There’s no great mystery behind the success of Geometry Wars. Bizarre Creations’ retro shooter is simplistic in every conceivable way, opening it up to gamers from all walks of life but at the same time reluctant to ever let you put down the controller. Retro Evolved remains one of our most played Live Arcade titles, beckoning us back at least once a week that we might creep slowly up the leaderboards. Imagine, then, that gloriously basic formula having more rules and even a campaign mode bolted onto it. Actually, that’s a silly thing to say. You don’t need to imagine it – that’s exactly what has been done with Galaxies. And it’s really quite good.
Interpreting dual analog stick control onto a far more abstract input device was always going to be the hardest part of putting Geometry Wars on the Wii but it has to be said that this is a valiant effort. Purists will obviously want to go down the Classic Controller route (although the GameCube controller doesn’t appear to be supported, which is most odd) but for the brave among you, the Wiimote control actually functions quite admirably once you get a feel for it. The default setup maps movement to the Nunchuk’s control stick with firing direction handled by an on-screen cursor moved with the remote. But we found that reversing the two roles made it slightly easier to get on with, especially when things start getting hectic as they so often do in Geometry Wars. When using the remote for firing, it’s all too easy for the cursor to slip close to your ship while masked by seas of enemies and explosions, often leading to wildly inaccurate fire and shortly after, death.
In its Galaxies mode, parts of GWG are barely recognisable from the game that inspired this evolution. The main change to gameplay comes by way of the drone, a helpful little chap who darts around helping you out in a manner predetermined before the action starts. Early on, the drone can only be used in Attack mode, adding a little extra frontal firepower but as the game goes on, there are a host of new options to unlock. Your little helper can provide rear fire, collect Geoms (the game’s currency) from destroyed enemies, spin around you like a shield, pick off priority targets as a sniper and even run interference with enemies to get them off your tail for a while. While each can be leveled up through extended use, some are clearly more useful than others and the hierarchy changes with each different mission. In lieu of being able to switch on the fly (which would have been the ideal way of telling the drone how to act), you just have to play each level a few times to work out which strategy will work best.
There are a number of other critical changes in place to distance the campaign mode from Retro Evolved too. An all-new score multiplier system makes reaching the higher end of the scoring spectrum a hell of a lot easier, with Geoms dropped by obliterated foes each adding one to your multiplier upon collection. This makes it incredibly quick and easy to reach the cap of 150 times your score, especially if you should lose a life and be sent back to square one once it all starts kicking off as there’s just so much on screen to kill by this point. Arenas themselves have changed too, varying between levels and while some offer the classic rectangle play area (albeit in a number of different sizes), many are far more angular. On the one hand, this makes trapping and executing those cowardly green fools a lot simpler but on the flip side, it’s also quite easy to work yourself into a corner without a fair bit of forward thinking.
And as if that weren’t enough, there are a couple of other new elements to get your head around as well. Moving blocks on some stages constantly change the shape of the arena and can drop you in some nightmarish situations with their erratic movement. Similarly, it took us a good few attempts to work out that the new mine layers are actually your friends – the small green mines they litter about the place are not to be avoided but run over to trigger a chain reaction that takes out any enemies it reaches. Very handy indeed, which is probably why the score targets for levels that feature mine layers are always so much higher than many of the others.
Unsurprisingly, the shape-obsessed enemy forces have added a fair few new recruits to their number to make your life even more troubled. The best of these are called the asteroids, giant versions of the basic enemies that split up upon destruction, first into two slightly smaller ones then each of these into ten or so of the basic enemy. With no real behaviour patterns of their own until down to their smallest versions, these aren’t particularly threatening until they take the form of tougher foes and come in greater numbers, especially when your drone decides to nuke one behind you while you take on a couple in front. Elsewhere, you’ll be taking on enemy generators, darts that swoop drunkenly towards you along crazy paths and all kinds of new swarming foes. Amazingly, though, it’s still not that much harder to keep tabs on the logic of each and deal with them accordingly, although with loads of flavours of death on-screen at the same time, as is common in the later stages, things can understandably still get somewhat frantic. Which is exactly what we like to see.
With the original Retro Evolved game on the disc too (which can even be sent to a DS via game sharing, where it stays until the handheld is powered off), this affordable package is a fine evolution of a modern day classic, its budget price point making it a pretty sweet deal all round. Galaxies mode trades the purity of the series for a string of wildly varied challenges and works relatively well for it while new multiplayer modes introduce a whole new geometric world of possibilities. Without the wonderfully crisp HD visuals, it’s fair to say that Geometry Wars does lose some degree of its charm but the playability remains crucially intact. And with two separate modes offering both old school and new wave takes on the shape-shooting action, this is something that can be brought out and enjoyed time and time again for some years to come.
