Do the Math

I failed geometry in high school. In college, I took Math for Dummies and nearly failed it as well. I'm the creative, not techie, flavor of geek. Of course, skill in math (or the lack thereof) has absolutely nothing to do with success or failure in the Xbox Live® Arcade game Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved.

When you download this game, you automatically download both the Retro game and the Evolved game. It took me about ten minutes to download. If you have any doubt whether it's worth purchasing the full game, let me set you straight. Do it.

If you plan to spend any time at all playing this game (more than five minutes), then you want to lay out the cash. The music alone is well worth the money. I don't know about you, but I play better when the tunes are kickin'. When I went back to the Retro game after playing the Evolved game, I really missed the music from Evolved.

Black holes are a matter of extreme gravity.

Elementary Math
The basics: Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved is a single-player game that originally appeared in Project Gotham Racing® 2. Bizarre Creations took the Retro version and updated it with hot graphics and new enemies to create the Evolved next gen version for Xbox 360™. Evolved runs more smoothly and sticks it to you more sweetly.

Drive your pseudo-pentagonal ship with the left stick, and direct your fire with the right. Move in one direction while firing in another, or coordinate both to fire out ahead of you. Learn to control your firing/moving and you've licked the game. If you get in a bind, you can pull either trigger to set off a bomb that blows up everything in sight (except you).

Multiplication Tables
The important numbers to remember are 10,000, 15,000, and 100,000. Points, that is. At every 10,000 interval, you earn a weapon upgrade. Yummy. At each increment of 75,000, you get an extra life. Reincarnation is your friend, but the true lifesaver is rarest of all. For every 100,000 points you rack up, you get a coveted bomb. This should give you an idea of how important it is to hoard these babies. Careful with that trigger-finger, amigo.

Adding up points increases your multipliers, which increases your points, which increases your multipliers, but only if you don't die. The moment your ship gets blown away, your multiplier returns to 1x. Ow. One of the toughest achievements requires you to survive and earn enough points to get to 10x. Only the most godlike of gamer can pull that one off.

Proofs
In this game, strategy equals success. You can't just fly around, randomly shooting things in the hope that you'll win. You'll have one heck of a good time, but you won't get past the early levels. Use your brain and approach your enemy logically. In nearly every scenario, there's an equation (or three) for victory. Find it, and the solution is yours.

If you don't move, then you die. If you don't clear your path, then you die. If you get cornered, then you die. On the other hand, if you target faster moving objects first, then you survive! If you shoot a double square, and it breaks into several mini-squares, and you continue to shoot in the same direction until you've hit these children, you survive! The mini-squares cross back over the original path of the parent double square, you see.

Open a can of warp-ass on your enemies!

Quantum Mechanics
Once you master the physics of the game, you have it made. Here are a few quick tips for maintaining your ship's integrity as you fly across the universe.

• Don't move from one spot until you absolutely have to. If you can stay in one spot and shoot as they come at you, then do it. The moment you're about to get hit, however, please move!
• Don't use your bombs unless you are in over your head.
  • Bombs don't grow on trees, honey.
  • You get no points for the enemy ships you eliminate with a bomb. No points!
• There are three main shooting strategies that, if you keep them in mind, solidify your position:
  • Shoot in the direction you're moving and clear the path ahead of you before you move into it. This one is particularly helpful. If you're feeling cornered, shoot where you want to move and then fly into the void you create.
  • Shoot behind you as you move forward. Your enemies follow you, attracted by your greater gravity. Lead your followers on a merry chase, all the while shooting back at them.
  • Strafe like your life depends on it. Sometimes, you have the leisure to mow down large numbers of enemy units. Don't hesitate. Those are points, not friends.
• Aim for the closest enemy, the fastest enemy, and the most dangerous enemy (duh).
• Stay out of the corners and away from the edges. New enemy ships spawn out of the corners or at the edges, and you can easily get blindsided.
• Avoid shooting the red circle object (a neutron star) for as long as possible. It moves slowly and has no effect on you until you shoot it. At that time, it becomes a black hole and begins to suck you in. Your opponents get sucked into the black hole too, so you can sometimes use that to your advantage by putting it between you and them.

Practice: Equation for Victory
This is one of those games that you have to practice. With all the chaos on the screen, it takes your eyes a while to adjust to knowing what to watch. That's more than half the fun—you get better the more you play. The better you get, the more fun it is. So, hang in there! What frustration you experience in the early stages will be well worth it once you hit that special score.

Article by Angel Leigh McCoy