Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 (Xbox360)

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved was one of the premier games for the Xbox 360 launch. It established low-cost downloadable games as a worthy alternative to full-priced, big-budget fare and made leaderboard races between friends a reason to keep playing through the night. But with such a simple mechanic, the idea of a full-fledged sequel being able to capture the same addictive nature of the original seemed like a pipe dream, especially after the subsequent sequels came and went without causing a stir. More than two years after Retro Evolved ushered in the next generation of gaming, developer Bizzare Creations has devised a game that doesn't just top the original, it blows it away. With five new modes that require unique strategies and cutthroat multiplayer competition that is among the best for any XBLA game, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 is the new standard for frantic downloadable games.

From a gameplay perspective, the biggest difference between Retro Evolved 2 and the original is the addition of geoms. These tiny green gems are the key to racking up ridiculous scores. Instead of raising your multiplier by shooting enemies, you have to collect the goodies that they drop. The original game put a 10x cap on your multiplier, but in the sequel you're limited only by your reckless desire to collect more geoms. Your multiplier will no longer reset when you die, so your best efforts from the XBLA original will seem like puny nothings now. Furthermore, you no longer need to worry about being stuck with the shoddy weapon while being surrounded by those dastardly snake creatures; there are no weapon upgrades, and your standard gun is more than enough to keep those evil shapes at bay.

The most divergent of the five new modes introduced in Retro Evolved 2 is Pacifism. As the name implies, you won't actually be shooting enemies. Instead, the level is loaded with slalom-type gates that explode when you fly through the center. However, if you accidentally bump into the orange edges that hold this contraption together, you will be the one who explodes. The idea of playing Geometry Wars without a gun may seem impossible, but you face off against lemming-like blue diamonds that dutifully follow as you lead them down death's trail. It is incredibly satisfying to get a huge fleet of these troopers to follow you as you burst through multiple gates, destroying the platoon in a massive explosion.

Other new modes don't stray quite as far from the standard GeoWars formula, but they are every bit as engaging. Waves returns from its stint as a Project Gotham Racing 4 unlockable. A wall of orange missiles will emerge from one of the four sides every few seconds, making you constantly watch your back as another massive fleet closes in on you. King mode places three circular safe zones around the map that are the only places from which you can fire. Since these havens will disappear soon after you enter them, you'll have to constantly swoop around the battlefield, collecting geoms while you desperately try to find a new home where you can hide and safely destroy enemies again. Sequence is the only mode that has an actual ending, but only expert players will ever be able to reach it. Here you'll blast through 20 levels that have the same enemy placement every time. Memory won't be enough to ensure victory because the rooms are near to bursting with enemies, which makes survival seem like a crazy fantasy. It's exhausting but extremely rewarding, even if you never make it to the end.

The remaining two modes are tweaked versions of the traditional free-for-all. Though Evolved mode is structurally the same as the original, the addition of geoms changes the strategy of battle. You'll have to constantly circle back on enemies that you've destroyed if you want to extend your multiplier, which makes the risk/reward dynamic all the more satisfying. Deadline limits the carnage to just three minutes, which makes collecting geoms your number-one priority. Both of these modes should satisfy Evolved veterans looking for more traditional shooting action.

Retro Evolved 2's visuals are definitely a step up from those in the first game. The screen is bursting with even more colors now, and every explosion fills half the screen with gorgeous lights. The enemies are much more distinct, too, and their brighter colors make it easier to identify them and work out a contingency plan. The sound is also much improved from the original. Every mode has its own music track, which gives each the tone that it needs. Pacifist offers a much more subdued feel, whereas Waves is just bursting with chaos. The explosions are extremely sharp and punctuate the music with bursts of energy.

The multiplayer mode takes the whole experience to another level of crazy fun. You can quadruple your firepower with cooperative mode, though it doesn't make the game any easier because keeping track of everything onscreen adds another layer of depth in an already frantic game. Copilot is utterly ridiculous: In this mode, one player steers while another shoots, so you place your fate in your friend's hands. Competitive mode is even tastier. Fighting for geoms while trying to stay alive longer than your friends is a teeth-baring treat that should keep you coming back for more. There are even scattered power-ups here that upgrade your weapon, freeze your friends, or turn you into a geom magnet, among other things. It's a shame that this mode is offline only, but it serves to make an already great game almost impossible to put down.

Retro Evolved 2 is a shockingly good sequel. The only problem is the lack of an online multiplayer mode. Everything else on display here is a drastic improvement over the original. Every new mode is extremely fun to play and requires a totally different play style to master. The geoms put upgrading fully in your hands; you have to decide if you want to risk your life for a couple of green gems or if you want to focus on staying alive. Even little tweaks--such as including your closest friend's highest score in the upper right corner of your screen to constantly give you a new goal to strive for--raise the addiction level. At only 800 MS points ($10), this is not only a great value but also one of the best games on XBLA.

Project Gotham Racing 4 (Xbox360)

With 2005's Project Gotham Racing 3, Bizarre Creations ushered in a new era of racing on the Xbox 360 with a game that continued the long-standing quality of its Project Gotham series with amazing graphics and extensive online options. Here we are, two years later, and Bizarre has turned in the fourth game in the PGR series, one that opens up the vehicles list a bit and adds to the online fun, yet still follows the tried-and-true PGR formula. In short, Project Gotham Racing 4 continues the series' tradition of brilliant visuals and fun gameplay, and adds to the list with new rides and weather effects that must be driven to be believed.

Weather abounds in Project Gotham Racing 4. In fact, along with motorcycles (more on them in a bit), weather is one of the biggest additions to PGR 4's gameplay. Dense fog, ice and snow, and, of course, lots and lots of rain are examples of the variety of weather conditions you find yourself driving through, and each affects your vehicle in a different way. The most successful weather implementation in the game is the rain effects.

Visually, it's stunning; rain droplets bounce off the hood of your car, or your windshield when driving in first person view, and they'll collect into pools of standing water that become a hydroplaning nightmare for your car or motorbike. In fact, pools of water strategically placed in the optimum braking zones are part and parcel of the tracks the Bizarre crew has carved from real-life locales such as Tokyo, Shanghai, and New York City. Find a way to brake early, or deal with the consequences of slamming your car into a wall after surfing across the water. The water effects in PGR 4 are entirely convincing, while the snow and ice effects are slightly less so--only in a video game would you attempt a lap of the ice-laden Nürburgring in an Enzo Ferrari and make it across the finish line in one piece--and typically pose a serious challenge for your throttle control skills.

While the game's weather effects are often simlike, PGR 4's car handling still treads the fine line between arcade approachability and simulation depth. You can hop into a car right away in the game and begin turning laps without fear of spinning out or locking your brakes in a tight turn. It also helps that the car list is more varied than the "all exotics, all the time" roster of PGR 3. This time around, the list has opened up a bit more to include everything from the pokey Mini Cooper S to F1 replicas, and even a pickup truck. Certainly at the highest classification, PGR 4's car list is as exotic as it comes; it's nice, however, that the roster includes a more representative sample of low-end models this time around. As in the past, the game doesn't feature vehicular damage beyond the merely cosmetic.

Then there are the motorcycles, which make their series debut here. As with the car list, the two-wheeled choices include everything from the relatively modest Buell RR 1200 to the frighteningly powerful MV Augusta F4 Senna. When it comes to handling, the motorcycles in PGR 4 have their ups and downs. Bikes are extremely easy to drive--there's no split between front and rear brakes to worry about--and it's tougher than you might think to get yourself thrown from the saddle. Toss in the fact that bikes are extremely quick off the starting line (due to their power/weight ratio) and that kudos--the in-game currency you earn as a result of stylish driving in the PGR series--are typically easier to rack up on a bike than in a car (thanks to endos, wheelies, and a responsive drift model), and motorcycles seem almost overpowered.

True, the fastest cars in the game will typically be quicker than the bikes but, in our experience, if you can grab an early lead in PGR 4 on two wheels and can maintain some consistency in your laps, you'll be awfully tough to beat. Bikes have their control quirks; for instance, when coming out of a turn, you'll want to let go of the analog stick in order to bring yourself back up smoothly, as manually bringing your rider upright can result in serious overcorrection errors. But for the most part bikes aren't much of a challenge and, as a result, aren't really as fun as we were hoping.

Regardless of your vehicular predilection, you will have plenty of road to drive on in this game. In addition to earning medals for beating challenges in the arcade mode or turning laps in the time attack mode, you'll have plenty to do in Gotham career, the anchor of the single-player mode. The goal here is to become the number one driver in the world by progressing through championships and invitational events strewn throughout the PGR world. The events are based around a calendar, so you'll have access to only a handful of races at any given time.

These races comprise of a variety of the challenges--including hot lap, cone challenges, eliminator, gate challenges, kudos vs. time, and standard street races. Kudos determine your overall position within a particular challenge; in addition to earning a bonus for finishing well within a race, any additional kudos you earn are added to your overall score. At the end of a championship series, you're awarded championship points based on your result and move up the ladder accordingly. In addition, you can buy items such as new tracks and cars, and even a custom Xbox Live gamer picture, with the kudos you've earned in races.

On the default difficulty level, we were able to win the Gotham career mode in just over three calendar years (or between 10 and 15 hours in real time); at the hardcore level--where the competition is significantly tougher--it will likely take a good deal longer. In addition to standard championship events, you can also try out the occasional invitational, optional race challenges based around a single vehicle; win the challenge, and you'll add that vehicle to your ever-growing garages. Interestingly, the cars available to you for certain events can vary in total performance--and there's really no reason other than personal preference for you not to choose the most powerful vehicle available to for an event.

While zipping your way through career mode won't take that long, the game's online play is just as compelling as in the past. You can race in single and team events through a variety of race types such as elimination, street race, cat and mouse, and the new bulldog mode. In our experience, online performance was slick and mostly lag-free, with the game's frame rate dipping only in the sharpest of corners with multiple vehicles piling up. While you're online you can even check out the new PGR On Demand service, which lets you upload photos and race replays for others to watch and rate. With some simple paint tools, you can even customize your cars a bit. It's not nearly as extensive as the customization options in a game like Forza 2, but at least it gives you the chance to give your online ride a unique flair.

Beyond being a fun racing series, the PGR series has come to be known as a standard-bearer for visual style, and that continues in spades in Project Gotham Racing 4. New locales such as Shanghai, Macau, and Quebec are all lovingly reproduced in the game. Blast your way down a neon-soaked night track in Shanghai with the Oriental Pearl Tower looming in the background, and you'll be hard-pressed to think of a game that has done as much with urban landscapes as Project Gotham Racing 4. That level of visual quality doesn't come at the expense of performance, either; again, for the most part, the game runs at a rock-steady frame rate. Certainly, it's one of the most impressive-looking games of the year on the Xbox 360. The soundtrack for this game is just as varied as PGR 3, featuring a healthy heaping of world, rock, hip hop, jazz, and classical tunes, though the quality of the individual tracks doesn't seem to be as strong as in the previous game. However, the only music gearheads will care about is the roar of the engines, and thankfully PGR 4 delivers here as well, with a huge variety of authentic-sounding engine sounds that change in tone and quality depending on the driving viewpoint you prefer.

With such an intense level of focus trained on the weather effects in PGR 4, it makes you wonder what the team at Bizarre Creations could do if they threw their hat into the simulation ring and took on the Forzas and Gran Turismos of the world at their own game. Still, that doesn't take away from what Project Gotham Racing 4 is: a worthy successor to the previous games in the series and a game that will create entirely new calluses on the hands of racing fans.