Boom Blox Bash Party in stores

EA and Steven Spielberg have done it again. Today the odd couple of gaming have released Boom Blox Bash Party for Wii. The Wii game sequel is available in North America today and will hit stores in Europe beginning May 28. The sequel to last year’s Boom Blox, the latest game offers 400 new levels, new worlds (Space, Pirate, Heroic and Show Time), new block types (Virus, Conveyor and Push blox), new shapes (cylinders and wedges) and twice as much multiplayer gameplay, according to EA. Players can also compete with or against friends in co-op, versus and new team-based challenges, throwing, bashing and slinging blox to make them go boom.

Players can also download new levels created by EA and the Boom Blox Bash Party community at no additional charge with an Internet-connected Wii. EA will make 40 additional levels available at launch with many more to come, it says. In addition, players can create their own levels using the game’s Create Mode, and submit those levels to be posted and made available to the community. Over time, EA is banking on the fact that Boom Blox Bash Party owners will have access to many more downloadable levels in addition to those already included in the game.

Look for the game in stores beginning today. More info on the game can be found at boomblox.ea.com.

Call of Duty 4 Wins Big at BAFTAs

The GAME British Academy Video Games Awards (BAFTAs) are over and the biggest winner was Call of Duty 4. The awards took place at the London Hilton on Park Lane, and were hosted by games aficionado Dara O’Briain. At this gala event some of last year’s biggest games were honored in various categories, while Atari founder Nolan Bushnell was given the BAFTA FELLOWSHIP Award for his contributions to the industry over his long and interesting career.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was the biggest winner of this year’s BAFTA video game awards, picking up top honors in the Action & Adventure, Gameplay, Story and Character categories - along with the only category voted on by players - the GAME Award of 2008. Dead Space also did pretty well, landing awards for Original Score and Use of Audio, while Super Mario Galaxy won the Best Game award this year.

A full list of the categories, nominees and this year’s winners can be found after the break (winners highlighted in bold).

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Game Developers Choice Award Finalists Announced

The ninth annual Game Developers Choice Awards finalists have been announced this morning, with Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet leading with seven nominations and Jonathan Blow’s Xbox Live Arcade title Braid following closely with five nominations.

Other nominees include Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead, Fable 2, Far Cry 2, World of Goo, Metal Gear Solid 4, Grand Theft Auto IV and many others. The Game Developers Choice Awards are held annually in tandem with the Game Developers Conference in March.

The full list of categories and nominees after the jump:

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The Highlight Reel: July 22, 2008

As the corpse of E3 continues to decompose, we continue to roll out or E3 coverage, including a round table analysis on the show in the latest episode of Blazing Prattles:

Feature - The Five: DC Universe Online: Comic book lovers, your dreams might just be coming true. The Justice League of America is preparing to pit superheroes against supervillains on a massive scale. Evan Narcisse got an early look at this upcoming MMO at E3.

Feature - Blazing Prattles Podcast, Vol. #14:
What did the Game Trust think of the biggest week in videogames? Tune in for their rants and raves about the biggest games — and the smaller size — of this year’s E3.

Feature - The Five: Animal Crossing: City Folk
What will your Miis make of the City Folk moving in on the Wii? Billy Berghammer got an early look at E3.

Column - I Call Bullshit: Special E3 2008 Edition: E3 2008 has come and gone, leaving a trail of offenses in its wake. Scott Jones tugs on his wellies and sorts through the notable nuggets from the week.

Feature - The Five: Dead Space: Horror is heading for outer space, so get ready for gore in zero gravity. Russ Fischer got an early look at this game at E3.

Column - Games for Lunch: Boom Blox: Kyle Orland throws, grabs and blasts away in this action-puzzler for the Wii. Will an hour of knocking down towers of blocks be more fun than it sounds?

BOOM BLOX Announced

You”d expect the first game resulting from the previously announced EA and Steven Spielberg deal to be something more substantial than a casual Wii title, but that’’s what is coming, according an announcement made today. The first game to come out of the partnership will be an all ages Wii game called BOOM BLOX.

The man that brought you E.T. and A.I. said that he wanted to create a game he could play with his kids, and apparently BOOM BLOX is the end result. So what is BOOM BLOX all about? After wading through the marketing-speak of the announcement (which is like wading through a sewer full of Jell-O), BOOM BLOX seems to be a candy-coated series of mini-games revolving around squares, rectangles and other similar objects. Basically the game features Blox, rectangular characters that inhabit a colorful series of locales. During your journey through the game you will encounter a cast of odd and cute personalities like Blox-laying chickens or baseball-throwing monkeys that serve as the glue for the gameplay.

Gameplay consist of using the Wii remote to manipulate a series of blox or structures. BOOM BLOX is all about manipulating things in a variety of ways to get the desired result. This manipulation could mean grabbing, shooting, shaking or even using the physics within the game to manipulate objects to cause some sort of chain reaction.

According to the press release, players will also be able to create their own levels using the in-game editor and then share them with friends via WiiConnect24. When creating your own puzzles you will be able to use four different environments (Tiki, Medieval, Frontier and Haunted themes), props, blocks or characters that have been unlocked during the game. Other promises include over 300 hundred levels to play, themed environments and single-player, co-op and versus gameplay.

BOOM BLOX will be released on the Wii in May 2008. A mobile version of the game is also in development.