Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved²

[slycat]

The sequel to possibly the best arcade shooter on the 360 has been released today. It's improved greatly on the original with there now being 6 styles of game to play. When you first play the game you have to play each mode a certain amount of time to unlock the next mode which is a great way of making people play all the modes. The modes include:

• Evolved, an updated version of the original game.
• Waves (yay!), which featured in PGR4 where you have to fend off waves of enemies with only one life to do it with.
• Deadline, where you have to get as good a score as you can in 3mins. You have unlimited lives but every time you lose a life the intensity of enemies attacking reduces, a bit like the way E4 punishes you for losing a life.
• King, where you can only shoot from temporary safe zones and have to pass between safe zones, avoiding enemies to collect geom multipliers and only one life.
• Pacifism, where you have no weapons at all and have to dodge the enemies and destroy them by passing through floating gates which will also kill you if you touch the edges of the gates and all this with one life.
• Sequence, where you have to complete a sequence of levels (20 in all) each with an increasing amount of stuff to do before you pass on to the next level.

All modes have adopted PGR4's GW:Waves multiplier mechanism where when enemies explode, they leave behind tiny "geoms", each one is worth a 1x multiplier which means multipliers get get up to silly levels (I had over 500 on one level). At the moment, out of the 6 modes, I'd say Evolved and Waves are my favourites but it's still fun to play the others.

The integration with Xbox Live is also fantastic. Basically when you start the single player mode, you get presented with a screen split 6 ways for each game mode and in each box are a list of your friends score and your score in comparison with them so you can easily see at a glance how you are doing compared with those on your friends list (which to be honest is all I care about when it comes to scores, I don't care about being number 1 in the world, I just like to beat my friends). When you're playing, in the top right corner of the screen is the next highest score out of your friends list you need to beat which is another great feature. There's also a multiplayer mode which I've yet to try out because I have no friends (sadly it can only be played offline) but I'm certainly looking forward to giving it a go when I do have folks over.

The game is really worth the 800points (£6.80) and I fully recommend this game to anyone with an Xbox 360 and a taste for arcade games. I'd also recommend it if you had the previous game as there's so much more going on with the new game that justifies the cost :)

Trailer for the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP6TK2xFWZs

Comments

[sphelx.livejournal.com]

I hope they bring it to Steam. I don't wanna spend £300+ on a sodding xbox just because I wanna have GW2 >..o

[slycat.livejournal.com]

I expect they'll bring it to Steam as the first one was. They have said it's 360 exclusive but I guess that doesn't include PCs.

[sphelx.livejournal.com]

On the forums, one of the devs said that there are no plans, or talks about doing a PC version "for now or the forseeable future"

[slycat.livejournal.com]

Guess you'll have to get a 360 then!

[m-tiger.livejournal.com]

That's the same thing they said for the first game, too. ;) It'll come to Steam eventually, though it'll probably be a long wait.

[sphelx.livejournal.com]

Thank god.

[rogerirrelevant.livejournal.com]

Well, s'pose I should get this version now I have a 360 - the Wii one was a shedload of fun, especially after a few joints!

[slycat.livejournal.com]

You should definitely get the 360 version. 1080p visuals and new gameplay. It's more arcadey than the Galaxies on the Wii as it's not level based.

[lazerus101.livejournal.com]

Just saw your score update on Pacifism mode...... WTF!

[slycat.livejournal.com]

"Contraband Zero" from XboxLive Furs has already bettered it with 51mil. I'll have to get more practise in. I'm not brilliant at the other modes it seems, really struggling with Deadline.