Geometry Wars Reshapes The Past 61
Eurogamer has a piece looking at the sucess of Geometry Wars, despite its old-skool flavour. From the article: "Eyes around The Beehive widen and brows furrow in incredulity. I'm suddenly instructed to tell everyone at the table what I've just said to one half. I clear my throat. 'The worldwide high score for Geometry Wars is 12.8 million.' Nobody says anything. Everyone just thinks about it. 'Terrifying,' says someone, eventually. 'Mine's 2.1 million, which I originally thought was pretty good,' says Stephen Cakebread, creator of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved and its predecessor, 'but I've since been put to shame by all the people who've scored five times that!' Well, six times, but we're not counting. It's too painful."
Cool (Score:5, Interesting)
Mod on crack? (Score:4, Insightful)
-Rick
Re:Mod on crack? (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Mod on crack? (Score:2)
Undeserved praise^H^H^H^Hworship? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it a "Oh wow, look what I just discovered on xbox live! This is the first shmup I've ever seen and its the greatest one there is!"-kind of thing, or what?
Re:Undeserved praise^H^H^H^Hworship? (Score:2)
Seriously, it's quite possible. The genre has been "dead" now for what, ten years? Yes, I know it wasn't truly dead, hence the scare quotes. But it certainly was something only old-school gamers even knew about, and then only some of those would develop a serious taste for them.
Not helping is the fact that some of the later iterations got increasingly focused on that market, w
Re:Undeserved praise^H^H^H^Hworship? (Score:1)
Re:Undeserved praise^H^H^H^Hworship? (Score:2)
This is one of the major reasons why the old NES game ZANAC is still among the best s
Re:Undeserved praise^H^H^H^Hworship? (Score:1)
I love them all, though I think I got far more playtime out of Ikaruga and Gradius. Which would make sense, considering Geometry Wars is $5 and the others are, like I said, 4x the cost (or more).
You have to factor in cost when you're comparing games like this, and that was the point of my post. Geometry Wars is a damn fine game, but had it been $50, I would've been rather peeved at how shallow it is. However, at $5, t
Re:Undeserved praise^H^H^H^Hworship? (Score:2)
It's a different genre of game than most people play, it's a twelfth of a new XBOX360 game, they already have your credit card number... it's just too easy.
Maybe the people who make games like Gish should take note of this.
Low price + good, easy to make game + ease of aquirement + large audience = the money.
It's just too bad there's a $400.00 entry point.
Re:Undeserved praise^H^H^H^Hworship? (Score:2)
Re:Undeserved praise^H^H^H^Hworship? (Score:1)
The single playfield with enemies spawning around it, combined with the dual-joystick steer/shoot combo, turns it into an entirely different play mechanic.
Re:Undeserved praise^H^H^H^Hworship? (Score:2)
If you havent played Border Down, imagine playing a regular shmup with a helecopter that you can spin around 360-degrees and... well, you see what I mean. Theyre pretty close in terms of control and objective.
Also, stuff like Twinkle Star Sprites (a blend of shmup and tetris-like puzzle games) is pretty far out there, but still considered a shmup by people who say the word "shmup" a lot.
Variety and depth not neccessarily good things (Score:1)
Let's look at my favorite shmup, Giga Wing 2. Sure, there's different levels, gorgeous graphics, etc, but aside from the percent of the screen saturated with bullets, the first level isn't much different from the last. Different patterns, perhaps, but essentially the same thing.
I'd argue that depth and variety are NOT good things in the genre. Shmups are supposed to be perceptionally*-demanding ga
Re:Undeserved praise^H^H^H^Hworship? (Score:2)
Despite my being critical of the game, I am very glad for it. The more people that play it and adore it are more people that have been introduced to shmups and more potential customers for companies to think about when theyre planning their next game ("should we make a shmup? well, people seem to like them again...").
I dont think it is as great as everyone rattles on about (though I do find it fun), but I am very happy that its here and attracting so many new people to th
Re:Undeserved praise^H^H^H^Hworship? (Score:2)
That doesn't make Robotron any less awesome.
Re:News? (Score:4, Informative)
The news is that an innovative game was made in an era when people bitch about not having any innovative games to play. The highscore isn't the story.
PC Version? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:PC Version? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.binaryzoo.com/games/mono/ [binaryzoo.com]
Re:PC Version? (Score:2)
Re:PC Version? (Score:2)
Get your PC version here! (Score:2)
PC version (played this one last night - works great!)
http://www.incitti.com/Blitz/GridWars14.zip [incitti.com]
Mac version (can't vouch for this one)
http://www.olpin.net/blitz/GridWars14osx.zip [olpin.net]
Note that this game is still in development. The author (not me) is still soliciting feedback on the thread cited above (which is pretty much the official forum for the game so far).
I can't vouch for
Could it be... (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it so ironic that this powerhouse console is most played for a $5.00 remake of Asteroids on LSD. The public is speaking, actually shouting, what they want and game companies are finally starting to wake up to this and take notice. While UT2K47 and Quake 32 with new bot AI and super-duper physics and textures still interests a fair number of gamers, a much larger audience is out there clamoring for fun, quick, simple, challenging, and cheap games to waste some time and veg out with.
Re:Could it be... (Score:2)
Since I don't own,or know any who has, an Xbox 360: Could someone enlighten me on how the controls for this game are? It reminded me alot of Smash TV because of the (seemingly) seperate controls of fire-direction and movement.
Anyhows, it looks like a sweet game, and I hope they'll release a PC version of it.
Re:Could it be... (Score:2, Informative)
I like his quote: "Geometry Wars is basically Robotron crossed with the famous Macintosh game Crystal Quest, with vector graphics" That sums it up well if your familiar with those titles. It isn't exactly my cup of tea, but it is fun... and fun
Re:Could it be... (Score:1)
Soon you'll be able to verify if that comparison is apt, since Robotron 2084 [xbox.com] is currently available on 360's Live Arcade and Crystal Quest [xbox.com] is coming soon.
Re:Could it be... (Score:2)
"You suck at this game!"
[Hilarity]
Re:Could it be... (Score:2)
Re:Could it be... (Score:1)
Re:Could it be... (Score:1)
Re:Could it be... (Score:1)
Re:Could it be... (Score:1)
I had a friend over (a big PC gamer fiend, not friend, fiend) and all I really have is my Gamecube. But I got Timesplitters 2! So we start a co-op and while we're both struggling to remember/figure out the controls I ended up in the minigame menu after which we played many a 2 player snake (Anaconda as they call it) games.
Re:Could it be... (Score:2)
Well, everybody claims that their games is just that. But most aren't.
If you're looking for something short and sweet (perhaps to play during lunch-break, or while listen to some management fool babble on the phone)... that market already exists, it's just that many people don't seem to know about it.
Have a look at http://www.gametunnel.com/ [gametunnel.com] for a nice overview. (No, I have no connection with them).
Want to play something like 'Civilization' in four min
Re:Could it be... (Score:1)
Most game developers, and a number of my close friends who are tied to gaming in some way professionally, are the first to say that their full attention and hope is on this new market. They eliminate their biggest areas of loss, increase marketshare, create less costly and com
Xbox live is going the way of the cell phone (Score:2, Informative)
Obviously there is a ton of money in this, but this is just the first step in seeing this crap happen to video games on a widespread. Microsoft does it, then sony sees it works, and they do it, then Nintendo says what the hell and they go for it...
Finally, its acceptable for all console games, computer games to charge extra for things that used to be unlocked through persistance. Now, the guy whos winning is
Re:Xbox live is going the way of the cell phone (Score:2)
As for your assertions that you can buy progress in the games (a) show me any example of this in any XBL game (b) explain why it's XBL taking us down this path when people have been buying MMORPG loot & characters on ebay for years.
Re:Xbox live is going the way of the cell phone (Score:1)
Re:Xbox live is going the way of the cell phone (Score:2)
Re:Xbox live is going the way of the cell phone (Score:1)
So, good games are still fun (Score:2)
Success? (Score:1, Redundant)
The game hasn't been released yet. How can it be successful?
In the mean time, Mutant Storm [pompomgames.com] is already available - plus it has eight difficulty levels along with two-player support.
Re:Success? (Score:1)
As far as I know, the game is unreleased and there's nowhere to get it. Either the article's support page is incorrect, or it's something that will be forgotten by the time it hits the release date
Re:Success? (Score:2)
Re:Success? (Score:2)
Colorful (Score:1)
ugh no (Score:2)
GW's sales, even at 5$, haven't come anywhere near the 800,000 copies sold of Call of Duty 2.
Call of Duty 2 for 360 made the top 20 list of games sold in 2005 even though it was only out a month, and the console was scarce.
Online Gaming Changes Old School Gaming (Score:3, Insightful)
Its not that old-school games are back. Its that online gaming changes the
paradigm of "bragging rights" -- and that changes the motivation for playing
old school games.
Asteroids was never networked. High scores were something that kids whispered
to each other -- but never saw. With 360's LIVE arcade, we're looking at whole
new reasons to play: to rank, to rank nationally, and to have your score visible
to thousands of other players. Its what bragging rights *should* be about.
This isn't to say that the success of GW is purely linked to a national hi-score
list -- the game is also great looking. Its an old-school concept with a lot
of things old-school games couldn't do visually, and that in itself keeps it fresh.
But I wouldn't be surprised at all if we see a whole new cult of players trying
to top high-scores of a new generation of "twitch games" in a huge global
competition for bragging rights.
Liquid War (Score:1)
Like battle-girl? (Score:2)
But it was an awesome game!
Crystal Quest derivative? (Score:1)
Re:Crystal Quest derivative? (Score:2)
Thanks for the memory!!