Joystiq E3 hands-on: Geometry Wars 2

Some would say Geometry Wars Retro Evolved was Xbox 360's best launch game -- it beat early hyped games like Perfect Dark Zero, Call of Duty 2, and Kameo to win the heart of 360 early adopters, despite the fact that it was 2D and a cheap XBLA version of a game that had previously been included with Project Gotham Racing 2. It held the record for a long time as the system's most-downloaded game, and that title was well-deserved, considering that a lot of $60 games haven't held a candle to the kind of frantic fun you can find pushing that little red ship around the board.

Now Bizarre Creations is attempting to follow up with Geometry Wars 2, and after our playthrough at E3, we're sold. Not only has the developer filled out the game with multiplayer and co-op modes, but Bizarre has figured out a way to make the super simple, yet extremely fun gameplay go deeper than ever before.
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Controls work exactly the same way as the first game, as they should: you move with the left analog stick, and shoot with the right. But along with the standard mode from the first game (called just "Evolved", and now available in co-op multiplayer), Bizarre has somehow dreamed up five more ways to play this game, and almost all of them are just as fun as the original.

There is a timed mode, something that isn't too surprising -- the first game was regulated by lives, and so it's fairly easy to think of a timed twist on that gameplay.

But the other modes are more different. King was probably the most fun mode we played -- in that mode, there are circles on the board, and you can only fire your weapon from within those circles. And of course, those circles appear and disappear at random, so the game is not only about just getting away from the shapes coming at you, but also getting back into the circles to shoot back. Co-op in the mode is nuts, as you have to coordinate moving to the different circles with your partner, and there's a nice wave of panic as a horde of enemies fly at you while you realize the only circle on the board is the one behind them.

Wave is another mode -- we were told that Bizarre noticed that players were using the wall to dodge enemies, so they decided to create a mode that forces you to the middle of the area. Waves of bad guys in single file will sweep across the screen, and sometimes they'll even block the whole way across, so that you have to shoot your way out just to get past them.

Pacifism was an achievement in the original game, and here it's been turned into a game mode: your gun doesn't work, and the only way to stay alive is just to dodge enemies for as long as you can. And finally, Sequence is the "puzzle mode" of Geometry Wars 2 -- enemies come at you from the same place every time, so expert players will be able to record better and better times and scores in that mode.

And there are a few new enemies in the game -- "gates" are little shapes that look like floating free weights, and when you cross the line in between them, the orange shapes on both sides explode and destroy other enemies. These are put to good use in the Pacifism mode. You can't shoot, but you can explode enemies with the gates, and it's a fun addition even with the standard controls.

The only thing we didn't get to check out was the sound -- the music of Geometry Wars really added to the chaos, and it was too loud in the demo area to hear it correctly.

But otherwise, Bizarre has really done a terrific job of capturing the fun of the original game, and tweaking it in ways that add a lot to the depth. The first Geometry Wars really broke out past its retro graphics and arcade status to compete with full price games for gamers' attention, and every indication is that Geometry Wars 2 will do the same on August 6th when it drops.