Official Website

Platform: Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS

Genre: Modern Retro

Number of Players: 1 - 2
 

In case you hadn’t realized it, retro is the cool thing these days. Having games with full 3D, incredible lighting and graphics and online playability is great and everything, but sometimes there are gamers who have been a part of the crowd fro quite some time who crave a little of that old fashioned magic that drew them to video games in the first place. Every so often though, you find a new game which is the modern day equivalent to retro.

That’s where a game Like Geometry Wars Galaxies comes into the picture. Originally the game was a part of Project Gotham Racing 2 as an in-game playable bonus in the garage and later, it was downloadable as a part of the Xbox Live Arcade as Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved which was also playable as part of PGR3. Now the game has evolved just a little further and has made its way onto the Wii.

One of the firs things you might notice is that Geometry Wars really doesn’t have much in the way of a story, and that’s the true retro way. Back in those days, we didn’t need a story to keep us entertained. Did Space Invaders, Asteroids, Dig Dug or any other games from the arcade days have a story? Not really, and if they did, it was something really simple that was quickly forgotten in favor of gamplay. That is precisely the approach that Geometry Wars takes, and trust me, it works.

The game plays like a classic shooter, and not the variety seen with Gradius or anything else like that, this is the brand of shooter before full-color visuals took over. Vector graphics were once all the rage, and that’s another area that Geometry Wars takes. As you begin the game, you’ll have access to a handful of planets. Each of these is a simple, 2D screen where you are limited to your movement, but within this limited field you can see where some of the enemies are approach from. The Wii remote serves as your directional fire while the analog stick on the nanchaku will move your ship. The overall mechanics are quite easy to grasp, but there is a bit more finesse involved with the game than just move and fire.

While destroying wave after wave of enemy, you will see that some of them will leave behind glowing objects called Geoms and collecting these is essential. Geoms will allow you to purchase things within the game; the first of these will be the drones that accompany you in the stage. Drones have a certain behavior pattern they follow, so an attack drone does precisely that whereas you can opt to bring along a drone to defend, one to collect geoms and there are eight different types that you can use. At the end of your game, you will get experience which will be applied to whatever geom you are using to increase its effectiveness. Also during stages there the geoms that will help to increase your multiplier up to a maximum of 150. However, if you are destroyed at any point, the multiplier returns back to one and you’ll start from the beginning.

Another method to help increase your score are black holes, worm holes and anything else that happens to come your way that can suck enemies into it. Once you’ve activated them by shooting them, they will begin pulling in everything that comes within their gravitational pull. You need to be wary however because the more enemies that are sucked into, the object will get close to critical mass whereupon it will explode, releasing another wave of enemies that will act like homing missiles. From my experience, using one of your limited bombs is a great means to escape destruction.

Each of the stages also will award you with a medal depending on your score, and the stages get increasingly difficult. But once you’ve conquered the planets in the galaxy, then what? That once again goes back to the geoms and these can be used to unlock more galaxies to battle through. Even though you’ve unlocked a new galaxy though, that won’t have access to all of the planets and these will also need to be purchased and if you want even more levels, the game links up with the Nintendo DS version of Geometry Wars to provide more content.

There is also a two player mode to be found, so you can either work with a friend to challenge the stages found dint the game, though they aren’t the same ones in the single players version, or you can compete against one another to see who can achieve the highest score. The idea carries over to the Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved portion of the game. This is an online mode that will allow you to see just how well you rank against other plays, though I did find that the connection for whatever reason was a little slow as far as accessing the leaderbaords.

Gemoetry Wars does keep with a retro look, so much of what you’ll see has a vector graphics looks to it, but there are things done that wasn’t possible years ago when these were the only types of games you could find in arcades. There are some great visuals, like how your pointer will tear through the fabric of the grid, leaving a wave and ripple effect as it does. The explosions of the black holes is filled with some very eye catching cascades of colors and this really is true of just about everything found in the game. It’s very simple in many ways, and yet it also has a nice degree of complexity which is what makes it classable as “modern retro.”

On top of everything else, Geometry Wars is addictive, incredibly addictive. There’s no worry about trying to make ti to the next stage, no concerns about time or anything like that but just, good old fashioned shooting action in a pleasing package. Even while trying to sit and write the review I found myself drawn back into the game as the hours wasted away. You certainly could visit other galaxies and play as a bounty hunter or some plumber, but those games will lose their novelty after a while whereas Geometry Wars just keeps pulling me back into its grip and if I ever needed a reason to pick up the Wii controller again, this most certainly is it.

-mike-