i picked up PGR4 unlike the majority of 360 owners out there, and i almost forgot that it came with the next iteration of geometry wars "waves" (i guess you could call it a spin off). huge fan of the original XBLA title, so i was expecting this to be fun. instead, i was given a frustrating, 1-life, no-bombs, piece of shit. really, whose idea was this?
like everyday shooter, the "new" gameplay mechanic involves picking up pac-man pellets that increase your multiplier. you do this by shooting a string of arrows that bounce up and down horizontally and vertically. the spawn rate of these arrows increases exponentially while other pesky shapes spawn in front of you, blocking your path. it gets even better, once the screen is filled with shapes, you have
NO bombs at your disposal to help clear a path. instead, you must pass through small electrical gates to create a detonation in the area around you, giving you about 1-2 seconds of breathing room before you get pixel raped. thing is, these gates are spread out all over the grid and spawn at the most ridiculous fucking times -- usually at the point where you're disoriented by the jeff minter-like visual mess in front of you.
to top it all off, no extra ships are given through scoring. if it weren't for my love of shmup self-torture i wouldn't have kept playing. the highest score in the game is currently about 8 million or so. scoring 1 million got me into the top 1000 players which is pretty sad. everyone must be having a tough time with this one. i'll probably end up playing this some more because i'm obsessive about beating my personal bests -- but i'm really not happy with the direction they took.
btw Groo, my goal last night was to beat your 900k... i needed something to keep me from staying up all night.
