Blast Works, the Katamari of shooters

What would you call a game where the goal is to move around and collect a bunch of random trash? You’d call it Katamari Damacy. But what would you call a shoot ‘em up that requires you to fly around and pick up parts to build the biggest, baddest spaceship? You’d call it Blast Works. The goal is the same as any other shooter - blow stuff up and get to the end, but Blast Works is ridiculous in the most fantastic way that will make any shooter fan laugh with delight.

I heard about Blast Works a long time ago and it was billed as a build-your-own-shooter. It kind of sounded like a cool idea but make-your-own-whatever games on consoles usually aren’t very stellar games, nor are they much fun to play. But when I saw Blast Works at Half Price Books for $20 I did a quick double check. The review over at Joystiq confirmed the make-your-own-shooter story, but it mentioned one thing I overlooked initially - the inclusion of Kenta Cho shmups, one of which is Torus Trooper, one of my favorite PC shooters.

Take the Katamari-ness and tack on four othe full games and the $20 used price tag becomes a little more tolerable. Load up Blast Works and like any good shmup you can get right into the action. The graphics in Blast Works are, honestly, not good. Every ship is built with basic shapes in quasi-3D, reminding you of a time when shaded wireframes were eye exploding. It won’t win any awards in that department, but where it will win is in sheer shooter silliness.

As you blast your enemies they explode, sending their pieces and parts into the air. You with your little airplane then collect these parts, making your “ship” bigger and bigger. The nifty part is that if you collect a bad guy’s gun, it then shoots for you. Before too long you have a fighter that takes up the whole screen and shoots bullets out in every direction. It gets pretty crazy, but it’s deceiving.

Every additional part you collect only has so much health. As they get hit with enemy bullets they will fall off and become unusable, you use the parts human shield-style. So at one moment you may have a huge ass-kicking ship and the next minute you’ll be naked with nothing but your default ship. During play I’ve found that naked time comes right before you face off with the level boss. You’ll blow through the level great thinking you’ll breeze through the last guy and BAM! You’re done. However, you can retract your super ship down in size to make it more manuverable, and it allows you to save your Katamari shield.

One good thing about piloting a super-sized killing machine is that the points can rank up quickly. Extra lives come at every 10,000 points and believe me, you’ll need all the lives you can get. Outside of the Rookie easy level, this game is hard. It many ways this is a classic bullet hell shooter. It can become incredibly frustrating. While the graphics and simple nature of the game laugh at you, the bullets rip you inside out.

Of course, as was part of the draw of Blast Works when it was released was the editor. Blast Works comes with a complete editor set that lets you make your own spaceships, levels, and other items. You can then play those levels separately. Unfortunately you cannot use your custom creations to play in the regular campaigns. Much like any editor, building your own stuff is time consuming and possibly with very little payoff. You can trade and download stuff through the Nintendo network but even then it’s more intended for one-off play.

But one thing that is a lot of fun in Blast Works is multiplayer. You can’t play on-line but the game supports up to 4-players in a co-op mode. I have only played in a 2-player game and it was completely ridiculous. It’s one thing flying your giant Katamari killer solo but when there are two giant Spaceball ships flying around it gets tough - but still a ton of fun.

If you enjoy shoot ‘em action then Blast Works will certainly deliver and keep you entertained. It might not look as good as Ikaruga or even Blazing Lazers, but it’s own unique spin on the Katamari concept is, well…a blast! Not to mention you get the Kenta Cho collection that includes Torus Trooper, rRootage, Gunroar, and Tumiki Fighters, which are all well worth the used game price tag you’ll pay.