Review
Release Date: 11.22.2005
Platform:
Xbox Live ArcadeDeveloper:
Bizarre CreationsPublisher:
Bizarre CreationsReviewed by
Ryan Dean on 5.2.2006
| Review Rating: 10/10 | User Rating: 8/10 |
What is the best game out for the Xbox 360? Ask some gamers on the street (more like an internet messageboard) and the responses will vary;
Call of Duty 2,
Project Gotham Racing 3, maybe even
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. However, they are all wrong. Yes, their opinions are wrong, and yes, I do understand the word. The best game available for the Xbox 360 game console is not something you can buy in a store. The best game for the Xbox 360 does not feature an involving storyline, 16 player multiplayer, or even 3D graphics. The best Xbox 360 game is
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved.
Stephen Cakebread was admittedly bored working on
Project Gotham Racing 2, and out of this boredom a beautiful idea was born. Simply enough, a small game to test the developer's controller was created. Eventually Stephen's co-workers noticed the game, and it began to spread throughout
Bizarre Creations. Eventually, this game blossomed into the original
Geometry Wars (The "retro" part of
Retro Evolved).
Now fast-forward to the current generation of gaming (or is it still "next-gen"?), specifically to the Xbox 360. I originally demoed
GWRE the very second I got my 360 and Live account set up, and truthfully, I was unimpressed. Later on during a late-night
Oblivion fest, I decided to grab a new gamer picture for my gamer card (Minnesota Vikings for life!). However, it would be ridiculous to buy the very cheap picture and leave the rest of my $6.25 in points sitting there. Remembering the vast amount of hype surrounding
Geometry Wars earlier on, I decided to give it another go.
The game is painfully easy early on, even during the first few times playing it. Our little polygon starts out with three lives and three screen-clearing bombs, and all we've got to go is kill everything that appears. For the first two minutes I like to sit in one place and shoot everything that moves just using the right analog stick; I won't move even if one of those blue diamonds is one milimeter away. Other times I'll just aggressively mow everything down. With just blue diamonds and purple spiral-things in the beginning, there isn't much to be excited over. However, the game (slightly depending on how you handled the first stages) picks up dramatically over time, becoming exciting and well, completely insane. Because the free demo available over XBL has a time limit, you really can't get a feel for how intense the game gets later on.
Once you've hit the 50,000 points mark, you start noticing that the game is actually pretty deep. Because your weapons switch every now and then (starting with single shot, then to slow spread, then to quick spread, and back to slow spread), you can't really rely on one strategy, especially when five or more types of enemies come at you (Green Squares, Red Circles, Purple Mayflies, Pink Squares; shapes have never been so exciting!).
Human competition is pretty fierce in
GWRE too. Online leaderboards track the best of the best, and you might be surprised at what some of the hardcore
GW players can achieve. After a particularly hardcore session, I finished at around 200,000. Now, that's a pretty big number in the outside world, but it's nothing on Xbox Live. As of two nights ago the highest score sits around 41,000,000. That's forty-one million. Million. I don't know if I should be dumbfounded or disgusted. Have these guys seen the sun since playing?
When you're done with the
evolved part, you can always go back to where it all started with the
retro version. It isn't nearly as exciting or fun to look at, but it's a nice addition for a small game.
Graphically,
GWRE is pretty hot. From ripples in the playing grid to the shake of a bomb wiping out everything, the game is awesome look at. Sometimes I let the "black holes" suck up everything just to watch the chaotic explosion of color. For five dollars,
Geometry Wars is a work of art.
In the audio department, things aren't as exciting. The background music is pretty good, but the effects (shooting, bombs exploding, dying) get pretty old after a while. However, readers must remember that this is an arcade game. It all fits well with the action, but in the inevitable sequel to
GWRE, I'd like to see more.
Because
Geometry Wars provides such intense action at little cost, no gamer has an excuse to pass up
GWRE. And for you gamerscore freaks there's also 200 points included to help you catch up with the thousands of other Xbox maniacs. We all know there is nothing more satisfying than putting down a controller, sore-thumbed, knowing you spent your time well. This is the type of golden gaming moment you'll definitely encounter more than once with
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved.
