Geometry Wars Evolved 2 Review

Geometry Wars seems to go from strength to strength,first with the success of Galaxies on Wii and DS and then the original Evolved game on the XBLA. So it is little surprise that the newest addition to the franchise is as much of a smash hit.

From the first time that you start the game and, no matter how good or bad you are at multi-stick games, you'll manage to rack up over a hundred thousand points,you can feel that the game is different from that of the previous incarnations. Evolved 2 has had a massive gameplay revamp allowing for much easier gameplay access, now quite plainly in line with the new casual and family based gaming that has taken affect recently. One of the biggest is the fact that you can reach some amazing scores all thanks to one small gameplay change, for each enemy that you kill and collect crystal like items called geoms you gain a score multiplier, now in previous Geometry Wars these multipliers have been taken away from you if your craft is destroyed at all. All that is gone from Evolved 2,each time you die all the enemies are destroyed at the same time with no points awarded but also your multipliers stay with you. This means that if you can pilot well then you can gain some very impressive scores with the multipliers, at one point in my play-throughs I have had a 400x multiplier going and there has been a few on my Friends List that have had 1000x multipliers active. As you could guess all this multiplier action takes away some of the skill involved with the game but still if you are well versed in Geometry Wars games then you will be equally rewarded with the bigger multipliers.

Geometry Wars: Evolved 2 offers up quite a variety in terms of game modes, there are six modes in total with all but one locked at the start of the game. It is very easy open up the modes which just works on playing the previous mode until the percentage count that is overlaid on the next mode hits 100% and thus unlocks the mode, and then it’s a simple rinse and repeat game to unlock all of the game modes. Of the game modes they consist of; Deadline, which is a basic three minutes countdown to score as many points as possible. Next is King, this mode works a bit like King of the Hill, you have circles in which is the only place that you can fire from, but the twist is that the circles are degrading and only offer protection (as while you are inside the circle the enemy can not attack you) and firing opportunity for a short time before having to move onto another circle. Following King is Evolved, this works on the same idea as the original Live Arcade game, but the points scoring is much higher. Pacifism is the next mode, in which you have no weapons at all and have to fly through gates in order to defeat waves of enemies. Waves, works by throwing wave after wave of enemies at you but the twist is that they come from different angles any instead of having to destroy the entire wave you only have one pass to destroy as many as you can before the next wave comes. Finally we have Sequence, the mode offers up 16 different mini games to hunt through.

Geometry Wars has most definitely evolved but is it a move for the better or the worse? That’s one question I’ll have to leave up to you guys to decide but for all the fun the original game was the new version really does hold a ton of hours of unbelievable fun. Though the older game was aimed more for the hardcore gamer, Evolved 2 looks to have been made and aimed more squarely at the casual gamer and the non-gaming family members.

Overall:8/10 – Excellent game but the skill level has taken too much of a hit for some hardcore gamers.