Geometry Wars is my new Tetris
In our constantly evolving gaming industry, it seems like the only way to measure a games worth is by viewing against all the games that came before it. Whatever game innovates the most and revolutionizes it’s genre the most “in the now” becomes the golden standard for all games to follow. However, there has been one game that has really stood the test of time. A game who’s genius is so simple that… well, it’s just genius. That game is Tetris.
If I had never heard of Tetris before and I had someone explain it’s concept to me now, the concept being you drop puzzle blocks down into rows which then disappear, I would have thought the person crazy for loving the game. Yet somehow the game is simply amazing. It’s something you can pick up in a split moment and play as your waiting for a class to begin, your clothes to be done in the dryer, or your cookies to pop out of the oven. It doesn’t have online co-op, fancy graphics, a complicated battle system, or any of the gimmicks that accompany the modern games of today. However, it holds a special place in my heart and fills a void that few games can. That is until Geometry Wars: Retry Evolved.
Now I know that I’m a few years late to the party, however, judging from the game’s lack of presence on the gamer score of my friends on Xbox live, there may be a lot of you out there who’ve missed this game. Basically, for those of you out there who’ve never seen or played it, the game is akin to the classic game Asteroids, with a few caveats. 1) The color pallet is mesmerizing as well as epilepsy educing, 2) You can set the trajectory of your main weapon independent of the trajectory of your ship, and most importantly 3) there are some 10 different “asteroid” types, each with their own behaviors and Artificial intelligence.
The game is amazing and I’ve become completely addicted to it. It’s something that you can pick up and play though a full round of it in 5 minutes or so. I play though at least a few rounds of it every day when I get home from work and then again before I go to sleep. In fact, I’ve played through a round in between each of the paragraphs in this blog post. If you have an Xbox 360, you need to download the free demo of this game and take it for a spin. I promise you wont be sorry. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a few more rounds to play though before I have to start getting ready for work.
posted by Christopher Schnese
