All entries for Sunday 05 March 2006

Grid Wars

Writing about web page http://www.incitti.com/Blitz/

When the Xbox 360 launched in December, I don't think anyone really knew what would be the best launch title on it. People had talked about Project Gotham Racing, about PD:Zero, but when the Video Game Design Society got a sneak peak of the 360 in November, I don't think any of us thought that would be the case.

This is because we got our hands on a retro beauty called Geometry Wars, that's available for something in the order of £4.50 from Xbox Live Arcade, and I think every Xbox 360 owner I've spoken too freely admits that they've spent at least as much time on Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved than any other game (and I wasn't that impressed when I played PD:Zero anyway…)

Anyway, I digress. What's really been burning the candles in the Society the past week or so has been Grid Wars, a clone of Geometry Wars written for the PC by Mark Incitti. It's pretty faithful to the original (although slightly easier until you turn the difficulty up, and it has a few different things such as powerups and spawn points for those nasty shapes) and it's frigging awesome if you have a dual analogue pad (or an Xbox 360 pad to just plug straight into your PC). It also runs surprisingly quickly, considering how pretty it looks. It's not quite as beautiful as the original, mainly because it's written in BlitzMax, I'm guessing, but it's pretty good.

And it's bloody competitive… The Geometry Wars veterans get 1mil+ on their first go, yet I'm still proud of the 870000-odd I just acheived…

Mathew Mannion : 05 Mar 2006 16:39 |  Tags: Games Geometry Wars Grid Wars VGDSoc |  Comments (5) |  Close comments |  Report a problem