And in timed challenges set in tight, twisting arenas, it can clear a wave single-handed.Īll of this, again, refocuses the gameplay, this time by your own design. Sounds odd, but in certain levels, that temporary ‘safe-zone’ can be a game-changer.

Homing missiles act as a great alternative to the smart bomb, cleaning the screen less efficiently, but preserving the points scored for enemies downed. Another hoovers up the geoms that feed your score multipliers. Appearing a few levels in, and unlocking progressively alongside campaign progress, these little robot buddies augment your ship with additional abilities, one passive, one activated manually, once per round. Appearing every 10 levels, not every boss is a high point, but at their best they present some of the most intense, exhilarating, conceptually and aesthetically stunning gameplay you’ll experience this year.Īnd then there are the drones. Others will warp into unannounced proxy-bodies on different hemispheres of the arena - sometimes several at a time - forcing frantic seek-and-destroy tactics while juggling the omnipresent normals. Some will try to distract you with unfathomably dense waves of enemies and morphing, obstructive level architecture. No mere psychedelic bullet-sponges, GW3’s mega-mooks are - in the majority - intricate, arcane, multi-stage puzzle-boxes of intense, problem-solving combat. All of it is the most basic level on which Geometry Wars 3 operates. That shifting, central choke-point is a constant blessing and curse. A simple, circular arena becomes a cat-and-mouse seesaw of control, as two walls rotate around its rim like the blades inside a washing machine. The peaks of domed areas and the corners of cuboids can offer powerful, king-of-the-castle advantages if you can hold them, but are also incredibly high-risk areas due to their reduced visibility of the overall warzone. The spiralling playfulness of GW3’s level design changes everything. It’s an incredible, immensely gratifying feeling. Those always-troublesome rows of orange rockets are terrifying the first time their formation spreads to stretch around a spherical play area, but once you realise that, logically, they have to come back together at the other side? You can dodge, fire a salvo behind yourself at the opportune moment, and know – without even looking - that they’re not coming back around to bother you a second time. You’ll start to discover radically new, deeply satisfying sides to – and interactions with – the series’ traditional enemy AI types. You’ll find that a boss enemy’s bubble-shield isn’t actually an annoyance, but a strategic, environmental opportunity, its chaotic, 180-degree deflections bathing the grid with cleansing gunfire more effectively than you ever could on your own. Not long after, you’ll start to realise the true power and potency of GW’s new set-up. You’ll be giddily impressed the first time you fire a stream of shots to the other side of a gleaming, glitterball moon, or spin around on the corner of a cube, showering three sides of it with a rainstorm of glowing gunfire. This is precise 2D gameplay exploded to take in boggling, free-wheeling, 3D strategies.

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