Throw some shapes - old school style
Despite merely being shapes, or a mixture of shapes molded together, the enemies take a variety of forms and boast numerous abilities; they’ve even got names. The Gravity Well (a glowing circle) sucks you into it, unless you kill it first; the Snake (a small circle with small triangles as a body) weaves its way around the grid unleashing its venom at you. Many of the enemies are from the original Geometry Wars games, but there are plenty of new ones, including the Cell Mass (a bunch of hexagons stuck together) and the aggressive Mutated (three half-circles). As you gain more and more points in each level and indeed move through the levels, the enemies get more difficult to beat and as you rack up more points you’ll often see almost the entire gameplay area swarming with these monstrous shapes.The levels, the drones and the structure of Geometry Wars Galaxies is the same in both versions of the game, but the main difference between the two versions is the control system; an area where I feel one performs better than the other.
The DS version makes good use of the dual-screen format by showing the in-game action on the upper screen and a circle on the lower screen, which acts as a visual aid for controlling your claw-shaped ship with the stylus. In this version, all of the shooting and the aiming is carried out solely with the stylus and it feels intuitive to move your ship around the grid. Using the stylus on the DS screen gives you stability to aim and it’s far easier to control then waving the Wii-mote around in the other version.
The Wii version utilises both the Wii-mote and the Nunchuck. You use the thumbstick from the Nunchuck to control the ship and the A or B button to fire, whilst using the Wii-mote to point at the screen and aim. It’s difficult to keep your arm totally steady whilst pointing the Wii-mote at the screen, because you have nothing to support it, so it means that your aim can go astray and you need even more concentration than the DS version if you want rack up those high scores. Unlike many Wii games, the Wii-mote doesn’t enhance the experience in Geometry Wars Galaxies, it hampers it. The game is far better to play when using the classic gamepad, which the game does support.
