Nintendo Wii Game Reviews: Blastworks: Build, Trade, Destroy Game Review
Screenshots
Introduction
Blastworks: Build, Trade, Destroy is a truly unique game from developer Budcat Creations, a shooter that uses a unique creation concept and is a breath of fresh air for the genre. A re-done, premium update of an popular title by developer Kento Cho (Tumiki Fighters), Blastworks: Build, Trade, Destroy holds promise for Wii fanatics hoping to see developers for the Wii heading in unusual and possibly very entertaining directions.
The good (4 out of 5)
It is a good value for the money. 15 levels can be played on 4 different difficulty levels. There is online user-generated content on the game’s site you can access for additional content and a very useful and powerful editor you can use to create your own levels to play on.
There are interesting and new ideas for adding firepower to shooters. Something new is always interesting, especially when it works so well and is so much fun.
Complete the game to unlock even more content in the form of 4 complete Kento Cho games: Tumki Fighters, Gunroar, Torus Trooper, and rRootage.
The bad (1 out of 5)
The graphics could have been improved. They aren’t very impressive for a game made today.
Sound effects were sometimes unnoticeable, they need more power to get noticed and add more entertainment value to the game.
The story (3 out of 5)
Blastworks campaign mode is more like a horizontal shooter, like Gradius or R-Type, laid over the template for Kento Cho’s original 2004 PC game Tumiki Fighters. You shoot at ships, destroy them, then fly into them to make the descending wreckage stick to the outside of your ship. The new parts added to your ship can still fire their guns, but only in the direction in which they were aimed when you collided with the wreckage, and they act as shields that fall off when hit by the incoming fire of the enemy.
How does the game look (2 out of 5)
The graphics are okay, nothing special. In fact they are kind of rooted in the past, but good enough.
The special visual effects we have come to expect in the games we play, just don’t exist in _Blastworks: Build, Trade, Destroy. A_lthough these effects always add to a game’s entertainment value, you probably won’t miss them much once you get your adrenalin flowing and get into the game.
The retro-geometric graphics style incorporated into this title adds a unique look and appeal we don’t see in the games we play.
The sounds of the game (3 out of 5)
A nice electronic soundtrack kept me tapping my fingers, but a little more variety in the songs would have been better. The sound effects were certainly present, but lacked any real power to make you sit up and notice. They were often dull.
Playability (3 out of 5)
The content and playability of this game just goes on and on for me. I still use up computer space creating my own levels using the editor, when I have the time. With all the levels and difficulty settings, plus the editor and user-generated content to keep you busy, who has time for anything else?
The bottom line (3 out of 5)
With great value for your time and money, Blastworks is a good shooter with a unique building system to increase power as you progress through the game, and for this alone it deserves a look. That said, using the Wii remote to point at items and then drag, isn’t as precise as a mouse, so building your own levels isn’t as easy as with some editors. The developers would have been better off mapping common functions to the buttons on the Wii remote and Nunchuk to allow for easier navigation of menus and moving of items. It’s easier when building your own levels to head to BlastworksDepot.com to download user-generated levels or download custom elements designed by users to populate your levels.
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This post is part of the series: Blast Works Guide
More articles about Blast Works for the Nintendo Wii.
