So good your girlfriend might dump you.
Geometry Wars Review
The original Geometry Wars gave a taste to new Xbox 360 owners what the Xbox Live Arcade was really about. Short games that have small price tags but give you hours of fun. Geometry Wars was extremely successful because it did two things right. It was cheap and it was fun. The second installment of Geometry Wars stays true to the core gameplay of the first game, adding new modes and concepts along the way.
The first thing your’e going to notice about this game is the beautiful look it has to it. With a distinct colorful style this one is really pleasing to the eyes. Multicolored sparks fly off the back of your ship as you shoot down bright neon enemies. Probably my favorite part about the graphics are the huge explosions. Killing a single enemy gives you and array of sparks accompanied by some great explosion sound effects. This in lies probably the biggest problem about this game. The explosions are way to big. It is not rare to be playing a game, and to kill so many enemies at once that your screen is just totally covered with yellow sparks. I often found myself navigating my ship blindly through the battlefield of explosion; just hoping I wouldn’t run into to anything lethal.
One main difference in this game, compared to the first, is the addition of geoms. Geoms are bright green colored diamonds, that permanently raise your multiplier. These stay with you throughout the entire game. So even if you die once, you will still keep whatever number of geoms you have for the rest of your remaining lives. This addition results in much higher scores then in the previous, and in my opinion this was a genius move. It really changes how you play the game. You can either play it safe and stay around the edges or you can take risk by going into the middle of the level to pick up the precious geoms.
Also added was the fact you have no weapon upgrades. Your stuck with the same pea shooter the entire game. Most enemies only take one shot to kill, and there’s only a couple that take multiple shots. So quite frankly, it gets the job done. The ship shooting those bullets moves beautifully. You feel like you really have total control over it, and it can change directions on a dime. To help out your cause, the space gods reward you with an extra bomb and an extra life.(in modes where you are able to use bombs, and have lives) You get this nice gift from them when you reach 100,000 points, then ten times that. Then ten times that, ect.
The biggest improvement from the previous Geometry Wars is hands down the new modes. With six modes in total there will truly be something for everyone. Each mode gives you a taste of something new, and really adds a lot to the replay value. They are all good in their own way, and really shows off how diverse a game like Geometry Wars can be. If you are unfamiliar with the 6 different game modes and would like to learn more, or the strategies for them, go to the bottom of this review.
Have ADD? Well that might be a problem because this game takes mad concentration. You might as well play it alone, or you might find yourself getting dumped by your girlfriend because your concentrating too hard. It’s ok though, because you won’t even hear her dump you. The game is that captivating. This is kind of a bad thing, because I sometimes found myself in zombie mode playing the game, instead of having fun. Another thing I found was that you tend to do your best on the first few days you get it. I was so concentrated then, and so much in the zone that I put up some of my best high scores ever. It’s hard to put this game down for a week, and then try to play again. You find yourself royally sucking, and there’s nothing more frustrating then not even being able to beat your own high scores.
Last thing I want to talk about is the difficulty. Some new players may be intimidated by the difficulty of this game, and may be turned off because there is no “easy” mode. The fact is the difficulty kind of makes it self, depending on the player you are. If your doing well and shooting down all your enemies without dieing, then the game will throw more and more enemies at you. If you die early in the game, then it will ease up on you a little bit, sending less enemies your way. This helps the new player get a feel for the game, and for the hardcore player to gain more points. It works out for everyone.
After many cuss words and failures I have come to love this game. To tell you the truth though, it really took some effort to come up with bad things about it. This downloadable game does everything right. It has a diverse group of enemies, great music and sound effects, amazing graphics, additive game play, cheap price (800 ms points), different modes, but most importantly the game is fun. That’s why we play games right?
- by Stephen French reviewed for Gameportrait.com
All of these modes enable you to play local multiplayer. There is no xbox live support for this game because it is too precise. Any type of lag would ruin the game. However there are online leader boards.
Deadline- In this game mode you are given infinite lives. The catch is you only have three minutes to get as many points as possible. You start out with three bombs, and throughout the game you are able to gain more. The key to this mode is to stay alive. Dieing means that all the enemies slowly coming back. It takes them a lot of time to reach full force again. And lost time equals lost points. Use your bombs to keep you alive and collect as many geoms as possible.
King- Remember playing king of the hill as a kid? Reaching the top of the hill and feeling unstoppable? Only to be thrown down seconds later. Well this mode is pretty much like that. Around the map small circles will randomly appear. You need to steer your ship towards those circles, and once inside you are safe from enemies, for a couple seconds. Right when you go into a circle it will turn green, then shortly after will start to shrink to nothing. The catch is you can only shoot while inside the circles, so you are absolutely left vulnerable when you are in outside space. You can play this two different ways. You can either collect as many geoms as possible, and risk getting killed in the process, or you could play it safe and simply clear a path from circle to circle. Getting a juiced up multiplier is nice, but it means nothing if you are dead. The choice is yours and yours alone.
Evolved- Not to be cliché, but this mode is an evolved version of the original game. It’s about as basic as the game gets, three lives, three bombs. Of course, the goal is to get as many points as possible. The enemies build up over time, and when you die they come back slowly. You multiplier stays the same throughout the entire game, so saving you bombs until your last or second to last life would be smart. This is because the higher the multiplier, the higher the points. The longer you live, the more enemies. The more enemies, the higher your score will be.
Pacifism- Inspired by the pacifism achievement from the first game, you not aloud to shoot in this mode. Instead you dispose of enemies by running into gates. These gates are a straight line with two orange circles on the side of them. If you run through the line, it triggers and explosion that kills all nearby enemies, but if you hit one of the orange circles you die. In pacifism, with only one life, that means game over. As times goes on, more and more enemies start to follow you. Your best bet is to probably run around, and get a huge horde of blue grunts to follow you, then run into a few gates in succession to kill them all. Then proceed to pick up the geoms they drop. Repeat this process until around 1 million points. After that point I would suggest just trying to stay alive, oh and don’t forget to breathe.
Waves- Rows of ten orange spaceships dart up, down, left, and right in this hectic mode. At first it starts out slow, only sending a wave at you every 8-10 seconds or so. As the game progresses it takes shorter and shorter for a new wave to appear. A wave consists of 10 ships, all in a straight line. As you get farther in the game the waves will often turn into 20 ships, taking up the whole screen. They travel from edge to edge on the map, either up and down or side to side. You have to try to dodge some of them, and kill some of them at the same time. You know if you leave one or two from a wave still flying, then they will end up killing you later.
Sequence- Twenty fast paced levels, a plethora of enemies, and a lot of cuss words defines Sequence. You are rewarded for staying alive in this mode of twenty diverse stages, all unique in their own way. You are given three lives and three bombs and like always are rewarded one of each at 100,000 and so on. Some levels are easy, and some are extremely difficult. Some you need bombs to beat, some you are better off just waiting for the time to run out. You learn which level is which over time, and what to do in each one. So really all you can do is play this, a lot. That’s really the only way to get better.
