Imagine, if you will, video footage from a building demolition. A huge skyscraper has been loaded with carefully placed explosives, so that the building will properly implode when a red button is pressed. Now, imagine that the explosives in the huge skyscraper were actually not placed very carefully at all, and when the building explodes, many buildings around it will also be toppled to the ground.

Now, imagine that you and your friends are the ones that get to press the big red button, without any fear of being charged with a criminal offense for destroying public property. That’s Boom Blox. If you have ever delighted in watching a wobbly building made of dominoes get destroyed and wished that it didn’t take so long setting up the dominoes in the first place, this game is for you. Boom Blox comes only on the Nintendo Wii, which is good, because I don’t know what other console could support a game like it.

At first, when I had heard of the concept for Boom Blox, I thought it would be fun for a few minutes, but without much potential for long-term play. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of different options for gameplay that the creators of Boom Blox – one of whom is none other than Steven Spielberg – came up with. There are modes where you hit things for points, others where you hit things to make them explode, and others where you delicately pull pieces out of towers, attempting to leave the rest of the tower standing. There’s a wide variety of weapons, from bouncy balls to six-shooters to, I kid you not, a fire hose that shoots bowling balls. As for variety in targets, there are Chemical Blox, which only explode when two come in contact with each other; Vanishing Blox, which immediately disappear when hit, and Gem Blox, which are frequent objects of desire for different modes of play.
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There are some video games that awe me with their artistry. There are other video games that amaze me with their simplicity, coming up with a new type of video game experience that I’ve never played before. World of Goo is both.

The concept is simple. Drag and drop balls of goo. That’s all you have to do. The goo, depending where you place it, can construct towers, bridges, fences and ladders. The goal is to create a structure that will transport other, free-moving goo, to a mysterious pipe somewhere in the level. Get enough goo to that pipe, and you’ve completed that level’s puzzle.

The art design is simultaneously beautiful and dirty, in a Tim Burton sort of way. The music is well orchestrated, perfectly complimenting the art style, and the sound effects are also appropriate, with the goo happily proclaiming “Woohoo!” when they get added to the tower, and angrily grumbling when they are placed somewhere that can’t connect to the rest of the goo.

World of Goo is downloadable on the Wii from Wiiware. It costs 1500 Wii points, and was well worth it. It’s games like this that really show the strength of the Wii controller, being able to intuitively act like a mouse pointer. This game would be much more frustrating if you were trying to place the goo with a joystick or a D-pad.

This game is also available, at the time of this review, for PC, Mac, and Linux. The free demo of this game can be found at 2Dboy.com. Even if you have no intention of buying this game, I highly recommend downloading the demo and trying the game yourself.