Well, I must say I was pleasantly surprised today when I got an email informing me that I had placed 4th in the Xbox LIVE GTA IV Promotion! I didn’t even remember entering until I went looking for the promo. There were 3 thousand “4th places” and I happened to be one of them! The good news? I won 1000 Microsoft Points! Aw yeah baby. 🙂
After several days of grinding away at Blue Dragon, and the disappointment of reaching the ending and realizing that the story was not one worth playing again, I needed something to cheer me up.
Enter Geometry Wars 2. I am a big fan of the first Geometry Wars, despite my inability to break the million points barrier (my high score is 929795). So when Geo Wars 2 came out for Xbox Live Arcade on Wednesday, I downloaded the trial immediately to play it (seriously, at about 8:00 am when I first got up). On my very first playthrough, I had over 2 million points, and spent the rest of the day grinning about how fun it was.
It took less than a day to convince the Mr to spend his well-earned Points on the game, and already I’m incredibly addicted to it. The six different game modes are each unique and very fun, the riciculously high score possibilities make the game quite satisfying, and the skill-based achievements make the game worth playing over and over.
I think my favorite part of this new version is the addition of geoms. These are little green gems dropped by enemies after they die, which increase the score multiplier when collected. No longer is the multiplier linked to the number of enemies killed since the last respawn. This means that the multiplier continues to grow, even over subsequent deaths, making huge scores possible (and by huge, I mean billions).
The multiplayer mode is also quite fun. I got my 4-year old to play some co-op with me this morning, and he really enjoyed it (but not as much as playing by himself and setting off bombs). Up to 4 people can play on one box at one time in versus, and 2 people can play co-op in any of the 6 game modes.
Geometry Wars 2 is exactly what I like in a game sequel. It is similar to the first in gameplay and fun, but with added perks and new skills to utilize to keep getting those high scores. Plus, the achievements are more action-based this time – perform a certain action (like flying against every inch of the walls in Pacifism mode to unlock Wax On) to unlock the ‘chieve. Now I’m off to try and finish Sequence mode, which is the real challenge in this game.
Major Nelson posted more details on the previously mentioned dashboard. Some exciting new features coming down the pipe.
Play from the hard drive: The ability to copy your game to the hard drive on your Xbox. Play right from the drive and save your disk. You will have to insert the disk to confirm ownership though (of course).
Web Access to LIVE Marketplace: Buy downloads from the web and have it download automagically to your console. New maps, TV and movies or even arcade games.
Xbox LIVE Party System: Create a party of up to 8 friends and hang out! Play games together, watch Netflix together (sweet!) or share personal photos. And finally, chat with more than 2 people!
Avatars: Mentioned earlier, this is your personally created character. You can play games with your avatar as well. We’ll have to wait to see more on what that is about.
and new display support: If you use a widescreen LCD computer monitor, you know what I mean when I say “sweet! 1440X900 support!” That’s right, Xbox 360 will do 16×10 aspect ratio. Awesome.
Microsoft Xbox 360 FTW!