The adrenaline fuelled do-not-blink arcade shooter has a simple goal, but getting a respectable high score for your friends on Live to see is a tricky feat thanks to some smart enemy A.I. Each of the ten different types of enemies acts different from the next. Whether the harmless purple pinwheel, seemingly uninterested in your ship, or the side winding red and blue snakes, steadily weaving in your direction at all times, the game does an excellent job of creating enemies that will force gamers to use a bit of strategy.
Most of the strategy revolves around the red circles that appear from time to time. Shooting these dangerous discs turns them into black holes that suck in anything within their vicinity; including your ship. This might sound like the kind of 'enemy' that you want to eliminate immediately, until you realize that you can use this to your advantage. As the circles suck in enemies, the circle gains points for doing this and expands in size. If the circle gets too large, it will implode, emitting a cloud of light-blue bubbles after you. Each time you shoot the swirling circle, it gets smaller, until it bursts and you get the points for killing it. The trick, and mastering it is necessary for several of the achievements, is to keep shooting it from time to time, but allow it to eat as many enemies as possible. The balancing act between enemy vacuum and imploding cloud of death is one of the many little joys in the game.
Rather than send enemies from just one area of the board, the game does a solid job of keeping gamers on their toes. Enemies randomly appear a couple at a time, will occasionally spill out in mass from all four corners of the map towards your ship, or will frustratingly appear as a collapsing ring around gamers that they will have to shoot their way out from. The varying spawn locations, the ever-increasing numbers, and difficult achievements will demand that gamers play Geometry Wars with eyes wide open, giving all their attention to the screen.
Perhaps the only complaint of this shooter is just how difficult said achievements are. Released in the infancy of Achievement Points, developers may not have had a good handle on just how difficult they should have been. It will take gamers a little experience to get even the "Score 100,000", let alone the one for surviving to that point without losing a life. Gamers earn achievements for both reaching, and surviving without dying, up to 1,000,000 points; surely only earned after a strong pot of coffee and the assistance of Alex de Large's eyelid clips from Clockwork Orange. Gamers can go months, and have earned less than a quarter of the available points, although the game is good enough not to mind the repeated attempts.
The bang for your buck this simplistic gem offers at just 400 Microsoft Points is incredible. The ideal single-player casual game; it is so addictive that you will not mind the silent two that precedes the five next time your wife or girlfriend says, "five more minutes, I just have to put on makeup".
