Geometry Wars: Galaxies

Title: Geometry Wars: Galaxies
Platform Played On: Wii
Release Date: November 20, 2007
Date Played: November - December 2007
Time Played: 3 hours
Completed (Y/N): No
Score: 4/5




Opinion:
Geometry Wars was a huge success on the Xbox 360, and it is good to see the franchise spread. The game is hurt by the Wii's lack of high resolution support; however it tries to bounce back by adding some great new features.

Geometry Wars is known for its flashy, explosive visuals, excellent music and mesmerizing gameplay. And all of these elements are present in this iteration of the game, albeit limited by the Wii's hideous SD resolution. So the moment to moment gameplay is as exciting as it was on the HD counterparts.  Galaxies does attempt to make up for the lack of visual fidelity with the addition of more modes.

Unlike Geometry Wars, in Galaxies you are presented with a campaign, a series of stages with unique goals and strategies. The game board also departs from the traditional rectangle and takes on a variety of geometric shapes and abstract figures.  The campaign although feels like it was  put in out of the necessity to justify the $40 price of the retail box does add many hours of interesting gameplay that has not been explored by the franchise before.

In addition to the campaign, you can play several multiplayer, competitive and co-op missions. Prior to Galaxies, Geometry Wars was exclusively a single player high score domination experience. But addition of multiplayer makes Geometry Wars: Galaxies a great party game.

At its core Geometry Wars: Galaxies is a good evolution of the Geometry Wars franchise. The multiplayer allows several people to play at the same time, and the ability to choose from several dozen of levels does mix things up. It is fun and entertaining, although the blurry 480p graphics do look terrible compared to the crisp PC and Xbox 360 counterparts.

Since Geometry Wars: Galaxies' release Geometry Wars 2 came out on the Xbox 360. It incorporated multiple modes and multiplayer. So unless you only have a Wii in your household, or cant live without the campaign mode I would skip Galaxies and grab Geometry Wars 2 instead. It is cheaper, and has almost everything Galaxies has to offer while retaining the excellent 1080p crispness.