For your everyday onlooker, Geometry Wars isn’t exactly that impressive to glance at. It’s a game though that once you begin to play, you truly understand its beauty. It comes as no surprise that many websites picked Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved as one of the Xbox 360 must have launch titles. So while Xbox 360 fans have been itching for a true sequel, it’s Wii owners who get it first with Geometry Wars: Galaxies.
The beauty of the original Geometry Wars was it’s simplicity. As a dual analog shooter (left stick moves, right stick shoots) the game was easy to pick up and play. The problem (if any) with the original was that once you got to a certain point in the game, it never changed or got more difficult. Galaxies sets to fix that with multiple level layouts, more enemy varieties, and even multiplayer. The core difference in Galaxies’ gameplay is how the multiplayer works. In the original Geometry Wars, you earned a multiplier (2x,3x,4x,etc) by killing multiple enemies in a row without dieing. In Galaxies your multiplier works by collecting Geoms. What are Geoms? Geoms are little pieces of badguys left behind after destroying them. Besides increasing your multiplier (which still reset to 0 when dieing), the Geoms serve as the in game currency to unlock levels and new abilities for your AI. That’s right, the other major additional gameplay mechanic is your little sidekick. The little guy, I call him Fred, follows you around and assists in the levels. Fred can be upgraded to perform various functions, whether that’s shoot where you are shooting, or become an auto turret and take down those pesky geometries. There’s about 10 different functions that he can serve, all which can be upgraded by killing baddies.
Galaxies is broken up into, surprise, galaxies! Each galaxy offers different planets to unlock and each planet has it’s own point total goals, enemies, and layouts. The layouts of the levels can vary between your normal square to one of many non standard shapes, both big and small. There’s lots of neat little things that happen on levels. Some levels have moving geometry which you have to work around. Others have enemies that lay down mines which you can trigger to set off chain reactions. And of course, there’s just the tried and true GW formula of shoot everything and never stop moving.
The one main problem with Galaxies is the game is a dual analog shooter without dual analog sticks. The developers made an admirable attempt to utilize the Wii controls to kind of use a point and shoot hybrid type control scheme. Unfortunately the Wii controller simply can’t provide a smoother circular motion and feels like a constant battle to aim and shoot where you want to. The Classic Controller becomes a necessity, but even then, I find the analog sticks and the hard corners of it detrimental to the fast pace of Geometry Wars.
Despite the controller flaws, the game is still Geometry Wars at heart, and that’s a good thing. The planets are very intuitive, and the unlocking nature of seeing what happens next is incredibly addictive. Add in co-op and versus play and the ability to link the game up to the DS and you’ve got a full value package at $39.99. The bottom line is this… if you are an arcade shooter fan - you need this game.
Score:
4 out of 5
