The Geometry Wars series has one of my favourite indie game series of all time. Starting off as a mini game inside of Project Gotham Racing 2 created by Bizarre Creations, the game quickly became the most-downloaded xbox live arcade game back in 2006 when it was released stand alone. Now handed over to Sierra, the new Geometry Wars 3 surprised a lot of people. After being announced online with advertisements as if it came out of no where, it was released very quickly after, being available to purchase on Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4, PS3 and Steam.
For those who are unfamiliar with the series, the game puts you in the pilot ship of a little asteroid blaster looking ship, and with that comes the start of this gorgeous twin stick shooter. The very basic mechanic of the game has you shooting enemies that are either floating about on their own, or flying towards you at great speed, and destroying them earns you points. The enemies will leave score multipliers in their exploded dust for you to collect in little green gems. This in turn gets you more points and the cycle continues until you either die from the massive amount of crazy different enemies you have surrounding you, or the timer runs out and you’ve done all you can to get the best score. The original game was as basic as that and the second game in the series introduced new game modes which were all dynamic and unique. Some of these game modes had you blasting through certain types of enemies in masses, other game modes had you not being able to shoot at all, and you had to use other methods such as exploding gates to defeat your never ending waves of hungry simple wireframe shapes. And that’s the game in a beautiful nutshell.
What Geometry Wars 3 has done is all of the classic game and more. Not only is there a brand new adventure mode, but also an online competitive multiplayer mode and also access to the classic games, all put in the new style of Geometry Wars. And of course, everything is now on exciting 3D grids.
The first game mode I jumped straight into was the adventure mode. The game starts you off doing the well known classic style of Geometry Wars, and introduces the new enemy shapes and Grid shapes as you go. One thing to note right away is that the plain flat rectangular Grid all Geometry Wars fans love and adore is slightly different, as the bottom left and top right corners are bent slightly to give it a more 3rd dimension feel. All though at first I was a little bit annoyed at how the classic mode was also the same grid, I’ve quickly come to love the way it bends, as it gives you more vision to the edge of the grid; quite frankly being able to see as much of the grid at once as possible can only be a positive attribute in a game where objects are being thrown at you from all side all of the time. Then unexpectedly the crazy and funnily named grids and, more excitingly new game modes started being introduced, being thrown in with the old classics games in-between. Using new mechanics, enemies and just great new ideas, the new game modes are interesting and fun to try and conquer. A couple of them are a little less addictive than others, but over all they’ve done a great job of really adding new modes.
As you play through the levels, you hit checkpoints along the way which are boss battles. To defeat them, you have to score a certain level of points to progress through, or kill the boss. Huge shapes named after elements like Emerald, Ruby and Sapphire send waves of enemies at you and raise their shield as they spin towards you. The missions are very challenging at times, and have quite a lot of replay ability, which I think this game truly thrives on overall.
Another sure to be fan favourite is the classic mode, which is put surprisingly behind the adventure mode in the menu. This is what I was expecting when I first saw the trailer, just the same game modes from the second title in the series with the new 3D grid modes. Obviously I was surprised to see the brand new game modes PLUS the ability to go back to the classic game modes. These game modes in the new style grid are nice to play, and run as smooth as they used to, with very similar music as the original games, but I can’t help but miss the classic style. The modern softer look of Geometry Wars 3 isn’t bad by any means, but I was a huge fan of the powerful music, and the parallax scrolling starry background and wireframe grid that helped make the game much easier to handle visually. The new style offers a bit more of a challenge as some of the colours blend into each other a little, making it harder to see allies and certain enemies occasionally. It makes me miss the old style a little bit more, but I can’t knock the matt finish and slick graphic style they went for on this title. On top of this, classic game modes such as King suffer a little more in the new style because the new shields you must blast your enemies inside of are visually more confusing than the old basic shape, and I’ve often found myself dying because I just couldn’t see what was going on around the bubble. Apart from the few itches that a fan like me of the series has about the changes to the classic modes, there isn’t very much to complain about. The game modes are always challenging you to persist to get a better score, and there’s nothing that stops you from doing the very best that you can do, without being interfered with by a silly game mechanic.
The online competitive multiplayer is quite basic in it’s own section. There are two online modes, one of which you battle another player to defeat a boss first, or score the most points. The second mode is a base capturing game mode where points are scored for holding control of a base. This is probably the weakest part of the game all together, as getting an online match may soon quickly die out from the lack of players trying to find a match, and when you do, there’s very little reward for playing online. As there are only two game modes, the thrill of going online to try and beat someones score runs dry fast, and I think it’s much easier to play as a game where you’re playing inside of leaderboards with friends. The idea of jumping on when you have some spare time and trying to beat a friends high score is much more effective kind of online experience than the multiplayer. However it’s nice that the series has expanded enough to offer it as an option to players. How long it will last until the servers run dry of players though is another question entirely.
The series was know very well as a brilliant twin stick arcade shooter for it’s impressive simplicity that still delivered an enjoyable experience for very long and very short periods of play time, and Geometry Wars 3 is no exception to this. Helping the game grow has to be it’s new upgrade and ability unlock system which allows players to unlock new allies that follow you for different reasons. One of the allies collects multipliers from dead enemies so you don’t have too, which is my particular favourite. Another increases your attack power, and other upgrades can add new powers such as black holes on the grid to help you in desperate times. The game offers amazing visuals and great gameplay all around and I think the team at Sierra have really done a great job to keeping Geometry Wars the same fast paced game at heart while expanding the game and creating a new way to enjoy the game. I hope they continue to expand on Geometry Wars, but stay true to the fans of the series like they have shown features of here, and maybe in the future we’ll see some new ideas returning down the line. It would be a shame to see some of the really nice features on this game not show up in the next.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
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