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Geometry Wars: Galaxies (Wii) Status: Stopped playing - Got Bored I started playing this game on Thursday 10 December, 2009 // I stopped playing this game on: Monday 14 December, 2009
Current opinion of this game
Yes, it's really cool. It's the sort of shooter that I can actually play and get reasonably good at.
December 14, 2009 10:05:31 AM
The bonus multiplier only goes as high as x150 which was a disappointment since the last time I played I definitely went over that more than a few times. I won't bother unlocking all of the levels/planets because they seem to be, for the most part, variations on a theme. For this kind of game, there are only so many variations I can take. I mean, it's not really worth it to me to see them all even as I'm sure there are a few out there that are probably brilliant. The problem is that I don't have the time to sift through them all in order to get a the nuances. Can't the designers do this work for me? I'm much rather the game have 10 levels than 100 if the 10 are absolutely brilliant, compared to 100 with 10 brilliant ones AND 90 really good ones.
December 10, 2009 04:36:13 PM
I played this for about an hour last night and couldn't help thinking of the game design class I taught last quarter. In particular, I just realized how this game is an excellent example of two things: noise in the channel (from information theory), and positive feedback loops (in the scoring system). When I first started playing I realized that I needed to get an insane score in order to get any medals. I think that the lowest was 600,000? Killing a little "thingie" is worth, I think, 10 pts. The brilliance in the design of the game's scoring system is that for every little thingie you kill you can collect a multiplier. So, kill enough stuff and collect enough multipliers and all of a sudden you're killing thingies with a score x100 and getting thousands of points instead of tens! And that's when things get really exciting. When I first started playing I thought the multipliers worked how they tend to do in pinball games. Essentially, extra points at the end. Working them into the game immediately really changed things for me and how I played. Scoring high is now more strongly tied to playing for a longer amount of time!

Geometry Wars: Galaxies (Wii)