As I type this I can still see the hundreds of blue diamonds swarming around my fragile little ship. I promised myself that I wasn’t going to buy Geometry Wars 2 (GW2 for this entry), but after playing the demo my twitch shooter finger vetoed my mind, I plopped down the 800 points to get the whole deal.
GW2 is of course the sequel to GW1 which originally was a mini game included in a racing title on xbox, confusing huh? GW1 was in essence a prettier version of the mini game with everything back from the mini game. This time however the developers have given us 6 games that change the rules in their own way.For people who haven’t played any of the GW series, the game is a throwback to the classic overwhelming force arcade shooters like robotron . Geometric shapes make up the enemy force with each shape having it’s own behavior. The two key differences overall from GW1 to GW2 are changes to scoring and to your ship firing ability.
In the last one your score was based on a multiplier that would increase after so many points were achieved. Meaning that if you carry your momentum and not die you can rack up a huge score, but one death later on when your being swarmed and you will not be able to build it back up. In GW2 across all modes there are now shapes called geom that appear when an enemy ship is killed, for each one you pick up your multiplier will increase by one. Your multiplier will not drop to zero if you die now making it possible to have a multiplier in the thousands by the end of a game.
The other change is the type of bullets fired from your ship. In the last one the type would change after scoring enough points. In GW 2 you only have one shot type to worry about , and I prefer it that way. My problem with multiple shots set up out of the player’s control is that it goes against old school gaming in my opinion. One trait in old games is that your dealing with constants, you never have to worry about Mario in Donkey Kong all of a sudden jumping three times his normal jump. Or what bullet is the best one to use (in my opinion the faster shot), having it change during the game seemed like a cheap way of adding in difficulty in my opinion. With that out of the way let’s talk about how what GW2 brings to the table.
The first change are the graphics, everything looks a lot sharper now and it helps you to keep track of enemy ships once the explosions start. Upon buying GW 2 you’ll start out with one mode and have to unlock the rest, which should take about 30 minutes. The first mode is DeadLine, in it you have unlimited lives and 3 minutes to rack up the highest score possible. This is my least favorite as it becomes obsolete once you unlock Evolved in my opinion ( more on that in abit).
Next up is King, now you can only fire inside zones marked by blue circles, once inside the enemy can’t enter and your free to fire. Once you’ve flown into one the zone will degrade and disappear while another one will appear somewhere in the stage. The challenge is that eventually swarms of enemies will appear requires quick moving and fast shooting to clear a way to the next zone before you run out of firing time .
Evolved is next bringing classic GW to GW2. This mode is the same one featured in GW1 with the changes in GW2. Not much to say about this one, fans of GW1 know what they’re getting into here.
Pacifism is the most jarring of the new modes, now your ship can’t fire at all but instead will have to past through gates to cause explosions to take down the swarms of ships. Touching either end of a gate or an enemy and it’s game over. The enemy swarms here build up fast and you’ll soon be chased by at least 100 blue diamonds as you attempt to lead them to their doom. Along with King, these two are my favorite additions to the game as they both change the rules dramatically.
Wave is similar to evolved with two differences, one you have only one life in this mode and two, orange triangles (a new kind of ship) that fly in a straight line back and forth make up this mode. With each wave a set of these ships appear requiring careful movement to avoid them while shooting a path through their ranks. Eventually other ships will appear requiring you to split your focus between the two groups of ships. While not my favorite mode, I do prefer this one to Deadline.
At last we come to the big momma, sequence, 20 preset stages with some of the most fiendish waves seen in the GW series. You have 30 seconds to clear a stage before automatically moving on to the next, dieing will cost one life and will end the current stage . Even though the patterns will not change on each play through doesn’t make this any easier, and the final group is sure to test any one’s skills at GW 2. I would have liked to be able to choose different collections of 20 stages, but sequence on its own is going to take sometime to master.
So where does that leave us then? For fans and newcomers alike GW 2 offers enough change from the original to make it worth the 800 points. Local multi player is sure to be a blast and a great party game when things start to get crazy. I still haven’t decided if GW 2 makes GW1 obsolete by default, as the changes made to it do make it a different beast in some aspect from GW1. Geometry Wars 2 gets me asking this question, ” what no rhombus”?
Josh
