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Geometry Wars Reshapes The Past
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."
It looks like a cross between asteroids and a winamp visualization.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
:-P
I recognize geometry wars as a good game (I am a huge shmup [SHoot'eM-UP] fan, so I had to play it), but there are tons of other shmups that are just so much better.
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?
Any chance of this becoming available on the PC? Even as a (shudder) flash-based web game?
No offense, but this is news? Go ahead, mod me troll, but it will just prove my point even further that this site has lost a lot of it's credibility when it comes to reporting worthwhile news.
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.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
That people are actually looking for solid, easy to get into, quick to play, fun, games instead of expensive eye-candy and flash with no substance that offer complex controls, forced long investments of time, and no real reward? I daresay it does.
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.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Maybe you should try RTFA. It's pretty interesting.
Charging you for the right to pay money to download small, overpriced games, sounds and backrounds.
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 isnt because he earned that super car you've always wanted to putz around in, its because he bought it. The guy whoopin your ass with his +5 of Infinate Chucknori saved up for it.
Video games take another momentus step down in quality, UP in profits. I wont be a part of it.
What a surprise, a good game is fun with or without 3d bitmapped whatever and tons of graphics horsepower. Er, wait... geometry wars does use a fair amount of graphics horsepower. So, it's the APPROPRIATE use of graphics to make a cool game, and not just graphics for the sake of "mommy-wow". I remember a paper airplane game on the Macintosh that was totally awesome, even though it was black+white, with simple cartoon style graphics. Heck, what graphics did the game 3 in Three have, and how great was that? Good games are still fun and will always be fun, graphics or not.
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The game hasn't been released yet. How can it be successful?
In the mean time, Mutant Storm is already available - plus it has eight difficulty levels along with two-player support.
Maybe I'm a little off the mark, but how can the first post to an article be redundant!?!?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Though I cannot understand the shading logic that should I use, it is very colorful and attracative even to my pets.
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
"I find it so ironic that this powerhouse console is most played for a $5.00 remake of Asteroids on LSD"
GW's sales, even at 5$, 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.
I think it has to be said that something big has happened here.
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.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
The best Shmups are those where you have to be able to move on an instinctual, twitch level in order to survive.
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 games that require an eye for detail and twitch reflexes. Throwing anything more complicated or diverse than GW's reflect barrier or Ikaruga's color switching system is a recipe for trouble.
Geometry Wars may not be perfect, but it's a damn fine game by any measurements, and at only $5 it's an incredible casual game-- and remember, it IS a casual game. It's not meant to dazzle Shmup veterans, it's meant for a much wider audience that isn't used to such fast-paced, intense action.
*I declare that an official word. Screw you.
Liquid War is another very entertaining and yet very simple multiplayer game.
http://www.yakyak.org/viewtopic.php?t=47632&postda ys=0&postorder=asc&start=165&sid=7637bca86e014343a 0a2304594354221
PC version (played this one last night - works great!)
http://www.incitti.com/Blitz/GridWars14.zip
Mac version (can't vouch for this one)
http://www.olpin.net/blitz/GridWars14osx.zip
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 whether this version is true to the original, but I can tell you that this version is a blast to play!
Note that F3 (on the PC version at least), is the shortcut key for toggling the grid display (which is not on by default). See the source files (*.bmx) for other details. Full dual joystick as well as gamepad, keyboard, and mouse configurations are all playable.
Enjoy!
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
The write-up sounds like Battle-girl, a fast-paced shoot-em-up for the Mac. Unfortunately, it was OS 9. Under OS X, the graphics suffer, and it doesn't really deal with USB controllers as well as it should.
But it was an awesome game!
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
Played this a ton on Macs back in the late 80's, seems to be abandonware now: http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/the_fairway/ game_pages/crystal_quest.html
It has the same concept of enemy's behavior indicated by their shape.