There's a nice thread on this with many different statements about what the game is and is not.
It's like Jenga on steroids in that there are many many different levels with different objectives and degrees of achieving those objectives that result in different medal scores. Achieve minimum medals to get to the next level in a given category.
Categories are:
Explore -- challenges revolving around throwing or shooting at different brick types to achieve different results and challenges that involve pulling bricks for different results. More detail required? As spanner stated there are many brick types, so there are challenges with ordinary bricks that ask you to bring down a tower in the fewest number of moves, or knock down all the gem blocks, i.e., the gem blocks need to hit the ground. Some are time-limited; some are shot limited.
Adventure -- Story themed levels in one of four themes: Medieval, Jungle, Western, Haunted. Each one divided into three sub-stories preceded by slide-show style "movies" that set the scene for the 10 challenges to follow. Challenges vary from knocking down gem blocks in fewest number of moves, to removing obstacles between characters on platforms and their goal, to protecting characters from other characters by eliminating them with time limits or shot limits in effect.
Create: Create your own levels to share using Wii Messenger with your Wii friends who also have the game; it is easier than having a game-specific code and yet not easier in that you still need to register friends; whether this is a limitation because of the Wii or the game isn't certain, although Blast Works has some alternative way of sharing levels that I have yet to see detailed and involves the Internet. Any level in the game can be opened in edit mode and modified.
Unlockables: get a medal in all the levels in a given Category and you unlock more, so that there are more advanced Explore levels and Adventure levels; get a certain medal rating in various modes and you unlock scenery, "toys" (i.e. objects to throw or shoot at blocks) and characters to use in building your own levels.
Versus mode offers co-op and head-to-head play for up to four players with a variety of different objectives.
There's a lot going on here. Best of all you can try to unlock everything or if you just feel like blowing up some bricks you can have a quick go. You can create levels that play themselves or that offer a difficult challenge; the editor is quite full-featured and provides a great deal of template objects and tools for quick level creation.
I would definitely say an 8 or 9 out of 10 in is order unless this type of game just doesn't float your boat. The execution is near flawless and the controls among the tightest (sometimes a little too tight -- someone suffering from palsy would be unable to play this) on the Wii without any gratuitous motion control evident.
The major barrier appears to be price. If the RRP was £5 or £10 less in the UK (to put it more in line with the US price) I think this title would have done a lot better, but EA is taking a long view and expect it to be slow and steady over time; probably we'll see a price cut by year's end.
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