mid-throw spin control to apply after-touch might've been nice, but shooting straight still leaves room for a nice amount of nuance, like deflection shots.

Without the nagging parent to make you clean them up, "Boom Blox" brings the innate joy of bowling over stacked bricks to consoles. Few games take advantage of the Wii's motion-sensitive controls so well, and impressive physics add a one-two punch of randomness and depth that few puzzle games can offer. The simple, easy input of swinging a controller can produce dozens of bricks to tumble on-screen, and it's this accessible cause/effect mechanic that makes "Boom Blox" a must-have game for all ages.

Fun: Playful, accessible concept; strong variety of game modes; robust physics model destruction accurately; effortless controls; level creator mode; puzzle levels balance the experience.

Unfun: Mild framerate slow-down at some points; weak shooting gallery sections; best game modes could use some more stages.