Jared Rea

The Escapist has published my first review for them this week (Thanks Susan!) and it’s for Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2.

Released in 2005, the original Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved could be considered a proficiency test in game playing skills, challenging players with the very essence of high-end gaming. At its core, Geometry Wars is a manic, dual-stick shooter that favors the quick and the coordinated, making short work of those with low response mechanisms. It also confronts players with their ability to overcome an epileptic fit (as cautioned in game manuals everywhere), bombarding them with more colors than a Norwegian laser rave.

It’s sort of a no-brainer, right? It was nigh impossible to find anything to complain about with the original Geometry Wars and now, Bizarre Creations has essentially perfected their beast. It concerns me to hear Stephen Cakebread talk about how he has “enough game ideas to do ‘Geometry Wars’ for probably about 10 games,” as I don’t think I want this ten more times, but if they can somehow manage to keep it fresh while still keeping it simple, I’d bite at least one more time.

PS: How do you like the new look? There are still a few tweaks to make here and there, but this is it for the most part.

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Rhythm games have made the world a better place to live. It’s true! Without them, maracas would have remained solely in the hands of mariachi bands and Dee Jay from Super Street Fighter II. The kids of today would go through life without knowing classic rock and Slap Happy Rhythm Busters would have been “just another fighting game.”

In the grand tradition of improving your life, Go! Go! Break Steady takes the gameplay of Bust a Move and duct tapes itself to Zuma for a game unlike anything else. I had an opportunity to play it some time ago and fell in love with its mishmash of gameplay concepts and Pop’n Music-esque characters. The folks at Little Boy Games have launched their website for it and I’m sure they’ll appreciate any love you can send their way.

I spotted this thanks to the good people at XBLAH, now known as GamerBytes. Congratulations on the new space, Ryan!

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Here’s something that I should have mentioned last week. Head honcho of Q Entertainment and overall awesome guy, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, was in town for the last push of Rez HD and came by the GameTap offices for an interview. There were about four of us in there to do it so while everyone else had the serious questions down, I pinged him with questions that I can only deem as once in a lifetime. We ended up talking quite a bit about his scarcely documented work on the arcade racer Manx TT and at one point I accidentally managed to call him overweight.

I’m the master of dealing with cute, fobby people. Ask me to place your order at Jollibee next time.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with Rez HD recently and it’s definitely a title that has stood the test of time, but most likely because there’s still nothing quite like it. And thank god for that. I don’t think I’d want to live in a world where there were annual sequels of Rez like we got with Katamari Damacy. I’ve been shooting for the achievements, though I’m noticing that it takes me longer and longer each time through the Direct Assault mode. I keep losing interest half way and wind up picking it back up again six hours later.

I’m not sure if I’d jump off the deep end and call it a ten, but I will consider you a bad person if you own an Xbox 360 and don’t pick up Rez. Chances are you never played it and if you did, it was probably the crappy Dreamcast version anyway. Go now!

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Unlike my good buddy Ray over at 1UP, I don’t plan on pissing all over Hudon’s latest XBLA offering, but instead doing quite the opposite. Which in this case I’m going to assume is sneaking up behind the team of Omega Five and dousing them in an icy bath of Gatorade like they just won the Super Bowl, only to have this act of celebration turn into a sticky inconvenience 15 minutes later when all that sugary syrup dries out. This metaphor is surprisingly accurate as I was about ready to start high-fiving those around me after the opening levels, only to have the third stage boss completely obliterate me with screen-filling buzz saws which proved to be quite the kill joy.

Even so, for as many complaints as I’m hearing about the difficulty, I just haven’t seen it yet. Sure, your character is about 10 feet tall and has the hit box of your common whale, but it’s not like there’s much in the way of intricate bullet dodging. Omega Five’s difficulty comes from forcing said 10 foot goliath into tiny pathways and then cramming enemies so far up your ass that you’d think this is what a robot receiving an enema would look like. Bosses aside, getting through the levels is more about being in the right place at the right time than anything else, but that seems to be what the horizontal shooter is more about than say your average vertical shooter. Of course, this is all coming from someone who doesn’t consider any shooter a challenge unless they sport the Touhou Project branding, so I’m probably just insane.

Priced at 800 Billy Bucks, Omega Five’s four levels does seem a bit tough to swallow, but playing with each of the four characters and their unique gimmicks tactical options does give it a lot more replay value than I initially suspected. There’s also a New Game+ mode to shut jerks like me up who think its too easy by doing away with the health meters all together, but even then I’d probably complain about still being able to actually fight back. Where’s the challenge in that?

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