Created for the Xbox 360 by Bizarre Creations

Available through the Xbox Live Arcade for 800 Microsoft Points

Rated "E" for everyone.

Once again a neon chalkboard universe gives birth to ever-growing swarms of glowing geometric creatures, hungry to blink you into oblivion. Survival is the key as you send out sprays of lasers in every paranoid direction, disrupting your pursuers into beautiful flowers of fireworks while electronica music pulsates and swoons in response. Being surrounded by all sides should be a harrowing situation, but the spectacle of light is so mesmerizing, you can’t help but be uplifted even as the end is closing in.

This was the case with the first “Geometry Wars: Evolved”, launched in 2005 for the Xbox 360’s online arcade service, and is still the basic concept for this week’s sequel “Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2”. The big change is the introduction of six different modes, each offering a captivating take on the basic survival theme. The result is some much-needed structure and variety over the original concept, creating a sequel that’s worth investing time in.

The controls are very simple, enough that anyone regardless of experience with video games, can pick up and play. Your left thumbstick controls the movement of the ship while your right thumbstick directs sprays of lasers in any direction. Swarms of neon ships, composed of geometric shapes appear and pursue you, with each style of enemy behaving in a different way. Some race straight towards you, others swirl and jink about. Some fly in formation while many simply arrive in large numbers. To survive, you must learn to fly your ship safely to avoid colliding with the swarms while shooting them to clear yourself space to breathe. When the numbers inevitably grow to overwhelm, you can press a trigger to release a bomb that clears the screen, but then you only have a limited number of bombs. As you survive, the game introduces new types of enemies along with new objects, such as gates that can reflect and rebound your lasers, to help you find an advantage as the closing numbers become greater and faster.

As you eliminate ships, you’ll earn points towards your high score, but you’ll also find floating bits of energy called “Geoms” that you can collect by flying through to earn point multipliers. As every player inevitably dies, the high scores are the only way to separate the good from the great players and the Xbox Live Arcade service provides online leaderboards for you to compare your scores both with strangers and friends.

Deadline

In Deadline you have but three minutes to earn as many points as you can, that’s it. You’re allowed to use bombs to clear the screen, but enemies destroyed in this way offer no points. The goal is to collect as many geoms to rack up the multipliers and stay alive long enough to use them towards a new, high score. To me this is the least engaging way to play and the mode I spent the least amount of time on.

King

My favorite of the eight modes, King spawns a series of circles within the spatial field that act as fortifications. Once you fly your ship inside, the enemy ships cannot enter to reach you. You can sit within, shooting out. The circles gradually fade, however, forcing you to leave to find another circle. The twist is that you can only fire while inside a circle, so you’re required to plot your movements wisely as you move from one fortification to the next. As the swarms of enemies become greater and faster in number, you’ll find yourself shooting solely to clear a path for yourself from one circular fortification to the next and so it adds a stronger sense of strategy to the Geometry Wars concept.

Evolved

The standard mode from the previous Geometry Wars games, but now with the Geoms and gates included. You’re given 4 lives and 3 bombs and in order to keep surviving you’ll need to earn enough points to unlock more lives and bombs. This is one of the few modes that include Gravity Wells, black hole-like circles that when shot pull all surrounding objects towards them. Its also the only mode to use what I consider the Geometry Wars theme in the soundtrack.

Pacifism

Some players are good at shooting in all directions, others are good at ducking and avoiding the swarming enemies. Pacifism is a mode designed for the latter. No lasers here, the only way you can defend yourself is by flying through spawned gates, doing so eliminates all ships nearby. This is one of the hardest modes, simply because the gates do very little damage, move in inconvenient patterns, and have end pieces that will destroy your ship at the slightest touch. However, hidden with this mode is another challenge tied to two achievements. If you brush the ship up against the edge of the playing field and fly along the limits, you can trace a dotted line along the boundaries. Complete the entire rectangle for the “Wax Off” achievement, and then again a second time in the same game for the “Wax On” achievement. This hidden feature alone has kept me occupied for hours. I can get the first dotted line, the second is proving too tough.

Waves

Here you’re up against enemies who fly in formation. Long lines of enemy ship will sweep across the screen, forcing you to shoot an opening in their formations as they pass you. The trick is that the enemy ships continue to sweep from one side of the screen to the next until you destroy them and new waves of ships are spawning in their place. You’ll find that you’ll take out most of one line, only to have a few left over ships still sweeping about as you try to deal with the next wave of ships. Over time it builds up.One of the achievements in the game challenges you to try to survive up to eight continuous waves without firing one shot. Since the waves criss-cross each other, you’ll find the spaces become rapidly smaller and the time you have to move through them shorter than you can think.

Sequence

Here Geometry Wars is brilliantly transformed into a puzzle game. You’re given a series of twenty levels, each one placing your ship within a special formation of enemies. All you have to do is destroy all the ships to move on to the next level. You’re given the use of bombs, but your supply has to last through all twenty levels. Failing a level will merely cost you a life, meaning that as long as you have lives to spare, you can still move through the twenty levels. The goal is to survive all the way to the twentieth level. Not having reached that myself, I can only tell you that will at least unlock an achievement if you do. As you progress through the levels, the game will keep track of the ones you finish the and ones you’ve failed. Complete them all and who knows what will happen?

Multiplayer

Up to four players can plug in a controller and take on any of the above modes where they will either play co-operatively, trying to help each other survive the on-coming mobs, or competitively, trying to earn the highest score. Power-ups, including shields and speed boosts are added to change things up. I find the result is your standard “couch’ multiplayer, in that it successfully takes what is a single-player experience and opens it enough to comfortably share it casually amongst a small group.

When it comes to arcade-styled games, especially those like Geometry Wars that find great success right from the beginning, the sequels rarely live up to the originals. Games that use simple designs often reach the limits of the formula the first time they find success. Hexic, another Xbox Live Arcade title, is a good example. The first one was addictive, the sequel was forgettable. Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 proves to be the rare exception and designers Bizarre Creations have been inventive enough in designed their eight new game modes as to take that initial idea and expand on it in ways that keep it fresh and engaging. I’m not sure they can pull it off again for a Geometry Wars 3, and might have to follow other arcade franchises into creating themed editions (Geometry Wars: Halo Edition), but for now, they have a true sequel worth your “Microsoft Points” even if you already have the first edition or the original mini-game before that.