Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2

The game mode was King. I was weaving in between enemies before taking refuge in my safe zone, only to begin blasting away at my attackers from the relative safety of my ring. A fruitless exercise in reality; as soon as I'd offed a few, twice as many appeared. At the very least, I'd cleared myself a path to the next ring as the boundaries of my current one turned red and began closing in on itself. That was my warning to move, so out I went and aimed for the nearby ring, swiftly evading all who were in my way until...

BAM!

Game over. I'd been paying too much attention to my destination, as opposed to actually getting there and run head on into one of the very foes I was trying to avoid. My score was 900,000; a mere 100,000 away from getting one million points and unlocking my "Millionaire" achievement. It was at this point that I realised just how much better Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2 is compared to the original. It surpasses it in every way possible.

For those not in the know (and shame on you for not knowing), Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2 is the sequel to the Xbox 360 launch megahit, Geometry Wars Retro Evolved, itself a “sequel” to the minigame Geometry Wars, bundled with Project Gotham Racing 2 for the Xbox. The premise is simple, you control a ship on a top-down view, whilst opponents shaped like pieces of geometry randomly appear around the enclosed arena and try to ram you (and, as such, cause you to lose a life), whilst you have to evade them and blow them to pieces (and then some, in a few instances) with your weapons, controlled via the right analog stick, or bombs, controlled with the right trigger. Killing enemies gives you points and builds up your multiplier, allowing you to achieve insane scores if you manage to survive without dying. Once you run out of lives it’s game over and your high score is uploaded to the leaderboards to be gazed at in awe by those not as good as you, or mocked by your friends with more skill. The simple yet addictive gameplay and many gamers’ lust to achieve the highest score they can has led to this game’s mass popularity. But that raises the question of how Bizarre Creations would do a sequel, and would they be able to justify doubling the price of the original?

There is a simple answer to that is a bold yes. Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2 has once again evolved the Geometry Wars formula and added many more hours of replay value to the original game. They’ve twisted the gameplay around so that scoring multipliers aren’t given for killing enemies, but collecting the Geoms they drop. With this, it’s allowed for insane multipliers scaling up to scoring in the millions within a few minutes. Incidentally, I expect the highest scoring players to achieve far greater points from this alone, and have the gap between what you’ve scored and what they’ve scored change from a small gap to the Grand Canyon. But beyond the larger scaled scoring, there’s also five new game modes besides Retro Evolved (which is still in this one) to shake up the classic Geometry Wars gameplay.

The first of these (and incidentally the mode available in the trial) is called Deadline. This mode employs the classic Geometry Wars gameplay, but instead of giving you infinite time and 3 lives, you’re given infinite lives and three minutes to rack up as high a score as possible. To me, Deadline feels like a tournament mode of the game (much like the gameplay of Pacman CE, also on XBLA) and when playing with a few friends, taking it in turns to have a go, this one will be the mode to play.

Next up, Pacifism. Pacifism is the mode based on a famous achievement in the first game of the same name. You have no weapons, and all you can do is evade the enemies as they come at you, occasionally passing through gates to destroy nearby enemies. Of the new modes, I found this one the least compelling due to the sheer repetitiveness of defeating enemies.

Waves is a “new” mode that was previously featured in Project Gotham Racing 4 on Xbox 360, whereby enemies come at you in waves of straight lines, getting increasingly numerous and speedier as time goes by. I found myself having the most difficulty on this one due to the totally unfamiliar gameplay dynamic of waves instead of randomly spawning enemies, which caught me off guard more times than I liked.

Next up is Sequence, which is a rather fun mode to say the least. This one works best in co-op as enemy spawns aren’t random, but pre-selected and ultimately requires forward planning and lots of practise and study, as opposed to the purely skill-based challenges of the other modes. There are twenty “levels”, and the goal is to reach the end of all of them. You have three lives with which to achieve this and when you lose one, you move on to the next level. Either way, this was really fun in co-op as you could really strategize with your partner after getting used to the layout of each section and I expect some mega co-op high scores from this one.

Lastly, and most certainly not least, is King. King is easily the most exciting new mode in Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2, whereby safety rings appear throughout the arena that prevent enemies from entering. The down side? You can only fire when inside the ring, and they quickly vanish after you’ve entered them, so racking up points involves you moving from one ring to the next, collecting Geoms as you pass and evading the mass onslaught of enemies until you reached the next safety zone. This mode adds a whole new dynamic to the game and I can see myself playing this as much as Retro Evolved and Deadline.

Graphically, Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2 doesn’t fail to disappoint either. In crystal clear 1080p this is easily the most visually stunning game on Arcade. The bright, vibrant colours bring your huge LCD and Plasma screens to life and are a good way of exploring the wide-gamut of colours that your expensive sets can so easily display. And when playing the game in co-op, the stunning visuals are ratcheted up another notch, to the point of being dazzling. For those with 1080p displays, you won’t be disappointed (though I’ll hold off on saying you should buy one just for this game).

The only major disappointment I had with this was the lack of co-op play over Xbox LIVE. Playing with a friend in the same room is great and all, but having the ability to play online would have made multiplayer far more compelling, however it’s instead been relegated to being utilized far less than many of us would’ve liked.

All told, Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2 is a fantastic package. For 800 Microsoft Points (double that of the original Geomtry Wars Retro Evolved) you’re getting the original Geometry Wars gameplay in all its glory, plus five tweaked versions that could stand on their own if Bizarre’s overlords, Activision, had demanded it. Add to that the local co-op play and all of a sudden the $10 price seems like pretty good value to me.

Completion: Played all of the six modes, scoring at least 1,000,000 points in each. Also played co-op mode locally.