Geometry Wars: Galaxies

December 5,2007 - Ever since its release as an arcade game on the Xbox 360, Geometry Wars has pretty much taken the world by storm. Let's be honest here, the developers deserve every penny because Geo Wars has to be the best extra in the history of gaming. The game is essentially something that can be downloaded everywhere, and now Sierra Entertainment is bringing the game to the Nintendo DS for about $25 more than what you can download it for with Geometry Wars: Galaxies. Still, it’s worth those pennies.

For those of you somehow unfamiliar with Geometry Wars, the game is a sci-fi shooter that gives the main fighter the freedom to roam wherever you choose on the geometric plain. Every fighter in the plain is a geometric shape, making everything a lot more simplistic—and also makes you wonder why people have never thought about this kind of game sooner.

Galaxies brings the game to a higher, more strategic level of play. After eliminating enemies on the screen, they'll be replaced by yellow leftovers that add more multiples of points to your total score. While it doesn't really change the gameplay, it does affect people's style of play. Since the game has always been naturally hectic on-screen, the yellow leftovers increase the stress of surviving in the game, and, without a doubt, increase the challenge.

The game gets its name, Galaxies, because of its level-design and overworld--if you will. Each galaxy has a set of planets for you to play through, and there's a medal system that ultimately decides whether you unlock another galaxy or not. The various galaxies have each planet's level design and enemies harder and harder as you progress through. It's not an impossible hard; it's the kind of hard that makes you continue to come back.

What makes Galaxies different on the DS is, of course, the touch screen. All the action obviously happens on the top screen, and you can use the bottom screen to more accurately aim your blasts. The problem with this is that the only way to move your ship anywhere is to use the D-pad. That leads to constant hand cramps, so it's probably a better idea to ignore the touch screen functionality entirely.

The D-pad and the four right-side face buttons serve as your main tools of play. You roam around wherever you like using the D-pad, avoiding the dangerous blue diamonds, green parallelograms, and the other evil shapes you learned about in 7th grade. The X button fires upward, A towards the right, B downward, and Y towards the left. You can also hold a combination of buttons to aim diagonally. For example, holding the X and A buttons will aim your fire northeast. It's very easy to learn yet very hard to master, but that's the basis of all sci-fi shooters.

The DS version of the game also is playable online via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. The gameplay is pretty standard and doesn't require much explanation. You can compete for points, kill each other; it's totally up to you.

With that, Galaxies also comes with its fair share of extras to further make the game worth its price. From the get-go, aside from the regular Galaxies campaign, you also have the option of playing the Xbox Live Arcade hit, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. It's the game that started it all, but Galaxies really takes the game to a different level so it’s tough to say whether it matters that Retro Evolved is even packed in. Aside from that, if you have the Wii version of Galaxies, you can unlock bonus content for both the Wii version and the DS version. What kind of bonus content? A tough galaxy to play in. Go figure.

Visually, Geometry Wars has always thrived off of its simplicity. From an honest standpoint however, it should be time for a bit of an upgrade. There are a lot of better-looking sci-fi games out there (R-Type, Ikaruga), and a lot of them have come out a long time ago. A flashy background or two, like in Meteos, would be nice, but all we've been getting in this series is a grid on a simple star background. While it may not be much of an argument, the game's pace isn't comparable to the frame rate on the Wii or Xbox 360. All the action on-screen gives the game some noticeable slowdown, but then again, that might actually be a good thing for those who really hate hard games.

Galaxies' sound is mostly the same from previous versions as well. There really isn't anything that warrants a lot of change in the game. While it’s true that the sound effects of blasting things in the sky are heavily overused, the sound in Geometry Wars is a lot more than that. The soundtrack is great and definitely gets you in the zone, and the seriously--that loud explosion of death is beyond awesome.

Geometry Wars: Galaxies is the definition of portable fun. Are the graphics great? No. Is the sound revolutionary? Probably not. Does the game make use of online play? No to that as well. But the bottom line here is that it gets the job done and it does what handheld games are essentially supposed to do. It's good fun on the go. It's not necessarily a perfect emulation of the $5 downloads, but the game offers enough spunk to make it worth the $30, and that's really what people should be expecting.

Games, News, Reviews, Media and More