Action in Deep Space

Understatement: Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved is a very, very cool game. What is a little overwhelming about it is that it's not only a lot of fun to play, but it's a bit of a shock in that for a game that was initially taken as a bit of a throwaway buried in Microsoft's Project Gotham Racing® 2, it's a big, solid hit.

It's a really simple game to play and, while gorgeous in hi-def, the visuals aren't all that groundbreaking. In fact, it's a throwback to 1982. There isn't a lot going on there that you couldn't cook up on an etch-a-sketch. But it's like watching a Michael Bay action movie on a recreational drug. You're pulled in, and there's stuff going on EVERYWHERE.

It starts out relatively simple.

Not only that, Geometry Wars has a vibrant, passionate community of hardcore gamers out there who are hitting the game with all they've got and wear their high scores like badges of honor.

Roots of Geometry Wars
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved is a progression of a game that started out as a load-screen boredom-killer on the Xbox® racing game Project Gotham Racing®. Its origins are even less ambitious than that—its creator, Steve Cakebread of Bizarre Creations, was working out some new joystick code while programming, the roots of which form the source of Geometry Wars.

Geometry Wars will demand everything you've
got—concentration, focus, hand-eye co-ordination,
twitch reflexes, timing, and strategy.

Its first large exposure to players was in the release of Project Gotham Racing 2 in the winter of 2003. This is the "retro" part of the game, which is one half of what you get on the full version of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. Even the tweaked, refined and 'evolutioned' version of the game which reappeared in Project Gotham Racing® 3 was a 'time attack', sneak-preview-trailer version of the arcade-style complete game which is arguably the most popular download in Xbox Live® Marketplace.

Geo Wars (as it's popularly known) is the core of what video games are. Drive a ship in the screen—like Robotron 2084, one stick moves you around, and one stick makes you shoot in any direction you want. This sounds like a license to invulnerability, but that just isn't so. Your universe is defined with borders—you play within a set, rectangular field, drawn in a grid.

Snakes in deep space!

Your ship is a clawlike icon—well, it could be a ship, it flies like a ship, thruster exhaust and all. Your weapons fire with a certain velocity. Within Geometry Wars the stark, abstract visuals keep you from being distracted by the subtleties and visuals of fifty or sixty enemies attacking you simultaneously on a field of battle that's affected by everything you are doing—and everything they're doing, too.

Old-School Arcade Action
Superficially, it's a fusion of old eighties arcade staples—Omega Race, Tempest, a hefty bit of Space Fury—but there's nothing derivative about Geometry Wars. Its gameplay dynamic is elegant, simple, and addictive. Enemies attack from all directions, spawning at random. You can move in 360 degrees, you can shoot in 360 degrees.

Complexities are introduced in degrees as you progress. Your weapons become more powerful, firing larger spreads of bullets at varying speeds. Also, you have a "smart bomb" in your arsenal, which can be triggered a limited number of times, destroying everything within sight. Replenish smart bombs by earning more points.

Might be time for a smart bomb.

Enemies become more numerous and aggressive as the clock ticks by, starting with simple geometric shapes that drift lazily toward you on the field. Some of them don't even try to attack you at all. It lulls you into a feeling of false security as you blast a few of them into fragments.

As the game progresses, the enemies become more complex and more difficult. Some dodge your fire with clever A.I. Some withstand your fire and require concentrated attack. Some seem nearly harmless, until they spawn in massive clouds so dense and numerous that you find yourself suddenly fighting for your life in every direction.

Gravity Field
What makes Geometry Wars unique is the blue crosshatch grid you fight within. It's a field of gravity—every object, every enemy, every bullet you fire, and even your ship itself creates a ripple of influence in the playing field, as though you were playing on the surface of a sheet of water. Everything pulls everything else toward it to a slight degree. The gravity field is represented by over 50,000 points.

The game rapidly escalates in difficulty and energy—what doesn't come across in the screenshots is the seething motion of the combat as the screen fills with multiplying enemies. It's one of those arcade games that demands a level of focus and concentration that only the classics can. Though the Xbox Live Arcade version of the game is still designed as a single-player game, the leaderboards hotly contested, as players are surprisingly passionate about defending their place in the roster and their high scores.

There are many unlockable achievement awards for stunts like playing for sixty seconds without shooting ("Pacifist"), as well as incremental achievements such as clearing 100,000 points, 250,000, and so on, not to mention passing those milestones without dying.

Geometry Wars is a fast-paced arcade game that will demand everything you've got—concentration, focus, hand-eye co-ordination, twitch reflexes, timing, and strategy. For everything you put into it, you will be rewarded with a startling graphics display of glowing neon and pulsating explosions of light that will take you straight back to the arcade roots of your childhood, or, for the younger set, give you perhaps the best glimpse at the kind of game that hooked us all twenty years ago and had us spending every quarter we had to stay in that game.