This game will overwhelm you with relentless action.
I first had contact with this game when I bought my Xbox 360 in the beginning of 2009, I used my one month free gold subscription to play online, and with that I could download some demos, one of these demos was Geometry Wars, I was blown away instantly.
This game is simple, very simple, the goal is to shoot things up while not getting hit by them. Sounds easy on paper, but the actual game proves to be much of a challenge, just like how games used to be when steep difficulty was the only feature at hand. No story to pay attention to, just press start and start shooting. You move your character with the left analog stick and shoot projectiles with the right stick - when I say "character" I mean in a manner of speaking, because it's more like a little "thing". The controls prove to be nicely implemented since whatever direction you press on the right analog stick will be the direction your shot will be aimed. You need to shoot several types of geometric shapes, each has its own level of difficulty and will give you certain amounts of points, some will just wander the screen while some will stalk you fiercely until you deal with them. The game is very intense and will certainly overwhelm the player with action without leaving much space to breathe.
With such a simplistic approach you'd say the graphics and sound are second-rate or at least didn't received much attention, right? Well, wrong! The graphics are amazing, they're simple just like everything else, but the details amaze; there will be lots of light effects and explosions happening while you play, the colors are very bright and shiny, and along with the rest they create quite a sight to look at. The main and only music in game game absolutely rocks, it will keep you rushed with adrenaline, of course the sound effects are just as great. There's a retro mode as well, the game is the same, just with less dynamism, weaker visuals and sound, more of a add on.
If you have the opportunity to play this game do yourself a favor and play it, it can be purchased on the Xbox Live Arcade by just a few dollars, or if you don't have how to connect your console online you can buy the Xbox Live Arcade Unplugged Volume 1 compilation, which can be acquired physically and brings a collection of a few live arcade games, some of them are decent but the true highlight of the package is obviously Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. If you still are skeptical about this there's a nice demo available online for download, download it and you'll have a brief gameplay, the full game is basically what you see with the exception of time restrainment. The definition is pretty straight forward, this game is simple, fun and addictive; definitely worth checking out.
