Review of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved
Rating: 
The first five star rating goes to the first game I became passionate about for the Xbox 360, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. If you are into old-school style arcade shooters or casual games in general… You need to pick this up! If you’re not, I still advise you to give it a chance.
I didn’t fall in love with this game over night. It grew on me. When you first download and play the trial, you realize a couple of things: the game has a very minimal vector-graphic style, the controls are simple (steer, shoot, bombs), the sound effects are awesome but the main song is horrible, and this game gets really hard really fast. The game gets so hard so quickly that I’ve watched people throw the controller down as quickly as they picked it up.
The key to becoming less frustrated with this game is to learn the enemies behavior patterns and know how to react to them. Each shape is eventually trying to crash into you, but they each do it in their own way. Some wander around the arena, some chase you until you fire at them, etc. Eventually you find yourself surrounded by a swarms of 1000s of geometric shapes all on the screen at the same time, and the point is to not die and blow them up. The real fun of this game happens once you pass the 1,000,000 points stage and start going after the achievements. It is overwhelming and addictive like every game should be.
I don’t really have much criticism towards this game. Sure, the soundtrack is lame, but that doesn’t really matter when you play your favorite songs from the 360’s hard drive. There is a bug when certain enemies spawn that can be annoying causing you to die when you shouldn’t, but that’s pretty much it.
As a bonus, they included the original version of the game, which I personally find to be harder than the evolved version.
I had this game for over a year before I really started playing it seriously, and I finally realized how deep this game gets. I wish I understood earlier. It has to be the most worthwhile and fullfilling 400 Bill Gates Bucks I’ve ever spent. This game is simple in every way and it’s this simplicity that makes it perfect. Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved is a work of art. Get it.
