Deadline
In Deadline you have but three minutes to earn as many points as you can, that’s it. You’re allowed to use bombs to clear the screen, but enemies destroyed in this way offer no points. The goal is to collect as many geoms to rack up the multipliers and stay alive long enough to use them towards a new, high score.
King
King spawns a series of circles within the spatial field that act as fortifications. Once you fly your ship inside, the enemy ships cannot enter to reach you. You can sit within, shooting out. The circles gradually fade, however, forcing you to leave to find another circle. The twist is that you can only fire while inside a circle, so you’re required to plot your movements wisely as you move from one fortification to the next. As the swarms of enemies become greater and faster in number, you’ll find yourself shooting solely to clear a path for yourself from one circular fortification to the next and so it adds a stronger sense of strategy to the Geometry Wars concept.
Evolved
The standard mode from the previous Geometry Wars games, but now with the Geoms and gates included. You’re given 4 lives and 3 bombs and in order to keep surviving you’ll need to earn enough points to unlock more lives and bombs. This the only mode to use what I consider the Geometry Wars theme in the soundtrack.
Pacifism
No lasers here, the only way you can defend yourself is by flying through spawned gates, doing so eliminates all ships nearby. Hidden with this mode is another challenge tied to two achievements. If you brush the ship up against the edge of the playing field and fly along the limits, you can trace a dotted line along the boundaries. Complete the entire rectangle for the “Wax Off” achievement, and then again a second time in the same game for the “Wax On” achievement.
Waves
Here you’re up against enemies who fly in formation. Long lines of enemy ship will sweep across the screen, forcing you to shoot an opening in their formations as they pass you. The trick is that the enemy ships continue to sweep from one side of the screen to the next until you destroy them and new waves of ships are spawning in their place. You’ll find that you’ll take out most of one line, only to have a few left over ships still sweeping about as you try to deal with the next wave of ships. Over time it builds up.
One of the achievements in the game challenges you to try to survive up to eight continuous waves without firing one shot.
Sequence
Here Geometry Wars is brilliantly transformed into a puzzle game. You’re given a series of twenty levels, each one placing your ship within a special formation of enemies. All you have to do is destroy all the ships to move on to the next level. You’re given the use of bombs, but your supply has to last through all twenty levels. Failing a level will merely cost you a life, meaning that as long as you have lives to spare, you can still move through the twenty levels. The goal is to survive all the way to the twentieth level.
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