Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions - Lucid Games - PC (2014)

The Geometry Wars franchise returns with Dimensions, the third title in the series and its most polished yet. If you’ve played either of its two predecessors you’ll be instantly familiar with its mechanics. Move with one analogue stick, shoot with the other. Randomly spawning shapes populate the screen with their own characteristics. Blue diamonds will hunt you down, purple stars aimlessly wander and the green square gang will dodge your bullets and cause you no end of trouble. It’s a case of score big or go home and this simplistic gameplay brought Geometry Wars kicking and screaming out of minigame humdrum and into stand-alone glory. Lucid Games have done a wonderful job of keeping the original title’s feel while adding their own spin. Job well done for a developer that, to be completely blunt, hasn’t done much else prior to this.

Aside from being more polished and shiny, Geometry Wars’ level design is opened exponentially by Dimensions. Gone are the days of only having a floating rectangle in space. In addition there’s cuboids, spheres, capsules, curved rectangles and cones. Pardon the pun, but they really do add a new dimension to the gameplay. You’ll need to adapt your movement in accordance to what’s thrown at you, a nice touch if you consider yourself to be a bit of a pro.

The adventure mode consists of 50 levels including bosses. There’s enough variety to keep you coming back for more yet it struggles with its own difficulty curve. The levels are cleared easily enough but if you’re aiming for a 3 star score you’ll be looking at carrying out a perfect run. Even for a seasoned veteran isn’t necessarily the most easy or guaranteed achievement. This wouldn’t be a problem if the levels unlocked following a win of the previous level, there’s blockages. You’ll need 16 stars to face the 2^nd boss on level 10. That’s 7 levels out of 9 requiring 2 stars. On paper sounds easy enough, in game, not so much. Lets face it, I really don’t want to be forced to go back into a level I’ve beaten 5 minutes ago to try and squeeze out those extra few thousand points to be given access to this boss. Its more frustrating than fun and albeit a nod to its arcade roots, seems like a stinky method of extending the adventure mode.

Its online mode does have some nice mechanics. The Stock mode is a tug-of-war style of game where you and the opposing team attempt to kill a boss the quickest. It can add a frenetic feeling knowing that the other team has almost killed their boss at the same time as yours. It feels almost like a fighting game where you and your opponent are on extremely low health and somehow managing to sneak in that low jab for the win. I did find it reasonably difficult to find a game online as I assume there’s not a tremendous playerbase for the online mode, however, pick this up with a few friends and I’m pretty sure you’ll have a fair few hours of fun with the online modes.

Local Co-op also adds another mode which is in effect the adventure mode but with you and a partner. It unfortunately suffers from the same flaws as the adventure mode does, and having two players on the screen at any one time can cause what can sometimes be a particle effect hell when playing solo, into a Michael Bay film. What I would have loved to see would be some split screen player vs player of which there is none. It’s not a massive complaint, but would have been a nicer addition than the co-op mode.

Geometry Wars Dimensions, isn’t Game of the Year material, but it isn’t bargain bin fodder either. Its one of those titles that I strongly suggest picking up in a sale or as part of a bundle. It has all the makings of a solid game, yet is let down by some minor problems but I still feel that Lucid Games should be given a pat on the back for driving Geometry Wars into new territory. Dimensions is better than the first two titles, but there’s not much evolution left for a game that was already Retro Evolved when it was initially released.