Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2 has been a long time coming. The first game blew Xbox Live users away as it was one of the first XBLA titles to be released that really demonstrated the potential of this new platform. Well now 3 years have come and gone and here we are at the arrival of its long awaited sequel, and wow was it ever worth the wait!
The game’s visuals and gameplay style haven’t changed much: the game is still a 2D dual-analogue shooter where you control a ‘C’ shaped ship with the left analogue stick and shoot bullets at enemies by pushing the right analogue stick in the required direction, and all this, of course, takes place in a large rectangular arena.
What differentiates this game from its predecessor are the multiple game modes. In the first game there was only Evolved, in Geometry Wars 2 however, you have Evolved and five additional game modes, some more interesting than others, but I’ll get into more details on those later.
The second major change is the multiplier that affects your score. In the first Geometry Wars you earned your multiplier by the amount of enemies you killed and it went away when you died. In Geometry Wars 2, the way you earn your multiplier is much more inventive. When you kill an enemy they drop what are called Geoms, little yellow diamond shapes that add to your multiplier. This introduces a risk versus reward system. All you were required to do in the first game was escape and survive, but now you need to get close to the enemies after shooting them. It’s a frantic mess; you’re often placed in situations where you’re facing hundreds of enemies head on with no real plan on how to get out, but when you pull it off, you feel completely bad-ass!
The third major change is that there are no more weapon upgrades. In the first game, the more your score would increase, the greater the spread of your gun would become. I’m not really sure why they chose to remove this feature, but after a little getting used to, you forget about it pretty quickly.
The final big change in the game is that it now supports 4 player multi-player: you can play against or in teams of two. But it’s limited to local multi-player. When asked about this, the developers said that they had tried to introduce online multiplayer, but there was too much happening on screen to allow them to do so. I understand that any lag would be detrimental to this game, but considering that most triple-A titles include online multiplayer in their game, I can’t imagine why such a small game couldn’t possibly pull it off. The local multi-player is a lot of fun however, even though it does get hard to see where you are sometimes; the camera tends to zoom out much further when you play multi-player. For the most part it’s enjoyable, but it’s not the main focus of the game.
The first game mode that you start off with is Deadline; you start off with three bombs and you have five minutes to get the highest score you can. What’s great about this mode is you can die as many times as you want, which is great for people who are just getting started with the game. It very much feels like a training mode, but is still a lot of fun.
The second is King. This game mode plays similarly to what a King of the Hill game would in a first person shooter. In this mode, you play in the same arena but you can only shoot from within circles that randomly appear, and then disappear the longer you remain inside them; while outside them, you’re on your own. Another thing that I liked about this mode is that the enemies can’t get in the circle. The obvious reason for this is because that would make it too hard. You quickly learn that you have to plan your way out of the circle pretty much as soon as you fly into one. Its also worth mentioning that the game’s music changes depending on whether or not you’re in the circle. When you’re outside the circle, the music dies down as if you were underwater, but when you get back inside, it kicks back in again; its one of those little touches that adds wonderful ambiance and feeling to the game.
The third mode is Evolved; it’s essentially the game mode from the first Geometry Wars. There are however a few new enemies added to this mode. Instead of following you around, these enemies tend to stick to their own path, darting from left to right, or just moving around in the same spot. This definitely adds an additional element to the game.
The forth mode is, by far, one of my favourite modes; it’s called Pacifism. It’s based on an Achievement from the first game in which you had to avoid being killed for sixty seconds without firing. So as you might have suspected, in this game mode you cannot shoot at all. The way you kill the enemies however is by flying your ship through gates, which basically look like a dumbbells; if you fly through the white bar the enemies around you die, but if you touch the triangles on either sides, you die instead. There is only one other enemy in this mode, which are the blue diamonds. All they do is slowly follow you around, which may sound easy to avoid but there numbers soon get the better of you. This game mode will have you coming back for more and more, until you reach the score you want to beat.
The fifth game mode is Waves. Waves was first introduced in PGR4, it wasn’t that interesting then, and it’s still not that interesting now. I don’t want to say it is bad but there is so much better to choose from and I can’t really see players using this as their “go to” mode. How it plays is the orange arrow-like enemies start on one of the sides (sometimes taking up the whole side or half), and fly from one end to the other. The idea is to kill all the arrows in a wave before the next wave comes, but it doesn’t take long for it to get out of hand. It’s very easy to be taken off guard in this mode and very much feels like a mode that was made for only the best of players.
The final mode is Sequence. Sequence is a series of levels that has its own specific enemy patterns. In order to best this mode, you’ll need to memorise the enemies’ patterns and master them. There are twenty levels all together and they get harder as you go on. Knowing the enemies’ patterns ahead of time definitely makes for an interesting gameplay mechanic and a nice change of pace, considering that the rest of the game relies mostly on complete randomness as oppose to any sense of order.
All in all, I think Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2 has lived up to being a worthy sequel. I may have my qualms with its lack of online multiplayer, but the sheer amount of game modes certainly makes up for it in strides. Everything from the Achievements to the Friends leader boards are so well done that you’ll easily find yourself playing this one till the wee hours of the morning.
By Chinny
