Posted on July 30, 2008, Chris XBLA Wednesday 7/30: Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2

More than two and a half years after Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 was released on Xbox Live Arcade, a sequel has been released. And from the time I’ve spent with the game so far, it was totally worth the wait.

Rather than just the Evolved game mode from the first game, there are now six game modes (including Waves, which was the version of Geometry Wars included with Project Gotham Racing 4): Deadline (score as much as possible in three minutes), Evolved (the classic mode; play until you run out of lives), King (you can only fire while in certain areas of the level which move around), Pacifism (you can only destroy enemies by running through gates), Waves (enemies come in waves across the level), and Sequence (a series of levels with preset enemy layouts — including a MONSTER wave of green enemies that simply blew my mind).

There’s also a new multiplayer mode for up to four players locally. Online support would have been great, but with a game of this nature it would probably have been extremely difficult to compensate for lag, so I can’t kill Bizarre over the omission.

It might be early to say this, but so far the game has met and exceeded all of my expectations. 800 Microsoft points ($10) is the price, and in my honest opinion, it’s worth every cent.