E3 '07: Blast Works: Build, Fuse & Destroy First Look

At first glance, it’d be easy to mistake Blast Works: Build, Fuse & Destroy as a Wii Virtual Console game. Although the game uses 3D polygonal models, the emphasis here isn’t on slick graphics, and the game is actually an adapted version of a student project game that was originally crafted in Flash for the Web. That said, though, the emphasis is on fast-paced action and screens that are full of enemies. These enemies also act as both targets and building blocks.

It’s difficult to describe, but you can perhaps most profitably think of Blast Works as an amalgam of Katamari Damacy and a Gradius-style side-scrolling shooter. Like Gradius, you control a small ship that fires bullets off to the right side of the screen while you move in that direction and try to avoid the bullets that your numerous enemies throw at you. The Katamari aspect comes into play when you actually shoot someone: When someone dies, that person will float toward the bottom of the screen. If you manage to run into the robotic corpse before it fades off the screen, you’ll pick it up and add it onto your ship. Your ship will then become bigger while you also manage to fire whatever weapons the enemy ship was capable of firing. Because some of the enemies here are many times larger than your ship, you can eventually wind up with an adapted ship that’s as big as the screen itself.

Apart from the simple side-shooting gameplay, Build Works features a set of new editors, allowing you to create new shapes, new ships, and new levels to share with your friends. At the moment, only memory-card sharing is confirmed, but Majesco is still looking into the possibility of having players share information over the Wii network connections.

Overall, Blast Works looks like it could be an entertaining pick-up-and-play game when it releases on the Wii, although it currently doesn't seem to be making much use of the Wii Remote's special features. We'll find out if there are any plans to adapt the game to its new medium by the time it hits its release date later this year, so stay tuned to GameSpot for more info!