A front-runner for the best game with a bad title on Xbox Live Arcade, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved might be the must-own single-player game the Arcade offers. Explaining to your friends, sight unseen, how a game with a moniker so closely resembling one of their least favorite High School classes is a good buy will be nearly as challenging as obtaining the achievement points. Offering simplistic gameplay in an incredibly challenging package, the game is essentially a tricked-out edge-of-your-seat Asteroids clone on steroids.
The game offers such simple gameplay that anyone in your house can pick up and play in seconds. It utilizes the left stick for maneuvering your ship, and the right stick for shooting in any direction; a la a smoother shooting Robotron: 2084. The only other controls gamers need to keep in mind are the triggers, which deploy your bombs to destroy all enemies on the screen in one point-free flash. The aim of the game is surviving as long as possible, as the game spews forth enemies with increasing numbers and ferocity.
Slightly forgiving, the game rewards players with a weapons upgrade every 10,000, an extra bomb every 75,000, and an extra life every 100,000 points. With starting points for destroying the onscreen enemies ranging from 25 – 100 points each, the game quickly allows for a scoring surge by giving players Multipliers as the score increases, until the Multiplier resets to x1 at a player's death.
The game offers both the original Retro (as first seen on Project Gotham Racing 2) and the updated Evolved (created for the 360) versions. With just two modes, it will keep gamers' thumbs twirling around their controllers for months. Retro features passable sound effects with no music, and is a much more simplified layout that shows the entire playing surface on the screen at once. The enemies are the same, but the point values change a bit, as do the weapons upgrades. The older version also lacks the flashy graphics displays, although the game is still vibrant, but lacks the effects of Evolved. It is a decent play, actually feeling a bit more difficult than the updated version, if for no other reason than the intimidation factor of being able to see all enemies on your board at once.
A gorgeous visual experience, Evolved is just what the name promises. A zoomed-in view shows approximately seventy-five percent of the game surface at any one time, as gamers have to scroll in all directions blasting anything in their path through the square board. On top of than the plain black background offered in Retro, Evolved has a blue grid lying on top. The grid by itself is nothing to gawk at, but the contouring ripple effects your ship movement and weapons create on the grid certainly are. Evolved features an enthralling early '90s inspired space adventure theme that pulsates and pushes gamers through the swarms of enemies.
