PAX 07: Geometry Wars Galaxies Hands On

by: Chuck - posted: 8/25/2007 4:37:00 PM

I dropped by Sierra's both to check out Geometry Wars Galaxies.  I was curious to see how the Wii control scheme worked for the game as the dual thumbstick control on the 360 is about as good as it gets for these kinds of games.

To play the Wii version you use the nunchuk to move the ship around the screen with the Wii remote pointing where you fire (which is done with the B button on the Wii remote).  Bombs are released with the A button. 

It took me about two minutes to adjust to the new control scheme.  Moving with the nunchuk stick is intuitive but firing with the wii remote took some getting used to.  Once I got used to it I got back into the grove but it still didn't feel that natural.  I think spending more than five minutes with the game might get me past that though.  The Sierra rep mentioned that you can use the classic controller if you want to go with the old scheme but felt that once people get used to the new scheme they will think it's better than the standard setup.

Outside of your ship you also have a little helper bot to help you take out enemy ships.  You can upgrade the bots with different weapons between levels.  Outside of blasting everything around you have to collect geoms which act as the currency in the game.  These geoms are what you then exchange for upgrades to your droid.  It's a nice system and I think it's a nice evolution to the game.

The game does look pretty cool though the new levels and mutliplayer modes should help make this game and easy pickup for people when the game comes out later this year.