Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved Review

Have you ever had the feeling where you have experienced one of the most addictive, high-energy experiences with one of the greatest videogame hits ever?

Well, the popular arcade-like, old-school style shooter-fest Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved certainly gave me that kind of experience. And I only downloaded it to my PC yesterday.

But don't take my word for it: there's a very good reason it's so popular. Especially on it's original Xbox Live platform on the 360, Geometry Wars is always that damn good to keep everyone hooked for just one more go at it.

That same high-energy experience soon made it to your PC, so long as you had Windows Vista - but just this week, the highly-energized brains at Valve (you know, the guys behind the Half-Life FPS hardcore franchise) released the backported version of the game for those still running Windows XP - and through their Steam download platform, no less - and it is this version of the game that I was able to test for this review. But just the same, every single thing in this review holds equally whether you're playing on XP, Vista or Xbox 360. Plus, with the sequel en route to Nintendo's Wii and DS platforms (refer here to my news article announcing it's confirmation) I believe it's a good time to give my impressions of the current game ahead of that release.

For those who are still unfamilliar with Geometry Wars, it's basically an arcade-style shooter where you pilot a sort of odd-looking spaceship around a rectangular grid and shoot in three-sixty degree fashion at approaching enemies that look much like geometric shapes, hence the franchise's name. Wave after wave of these things come after you in rapid succession, and if things get a little too hairy you can set off a bomb to destroy practically everything on the grid, although you only have a very minute three-pack of them to use. Your firepower, bomb count and number of reserve ships increases as you score more points, but some of these bonuses take a long time to build up again once some of them have been overused, making strategic decisions a big part of the experience.

That said, Geometry Wars isn't without it's issues. And most of those stem from the fact that the game clearly follows old-school arcade conventions. Everything is clearly set on a fixed, wave after wave pattern of repetitive enemy intrusions - and there are often scores of approaching foes that come fast enough that plenty of serious thinking is needed to keep from losing a ship if they get to close. The creativity factor, while it gets very marks for the concept of using geometric shapes to represent enemy ships compared to your own fighter, does little to hide the old-school conventions at play here. And the graphics, while clearly designed for modern computer systems, are obviously not the most impressive due to the game's concept. The good news is that none of this even detracts from the overall experience thanks to the clever set of conventions used in the game, and despite all the other flaws the audio mixset (both with the music and sound effects) is exceptionally top-notch. But most of all, Geometry Wars really does a lot to encourage you to attempt to beat your own high score, over and over again.

And that, despite all the bad sides of the game, makes Geometry Wars that fun to play. If you haven't already played this one, feel free to give it a go. You'll be glad you did.

Explanation of the scores:

Graphics and Audio
Simplistic graphics to be sure, but nothing that detracts from the overall experience. On thop of that, the in-game audio is top-notch exceptional.
Gameplay
A little bit too old-school, but more than enough to encourage replayability for those who wish to beat their own high score.
Creativity
Mostly old-school in the presentation, but the concept of styling the enemy fighters as geometric shapes manages to make this a lot more than just excusable.
Fun Factor
Perfect score because, well, it's still very enjoyable despite everything else. Besides, it's just so easy to understand why the game is so compellingly addictive.