If you’ve read my Geometry Wars: Galaxies review for the Wii, you know I thought very favorably of it. What’s even better is the fact that there’s a portable version of the game available for the Nintendo DS. In that tiny little cart you’ll find a virtually identical version of Geometry Wars: Galaxies. That’s not to say there aren’t differences, but from a gameplay and content perspective you’ve got every Geometry Wars fan’s dream.

Obviously the Nintendo DS isn’t two Gamecubes with some duct tape, so graphically speaking the game doesn’t look quite as good. You won’t get any fancy grid effects, and there won’t be as many colors, but you do still get a great particle engine and plenty of baddies on the screen at once. The game does slowdown at times, especially when things start to get really hectic, but it’s nothing too bad and it’s something you get used to.

The Controls on the DS allow for a few options. The first has the game displaying on the top screen while you use the d-pad (or buttons for us lefties) to move and the stylus on the bottom screen to aim. There’s a small ship icon which corresponds to your ship up top, and moving the stylus around it shoots in the appropriate direction. The second method has the game screen at the bottom and has you using the stylus directly on the game board. The problem I found with this is it can be difficult to see the action on the screen. The final method allows you to have the screen on either top or bottom and you use the d-pad and buttons in a familiar dual analog stick type fashion. I actually found this method to be the best once I go the hang of rolling my thumb along the buttons to aim.

Besides a bit of slowdown the only flaw I found with the game is the sound. While it does an accurate job of recreating the effects, there seems to be a limit as to how many sound cues the DS can play at once. This causes you to miss critical cues of different types of enemies spawning. The Nintendo DS and Wii version of Galaxies allow you to connect the two to unlock an additional galaxy. The galaxy has one of the greatest levels in it which has a giant black hole in the middle that can’t be killed along with constantly spawning enemies. It’s an interesting and hectic challenge.

For Geometry Wars addicts this is the version of the game you need to have. The pick up and play nature of the game is perfect for the DS. On top of that you get online leader boards via the Nintendo WiFi connection to feed your competitive side. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some isosceles triangles to blast apart.

Score: 4 out of 5

Buy it @ Amazon.