As you've probably gathered by now, I'm a big retro game fan, so when I heard that Geometry Wars was coming to the Nintendo Wii, I got unnecessarily excited.
Geometry Wars started out as a playable mini game in Project Gotham on the XBox 360, but it was Geometry Wars Retro Evolved, released on the 360's XBLA, that really caused a fuss. Geometry Wars took the control system from Atari's Robotron and fused it with the vector graphics visuals of Asteroids, creating an addictive, fast placed blaster which garnered acclaim from fans and media alike.
Because I don't own one of Microsoft's hefty consoles, I've not been able to play Geometry Wars for myself, so when old chum Nathan appeared on my doorstep one evening with a copy of GW Galaxies, I booted up my humble Wii with considerable anticipation.
The control system, it has to be said, is something of an acquired taste. Movement is achieved through minute twiddlings of the Nunchuck, while you aim and fire at enemies with the remote. While this should work beautifully on paper, mimicking the twin stick approach of the original (or many other games, such as Bangaio or Smash TV), in practice it's rather less intuitive than you might expect.
The other thing that struck me was the sheer number of colours, enemies, bullets, sparks, particles, squares and lines the game throws at you - it all looks very pretty, but I genuinely struggled to understand what was going on much of the time. Add to this a strangely distracting background grid that warps beneath your ship as you move and fire, and you're left with a mind-numbingly psychedelic fog of war.
If you don't believe me, look at that screenshot above - is that really a game, or is it a Carlos Santana T-Shirt?
Having said all this, GW Galaxies remains a highly addictive game, and while I found myself confronted with the big Game Over with irritating regularity, I couldn't help going back for the proverbial 'one more go.'
Addictive or not, I still couldn't help feeling a sense of relief when Nathan took the game away again. There's something about the constant, hallucinogenic explosions of colour that made me feel rather odd, like an LSD addict transfixed by fireworks. In fact, I can feel an acid flashback coming on now... oohh... the colours...
