Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2

How do you improve one of the premier Xbox 360 arcade games, one that was wildly successful and proved that people were willing to pay for simple 2D downloadable arcade games?  Keep the original addictive formulae, but add in some zappy new gameplay elements, an improved visual style and some new modes, and you’re bound to have a cracking time. Originally, it was an extra minigame, in Project Gotham Racing 2 for the Xbox, and it has since expanded to others platforms such as Xbox live Arcade, Nintendo’s Wii and Handheld DS, Windows Based PCs and even mobile phones.

The fundamental premise is almost as old as gaming itself; you command a ship that must shoot down targets. It has expressed itself in games like Space Invaders and Asteroids as well as countless clones and imitations. However, just like Asteroids felt like an evolution of Space invaders; with the latter liberating you and allowing free movement, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2TM feels like the natural progression of Asteroids.

You play exactly last like the last XBLA Title with the left thumbstick controlling the motion of your ship, and the right thumbstick controlling the direction of your fire and either trigger releasing an all-consuming bomb. The biggest alteration is the addition of geoms, released by exploding enemies— they allow you to increase tour score multipliers by ridiculous amounts. Originally added onto the Wii version, Geometry Wars : Galaxies, geoms allow you to boost your score to outlandish levels, that put your best attempts in the previous XBLA Title to shame. The only limiting factor is how many geoms you get: dying won’t reset your score multiplier counter.
There are several modes, each with their distinct playing methods, all of them testing and yet rewarding:

Evolved is the same mode that you’ve played in the older XBLA title. You begin with 3 bombs and lives and get another life and bomb at 100,000, and at every score of an increasing index of ten. [E.g.  100,000 – 1,000,000 – 10,000,000]

Sequence is a series of 20 levels, each half a minute long and of increasing difficulty. Failing too often will result in the chain collapsing and having to start from the beginning.

In King you can enter sheltered zones but you are only allowed to fire from there. The second you enter, a timer will start and you will see your sanctuary shrink. The enemies can’t get you until the zone becomes too small, after which you must evade the enemies and get to the other safe zones. Of course there is a catch, stay in these zones, and you won’t be able to get those precious geomes floating around.  Do you dash outside and risk losing a life for those geoms?  It’s all up to you.

Under Deadline, you have 3 minutes to gain as many points as you can, with unlimited lives, but losing lives will result in you temporarily losing enemies and denying you a good score.

In Waves, lines of enemies zoom from border to border. In order to survive you must create gaps in these walls and escape, or try to outspeed and evade them.

Pacifism is by far the most innovative mode, with your ship being denied of weapons. You must pass between orange gates, which detonate and kill any enemies following you. This means that you will need to use some impressive moves to evade enemies, collect a large following and pass between those glowing gates. Get hit by your enemies or those gates, and its game over.

The graphics have been made more colorful and the enemies have been made brighter. The explosions swathe the screen with bright sparkles and help reinforce the graphical style of the game. Here’s a trick: Pressing [Back] and [Right Bumper] will freeze the action and allow you to view the scene in 3D, as well as move around in it. The audio has been upgraded; with each mode having its own background music, and each explosion adding some flair to the sound track. The game is bursting with bright, energetic sounds and colours which suit the frenzied environment perfectly.

Add in 4 player offline Co-op, in which you can have a mate gun for you, or fight against them collecting geoms and other powerups that help you or hinder your opponents. The only downside is that there is no online Co-op. Everything else, however, is so much better than the original, so in the end this is a game worthy of your money and will offer a lot to both veterans, and people wanting to see what Geometry wars is all about.