 | | What can I say? Almost a year on, Geometry Wars is still one of the flat-out funnest games on the 360 |
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While I wouldn't call myself the best Geometry Wars player in the world just yet, the sheer number of hours I've spent with the sucker has still netted me enough knowledge to refer to myself as a bit of a bad ass when it comes to this wondrous fountain of colour and noise.
I'm closing in on 2mil on the high score table right now, yet studying my friends list I see many are still unable to break a meagre 250,000 (Jam, I look your way). With that in mind I thought I'd patronise my heart out, and share a few tips that I've accumulated over the past 9 months...from about 200 accumulative hours playing the bugger.
Make no mistake, for all its old skool 2D gameplay, Geo actually houses quite a labyrinth of quirks to master you see. One of its greatest assets is its sheer depth, actually...particularly for one so simplistic and derivative on the face of it. Read on to find out more...
Multiplication
 | | Screen look like this? Use a bomb. Now |
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Quite simply, the key to scoring high in Geometry Wars is building up your multiplier. The higher it is, the more points you're awarded per kill, the faster your score increases and the quicker the enemies reappear. Far more importantly, the faster you'll knock out them all-important Achievements!
The way the multiplier works is based totally on how many enemies you manage to whack without dieing. It's amazingly easy to ramp up to 5x in no time flat (we're talking a mere minute of constant killing), but from here upwards its incremental increases slow down hugely, with you requiring a good 900,000 continuous points to snag the almighty 10x multiplier. Get taken out, and it'll reset back to 1x. Don't let that happen.
With all this in mind, use of your bloody smartbombs! By tapping the top R trigger, you can zap every enemy on screen at once with these babies, and they'll keep you alive in those most perilous moments when you find yourself running out of options. Bombs are your friend, so if you're not sure whether you're gonna make it through that fountain of enemies spawning from all sides at once, play it safe and let 'er rip. Best to waste a bomb, than lose that precious multiplier.
Practice, Practice, Practice
Going back to Achievements, I highly recommend unlocking the "Pacifism" one as soon as possible. This is awarded for staying alive for 60 seconds without firing a single shot, and not only is it a wee bit of ace fun in its own right, but it'll also teach you to be a lot more gutsy and ballsy with your flying too. You'll need to weave in-between dozens of enemies at once and out-run a hefty swarm of multicoloured Geo dudes to last those mental 60 seconds - especially the final 10 - and it's about as good a practice as you'll get for what's to come later on in the game. Once you unlock it, do it again. And again. And again. Do it until you can do it every time without fail. Now you're starting to become a master.
You won't get an Achievement for this one, but it's another good bit of tomfoolery to beef up your skills with. As soon as you spawn, see how long you can survive by firing, but without actually moving. As enemies pop up around you and start homing in, you'll have to be quick and accurate to take the buggers out in time, and it's a fab way to improve your aiming and accuracy tenfold. See how long you can last before a Black Hole swallows you up, or a Green Twat manages to break through your defences, then try and better your time.
 | | Geo Wars is probably the first 360 game that truly nailed Achievements perfectly. Fun and challenging at once, they got you trying out new and varied playstyles without you even realising it |
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I touched upon the importance of smartbombs earlier, but at the same time it's important not to become
too reliant on 'em. Once your score breaks 1mil and pure and utter fucking
chaos ensues, you'll be ever so bloody grateful for every last one of these buggers you kept spare, so the sooner you learn to rely primarily on your shooting skills, the better. Despite how crazy Geometry Wars can get though, if you keep your cool and concentrate, you can in fact fly 'n' shoot your way out of pretty much any situation.
With this in mind, play a bunch of practice sessions in which you fire off all your smart bombs immediately, ripping away your safety net and forcing you to improve your reflexes in their wake. You probably won't beat any high-scores without 'em, but it's more ace practice which'll come in amazingly useful further down the road.
And one more tip regarding smartbombs, instead of just lazily idling your top finger around that trigger button as you play, hold it slightly squeezed in at all times so you're always all but a few millimetres away from actually firing one off. When the screen is choc-full of bad guys from end to end and you can't even budge a single millimetre without dieing, you're gonna need those bombs going off instantaneously...so much so that every millisecond longer it takes to squeeze the trigger can result in all-too-painful death. This tip pretty much remedies that, and even if it feels a little awkward to fly around in this manner at first, get used to it 'cos it'll save your arse big time in the long-run.
Management
Along with keeping your multiplier up, Geometry Wars is all about maintaining control of the screen more than anything. Although the game starts off slow - easing you into things with just 1 or 2 enemies at once - it'll immediately start to build up until entire swarms of evils are spawning every damn second, running you down and bumming you in the gob before you can blink.
The trick to surviving these vicious onslaughts is simply managing the chaos around you; making sense of what's on your screen, prioritising what needs taking out first, and getting the really nasty stuff out of the way before all else. Only then can you relax and start to mop up the easier crap.
With that in mind, let's run through each of your various foes, starting with the most harmless, ranging up to those you'll wanna take out the millisecond you discern their evil spawning sound from across the other side of the screen...
Rotating Purple Thing
This guy is about as docile as they come, so much so that you almost need to
purposefully plough yourself into one to die from it. It'll spin around the screen randomly, pretty much ignoring you as it does, so presuming you haven't rid the entire screen of every other enemy first, I'd advise you to return the favour and worry about some of the below instead.
Blue Diamond Dude
This guy's just a minge hair more dangerous than the last one, but he
will start heading your direction the second he spawns so make sure you keep on the move. That said, he's slow, bright and easy to hit, only really posing a threat when 30 or so spawn at once all around you. In these cases, simply blow a small hole out from one side and fly through the gap before you get crushed from every angle.
Green Twat
It's quite bizarre, but this guy demonstrates better AI than your average FPS bad guy. The Green Twat will immediately come gunning for you much like his blue brother, but he also has the uncanny ability to dodge your bullets when fired upon and remain forever unscathed. He's a right bastard to kill due to this - especially in your earlier days - but these Matrix-esque dodging abilities do render him rather harmless in return. Simply firing a few random shots in his general direction will see him scatter, buying you precious seconds to escape. This is particularly useful when tons of them spawn all around you; simply do a full 360? sweep with your blaster and the whole lot will crap their pants and go running for the hills.
To actually kill the sucker though, you'll have to be a bit more sneaky. "Leading the target" - the art of shooting ahead of someone so they actually
walk into the bullet - is the only real way to nail him, but if all else fails, just try pointing in his general direction and falling back on a bit of spray 'n' prey, wiggling the stick side to side slightly as you do so. He'll soon drop dead from a lucky random shot.
Pink Cunt
This dick-face has foiled my high score attempts on more occasions than I'd care to remember, and goes down as one of the biggest of bastards found in the game. He'll spawn and charge you down straight away - no surprises there - but to make matters worse, will also split up into three Little Mini Pink Cunts the second he's destroyed. These smaller dudes are pretty damn hard to see in the game's more chaotic moments, resulting in many an accidental kamikaze run straight into the mother funkers.
My advice? Never engage Pink Cunts at close range due to this all too powerful defence mechanism...the little buggers will more often than not smack ya right in the face. Instead, take 'em out from afar with some long range sniping, backing away from them as you do.
Pacman Wannabe
Not only does this little runt emit the most annoying of sounds as he pelts headfirst into you, but he's also way faster than you are, making him a bitch to avoid unless you know how. Even worse, he has a front mounted shield, so engaging him in a game of chicken ain't recomended.
On the plus side, turning and steering around corners just flat-out confuses the retard, often seeing him skid into a wall, at which point you can spin around and butcher him from behind for a quick kill. Due to this guy's inability to turn corners, you can also quite happily fly around with a bunch of 'em tailing you without too much worry, while you deal with more pressing issues, such as...
Black Holes
 | | Multiple active Black Holes like these are exactly what you don't want. Take 'em out the second they spawn |
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What looks on the face of it to be your friend, is in fact one the most vile of all Geo's line-up. Shoot the Black Hole once and it'll "activate", swallowing up all around it, enemies included. This can at first seem pretty sweet, but avoid the temptation to let it do all the work while you chill in the sun, 'cos once it eats up one too many bad boys, it'll actually combust, letting lose a swarm of Little Round Homing Cock-tards in the process that'll hunt you down and take you out almost instantly. These mofos are the fastest bad guy in the game, impossible to outrun, and utterly vicious in every way. In fact, the ominous sound of a Black Hole exploding can often be the perfect warning siren to let loose a smartbomb.
For this reason, the Black Hole basically becomes your number one priority for 90% of the game. Every time one pops up, take it out
immediately. Simply fly from each one to the next, blowing 'em away at point blank range until they're all gone...then you can resume wiping out the more medial beings mentioned above. Black Holes = bad.
Snakes in a Game
 | | Taking on Snakes can be down to luck more than anything, but "wiggling" off a burst of shots in their general direction should usually see you through |
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Despite the viciousness of the Black Hole, there's a couple of even more despicable nob-farts that supersede it in urgency. Thankfully they're a fair bit rarer than the rest of the line-up though, so you probably won't see 'em quite so often.
The first of these are the Snakes, who'll make their presence known by an eerie hissing sound. Usually they appear in all four corners of the screen at once, slowly slithering their way towards the center and cutting off all your space and escape routes in the process. For this reason, they need to be taken out abso-bloody-lutely immediately...which ain't too easy, as their heads are their only weakspot.
Wiggle off a volley of shots in their general direction for some
massive damage though, and they should drop after just a few brief seconds of nervousness. That said, if you find yourself a little too up close and personal with the Snakes - such as when they all spawn around you simultaneously - it's best just to fire off a smartbomb and be done with it.
Little Metal Butterfly Bitches
 | | That right there is your impending doom |
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These guys are without doubt your true nemesis in the world of Geo Wars. Minute in size, they'll swarm from all four corners at once, piling towards you en masse, over and over, and over, and over...until they pretty much fill the entire screen. The good news is, if you have the big huge wavy power-up gun, you can mow through the motherfuckers rather pleasingly, racking up some serious points in the process.
That'll take some major skill though, and to be frank, you might just wanna cut your losses and once again fire off a bomb whenever these buggers show up. They take some serious manoeuvring skills to weave in-between - not to mention X-Men calibre vision just to spot the lone stragglers - and survival can ultimately boil down to luck more than anything.
On those rare occasions when I do feel like going up against 'em face to face though, I'll generally hang around the center and thin their numbers out for as long as possible, before dropping down to the bottom of the screen then firing paths through 'em side-on. If you can blast through a wave or two in this manner, you should be able to pop out the other end in one piece and mop up the rest.
Becoming a Pro
This concept of "blasting a hole" to fly through pretty much becomes your primary tactic as Geometry Wars ramps up in difficulty. I'd say between the 500,000 and 1mil point marks, enemies start to spawn so damn fast and with such randomness that taking out the whole lot becomes physically impossible.
Instead, ignore all the bastards on your tail, and just run like the wind! Shoot straight ahead, constantly creating a narrow passageway with which to fly through, while making sure to blow away every Black Hole as it pops up along the way (when things get this busy, they can literally combust in 1 or 2 seconds). Don't forget to twist and turn to confuse the 5 or 10 Pacman Wannabes hot on your tail too.
 | | When swarmed from all four corners at once, try to thin numbers out from the middle as much as poss, before blowing a whole through their flank to make your getaway |
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I also recommend you avoid flying right up against the side walls. As touched upon, Geo Wars likes to spawn enemies all around you quite regularly, in those horribly nerve-wrecking 360? ambushes. If you're too close to a wall at a time like this, you'll instantly fry. Instead, try hovering about a quarter of the screen in, doing clockwise laps around the playing field while you blast that path for yourself.
That's pretty much all you can do to survive as you reach the end-game though, and it takes a certain pedigree of balls and reflexes that admittedly not everyone will have the raw skill for. Personally I tend to tap out at around 1.5 mil every time, mainly due to the fact my bloody wrists start to ache like a biatch. As if you don't already, consider spanking your meat regularly to build up that wrist strength.
I'll leave you with the most important tip of the lot though; custom fucking soundtracks. To get the old adrenaline going, I suggest whacking on some super fast-paced, hard mother tunage via the 360' music player...this is your ultimate secret weapon against the rainbow coloured scourge.
Geometry Wars ain't one to play when sleepy you see, ya need the senses of a cat and the reflexes of a ninja to conquer that scoreboard, and music is the perfect way to get your body in the mood, from your brain to your fingertips. Personally I drift towards Underworld and the like - or even some harder, more driving techno - but whatever suits you, get on it. Fix up some killer playlists and deafen your neighbours.
Oh, and a couple lines of coke never go amiss.
Parting Gift
I've uploaded a 10 minute long video clip of myself putting some of these various tactics into action, in which I also manage to unlock the all-but-impossible 10x multiplier Achievement too (t'was a happy day, I tell you). You can snag it below via some crazy right click mouse action...
Dig Does Geometry Wars
Best o' luck.
