Geometry Wars: Galaxies (DS)

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Nintendo's DS is probably the perfect platform for small arcade games like Geometry Wars. Sure, your friends and family can't watch you play, but the stylus is as elegant an arcade input device as has ever been crafted. Guide the shooty thing in the proper direction and watch the explosions.

Geometry Wars is probably familiar to most gamers. It's an Asteroids-type game in which you destroy diamonds, squares and circles that surround you. Touch one and you die. You have bombs that can clear the screen whenever things get too hairy, but these are in limited supply. So, as in many classic arcade games, death is inevitable, and all you can do it stall it.

Galaxies adds a few new twists to the classic formula. Your ship is accompanied by a 'drone,' a mini-ship that orbits your own. You can customize this drone to serve any of a half-dozen purposes. For example, it can be a collector that rapidly gathers 'geoms,' which increase your score and the point multiplier for enemies destroyed. Or it can be a turret, circle strafing and watching your back. The more you use a particular drone, the stronger it gets.

Geoms are also in-game currency. You can spend them to unlock new drone powers or to access new play fields, each of which is organized as a planet in a star system (hence the name Galaxies.) Meeting certain point goals earns you medals and bonus points. But if you earn a bronze on a planet, you'll need a silver there to get any more bonuses for that map.

These two game dynamics work together to create an interesting feedback loop. Certain drones work very well in certain situations. Play fields that start with a lot of enemies are great for the turret drone, but to unlock it you'll need a lot of geoms, so you will want to use the collector drone to scoop them up or an attack drone to kill better. For the really high-powered drones, you will want to keep beating on a system for a while so you can get those gold and silver medals and the big bonuses that go with them.

Of course, if you spend all your points on accessing new drones, it will take you forever to unlock the new planets. So you need to balance opening new gift boxes and powering up what you've got. As far as interesting choices go, it's not up there with magic-user versus tank, but it provides a little more decision-making than you normally get in an arcade game.

In fact, the way the game is structured gives you a lot of incentive to revisit maps on which you did well, but not perfectly. Earning a bronze on a training map is great, but once you've powered up your ramming drone you can go back and obliterate everything. Gamers love a challenge, but they also like destroying any glowing object in their path. You can climb the ladder of difficulty or take a step back and see how your new drone changes things.

It would be nice to have previews of the maps you are about to play, though. Some are large boxes in which there's lots of room to scoot around; others are confined spaces with blocks or walls restricting movement. There's a certain satisfaction in knowing that you have chosen the right drone for the situation, and a preview would only increase that satisfaction, adding the 'I have just the thing for that!' feeling that all great solutions give.