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By brikrok3 (8th Jul 2008)

There’s something almost groan-inducing about a game when even its designers are willing to describe it as a “frenetic geometric battle”. Like the terms, say, “limber, sexy octogenarian” or “rowdy vitamin supplement,” such descriptors seem to reveal either a total disregard for the staple tricks of marketing or an almost childlike comprehension of the English language. Geometry is not a word used lightly in a gaming culture of prolific violence and non-stop stimulation. So when a game comes along that’s willing to be described in such baldly bland terms, one is almost forced to think twice about the nature of geometry. More than once I caught myself thinking, for instance, “my God, I might even like geometry.”

Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy is simultaneously retrograde and unique. You are, like in so many other games, a pilot in an aircraft, flying two-dimensionally on a horizontal or vertical plane. You guide your vehicle through the levels, attacking oncoming aircrafts. This is all pretty straightforward. But Blast Works adds a few twists.

First, as enemy ships fracture after being shot, you can collect their debris. These damaged parts are then reanimated, serving both as a bulked-up force field (when hit, you won’t be damaged, but you will lose accrued parts) and as supplementary weapons. These add-on weapons are nice touch, providing you with numerous different modes of attack. Your now beefed-up armour will likewise serve you well during fierce battles with bosses, providing a much-needed safety net throughout.

Second, though you’re provided with numerous levels to play, you can also design your own, just as you can design new bosses, enemies, weapons, and ships. In all fairness, this design-editing tool was cribbed from Kenta Cho’s TUMIKI Shooters, a free software program in which gamers could interact at a design level. But much has been improved upon since the original, which is included as a bonus for gamers who complete Blast Works.

All of this self-design business works tremendously well, but particularly in reference with the two- or four-player cooperative mode. Here players can enter the Hangar, working together both to build ships and upgrade existing models while defending the hangar itself from outside attacks. This is a clever idea, which helps to integrate traditionally disparate modes of gaming: instead of the mutually exclusive model of “play game now, upgrade vehicle later,” Blast Works integrates both, forcing players to make split-second design decisions, rather than allowing them to walk languorously to the kitchen for a grilled-cheese sandwich while their ship waits diligently in the shop.

Added to this is the game’s Wiiconnect experience, in which players can swap self-designed components, a good if unfortunately somewhat Draconian-style experience, which won’t be surprising to those familiar with Nintendo’s online track record. Players will also be interested in Majesco’s website (www.blastworksdepot.com), at which registered gamers can view other gamers’ level and component designs.

The multi-player option is likewise good, though the screen quickly becomes a rather cluttered mess. Admittedly, there’s something hypnotic about the geometric onscreen chaos that unfolds before your eyes. But those more interested in fight scenes than séances will quickly be rankled by the screen’s soon incomprehensible disorder.

The control scheme is likewise very good, providing players with the usual choices: Wiimote only, Wiimote and Nunchuk combo, or the Classic Controller. All of these work well, though none is really superior to the others. That’s a good thing: gamers enamoured of the Wii’s motion sensitivity will pick one, while others who hanker for a retro feel will pick the old-school controller.

Visually the game looks awful, but in a good way. Such paradoxes are not unknown in a world of “frenetic geometry.” The game opts for rather simple designs. This, in itself, isn’t a problem: the Wii is founded upon the almost banal and yet seemingly novel idea that simplicity is superior to complexity. Like the most soberly decorated chronometer watch, the Wii chooses to conceal rather than revel in its complexity. Take for example the Wii’s easy-to-use and yet technologically complex control system, or the understated encasement of the console itself, which simultaneously suggests an air of Mac-style user-friendly nonchalance while obscuring the reality that much of the same tech know-how went into the Wii as Sony’s painfully gaudy XBOX. Much is the same here: Blast Works is stripped down, in part to promote (one imagines) the unthreatening involvement of the gamer. Trying to have gamers replicate gaming’s branch of visual realism would have been folly: no one looks at a game like Red Steel and thinks “I could design that.” But the look of Blast Work’s two-dimensional and yet rather playful graphics is inviting. There’s a sense not only that you can intervene at a design level, but that the game wants you to; this is a game made to be tinkered with.

The game’s audioscape also kind of sucks, but again in a good way. The music for the most part is the kind of stripped-down, retro synth tosh that we’ve all heard a billion times, but gets stuck in your head for your entire life—much like the Super Mario Bros. music for NES and SNES and the original Tetris music. The sound effects have a similarly lame and yet familiar feel, the kind of limp gunfire and unreal explosions so common to classic shooter games. All this gives the audioscape of the game a certain wink-and-nudge feel, as if its designers, in creating a new gaming experience upon one of the most classic models, wanted vestiges of its tacky if memorable forbearers. Overall the music and sound effects aren’t great, but they are pretty cool in a corny way.

If there’s but one problem with Blast Works, then it’s that the game is too short. But this is a quibble. It’s also something easily remedied when the game more or less has only strong and continually revisable content: simply play it again, but this time with different enemies, bosses, ships, weapons, etc. Overall, this is a great game. But one wonders where gaming can go after this; one wonders whether gamers even want to design games. For some, though certainly not all, playing Blast Works will be like going to a restaurant where you prepare your own meal. Admittedly, though, this meal is pretty damn good. And most gamers, I imagine, will agree.