Gearhead

Bizarre Creations became widely successful, with its downloadable launch game for the Xbox 360, entitled Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. With that, it released another game in late 2007 for both the Wii and the DS, called; Geometry Wars Galaxies. But finally, after almost three years, its true sequel has finally come with Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2.

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 regenerates the series with improved graphics, new gameplay ideas, new enemies, and five new modes to play. The first thing that strikes your eye after downloading the game is the much improved graphics. Everything from the enemy's, to your ship, to even the board in which you do battle on is brighter, and just looks like a real next-gen game. Though some problems do arise from all of this color, and brightness. At times, after shooting multiple enemies, the screen is brightened so much from the explosions, that it makes it hard to see. Though this only happens rarely, and after a couple hours of playing, you will become accustomed to it.

Shortly after realizing how beautiful this game is, you see that there are some new ideas implemented in this game. One of which is the idea of Geoms. These are little green dots that appear after destroying an enemy that will increase your multiplier after flying near them. These geoms replace the old system of multipliers, and is welcomed greatly. No more do you have to try and hit a certain number of points to increase it, and after you do now, no longer does your multiplier revert back to one. Instead, it allows keep all of your multiplier points after death, creating a new strategy to both avoid and shoot enemies while trying to collect these geoms. Because of all these new gameplay mechanics, your scores will be much higher from the orginal game, making your once high scores in the original, mediocre ones in this version.

Though one of the biggest new features in this version is the five new gameplay modes. You start with Deadline, then after playing that for a short time unlock King, Evolved, Pacifism, Waves, and Sequence. Deadline is basically the old Geometry Wars gameplay mode, Evolved, in a strict three minute time limit with unlimited lives. Then there is king, which has your ship interacting with small bubbles. Outside the bubbles, you can not shoot at all, but once inside them, you are able to shoot, but are destroyed after five to ten seconds of use, and have to move onto the next bubble. Evolved, is just the classic Geometry Wars mode, but still great fun. Then is Pacifism, which is probably the best new mode in the game. In this mode, you can not shoot at all, and just have blue enemies coming at you. The only way to destroy these blue enemys are to travel in and out of these gates which will explode in a certain radius, though you have to be careful, since the ends of each gate will kill you. Waves has you pit against a new enemy, which look like orange rocket ships. These rockets spawn at the edge of the screen in complete order, and fly straight from the side of the board that they spawn on. This mode can be very difficult, but great fun at times. The last new mode is sequence which has you try to destroy different sequences of enemies. There are twenty different boxes each having a different order of enemies coming at you. Though the order of spawns is different from each box, the spawn's stay the same after each game, making you have to play the game over, and over again to try and memorize each order of spawn sequences.

In all, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 adds a lot to the series with many new game modes, gameplay ideas, and much, much more. With just a mode or two being a dud, and some time needed to get used to the new graphics, this sequel to an Xbox Live classic, becomes a classic of its own, and is probably the best game on Xbox Live Arcade. If you have not already, give your inner gamer a service, and play this game.