It isn’t often that a game comes along that is:
- Instantly Playable.
- Wonderfully fun.
- Loaded with eye-candy.
- Highly addictive.
Hmm, make that:
Don’t let the two dimensional Asteroid-like vector graphics on the box fool you. Geometry Wars: Galaxy is not an Asteroids rip off.
If you got a Wii, you need to buy it now for your collection. Before the holidays.
Deep inside we all want a game where you shoot everything with total disregard, you’re loaded to the hilt with fire power, you amass incredible scores, and you cause all kinds of explosions and manipulate the environment to destroy your enemies. That why we seek cheat codes. This game found out how to do it without ruining playability! You get everything you ever wanted, without relying on cheat codes to make it happen.
Here’s my take on what gives this game its incredible hook:
Visually Pleasing
There isn’t a moment that there isn’t some color explosion, spray of sparks, swirl of color, or special effect going on. Some thing’s always moving or blowing up, and when it does, it looks like the best fireworks show you’ve ever seen. Effects are not boring, the tend to interact, and don’t seem redundant. Those watching will be treated to an impressive spray of color and particles.
Simple Controls
The simple synopsis is that you’re a ship in the middle of a grid in the galaxy. With the nun chuck you steer, with the Wii-mote you point.
You don’t need to read any rules to start playing instantly.
Enemies Fear You
As you point, you emit a red laser that directs where you’ll fire; enemy objects see the red laser and run from it.
Unlimited Firepower
Unlimited, constant, fast, ever improving unlimited firepower — just push the button or squeeze the trigger.
Enormous Colorful Bombs
If enemies get too close, push either button on the nun chuck and a kill-everything bomb will go off, taking out all your enemies.
Points for Everything
Whenever you destroy an enemy, you get points. If it moves, shoot it. If it doesn’t move, shoot it. If it disrupts the fabric of space itself, shoot it.
As you play, you get awards, in addition to the high score list, which is easy to get on and bump off the default scores; no one wants to look at scores from the game designer anyhow.
Cumulative Score Multipliers
Destroyed enemies leave behind little golden bits which you simply have to zoom near, accuracy doesn’t matter, and you’ll consume them; doing so gives you score multipliers. You can have very big multipliers.
Money Does Buy Happieness
Earning multipliers is like accruing currency, you can save up between games. Currency unlocks different playing fields, new enemies, and more wonderful things.
A.I. On Your Side
In addition to your ship, there’s a totally hands free drone.
Your drone stays near you, and using some very basic artificial intelligence, it helps you.
You can buy different skills for your drone. The more currency you have, the more skills you can purchase. And, get this, one of the drone’s tasks can be to collect more currency. Clever.
Longer Play
Think back to how many times you’ve played an arcade game and lost a life because you missed something trivial or committed a dumb mistake.
You may have your drone shoot, defend, snipe, or do one of any number of a selected set of tasks. You pick which, making compensates for weakness in your play style or leverage your strengths.
If you miss something during play, aren’t playing attention, or aren’t looking where you’re going, there’s a really good chance that the drone will take care of it for you. Play lasts longer and is more enjoyable because little accidents don’t matter.
The Addiction Feedback Loop
The more you play with a drone using a particular skill, the smarter it gets. The better you play, the faster that it gets smarter; it literally accumulates experience. With enough experience, the drone levels and plays even better, helping you even more.
Meaning, that after you finish a game, the drone is more capable, and you’ll do better in the next game at the same level of effort. So you do.
But then your drone levels, so now you want to play again to see what the new capability is. So you do.
You get more kills with a better drone. That directly translates to higher scores and more currency. And, more currency means new drone skills and more experience. Which, gives you a better drone. That takes you back to more kills.
Every time you finish a game, the next carrot is just withing reach — if you play one more time.
Pure evil. The best kind.
Features, features, features
Aside from the ton of worlds and surprises you can unlock, the disc has more.
Yes, you can play with another player. Even more surprising, if they have a Nintendo DS, your Wii will go WiFi and connect to it.
There’s also a Retro version as part of the game as well.
The game experience itself is fresh.
Plus the game itself comes in at about $10 cheaper than other main titles, it’s so affordable it’s not worth resisting.
Walt gives the Wii’s Geometry Wars: Galaxy two carpel tunnel thumbs up!