Geometry Wars

[Atari5200]

am i doing something wrong that I cannot beat my high score of 89,000? How in the hell did people get 300,000,000 + scores??????

[ubersaurus]

It's very much one of those games where you hit a wall and don't improve for a long while.

 

I'm assuming a lot of it is knowing when to use the bombs.

[CGQuarterly]

Watch some of the high score videos for Geometry Wars on YouTube. That may give you some hints as to how to improve your score. It helped me, anyway.

 

Chris

[Gabriel]

I'm not an expert by any means. My high score is only 662K, but I hit a brief wall at 100K, a longer lasting one at 250K, and I'm currently at a 500K wall which I've only made it over once.

 

The best thing to do is to watch enemy patterns. For example, the green hexagon things always run away from your shots. The pinkish tankers always move toward you while revolving around a point nearby them. Diamonds just slowly seek you. Etc. You need to drill those behaviours into your head, because you need to be able to pick them out in a crowd.

 

My strategies are pretty simple. Firstly, I try to keep the green hexagons on one side of me. If any hexagons are on a side I can't devote attention to, I fire a brief burst that direction to get the hexagons to back off, and continue doing the other thing which is occupying me. Secondly, unlike Robotron, you don't want to be on the edge of the board for any period of time. The game tries to push you into a corner or an edge and murder you with a quick spawn. You want to try to maintain an orbit around the center of the board.

 

Singularities are sometimes your friends. I sometimes leave one or two alive so they can absorb the occasional flows which spew from the corners, and as a quick spot to hide from a group of pursuing hexagons. In Evolved, their eruptions of circles aren't too dangerous as long as you keep moving.

 

A key point I learned was how to shoot. This is another area where you can't think like Robotron. In Robotron, you only shoot in 8 directions. In GW, you can shoot the whole 360 degree arc, and you need to. I gently rock my fire a few degrees to either side of my desired shot direction as I move to clear a wider path as well as to nail pesky tankers/babies and hexagons. This is a very key bit. It wasn't intuitively obvious when I first started playing, but now it's second nature.

 

And then there are times you need to CHARGE! Sometimes you'll just see a big mess of stuff and the only way to survive is start spraying the area and wade right into it.

[Buyatari]

If you are stuck under 100k my best advice is this...Shoot the direction you face and not behind you. Shooting left and moving right kills you 99% of the time. You will see early on that almost all enemies are slower and will NEVER catch you anyway so if you keep moving they will only hit you from the front. The small circles that come out of blackholes are faster than you and possibly the u shaped red magnet guys but thats about it.

 

I was pretty bad but played just one "practice game" where I just went around in a big circle and shot directly infront of me to see how far I would make it. My scores got WAY better but now I'm stuck at the 500k mark and I just can't beat it.

Edited April 28, 2007 by Buyatari

[Hyper_Eye]

My score is up there with Gabriel's. I think the first thing you have to do is decide which way you want to circle (clockwise or counter-clockwise) then stick with it for good. I always circle counter-clockwise. There is the rare moment when I am dodging through enemies that I will find it convenient based on my location to make a clockwise circle until I can resume my regular circle. This is always the first thing I tell friend's that want to know how to get a score like mine. In this game you will spend most of your time simply making a circle. You clear things in front of you and then knock out some of the mob following behind you until you need to clear the front again. Your goal is to clear the enemies in front of you the best that you can and get the rest to follow you. There are only two enemies that can catch you and those are the red magnets (which have shields) and the Protons which are ejected from the Gravitron's when they explode. When protons hit a wall their momentum is doubled so you want to take care of them as quickly as possible. It is best to not let them emerge at all. The other big thing is to not freak out when large groups poor from the corners or spawn around you. If they are coming from the corners head towards a corner (maintaining your circle) and destroy as many as possible in that corner while the rest form up behind you. After they form up behind you they are no different then anything else. If a circle of enemies spawn around you simply shoot in the direction you are heading and make a hole. Don't get nervous about it.

 

After a certain point in the game the walls become deadly. You must stay away from the walls because snakes will spawn right on top of you and kill you. The only way you can make a hole and escape when a group of snakes spawns around you is if you are away from the wall. That is why you have to circle the center. When it comes to enemies spawning in a circle around you snakes are the hardest to deal with. But, you don't have to get out instantly. You have to do it fast but you do have time to get a shot at their heads and blast your hole. Don't wig out and run into them. The thing that ups the difficulty for me and gets me in trouble is definitely the blue jacks. I am yet to find a good strategy for dealing with them. They are just so small and there are so many. These kill me almost every time. If somebody has a good strategy for dealing with these I would love to hear it.

 

Some people say that the best way to get incredibly high multipliers and in turn very high scores is through the gravitron's. When you destroy a gravitron the points reward is dependent on the number of enemies it has devoured. The strategy that is employed is to allow the gravitron to fill to the breaking point and then blast it back down to normal size. They do this over and over until they can't manage it anymore then destroy it. This results in a huge number of points being rewarded for the destroyed gravitron. I will try this at some point but right now I am more comfortable simply destroying them.

[moycon]

Good advice from everyone. I am going to have to try out these tips because I am one of those folks that can only get around 180k...and that was my high, most times I probably average 100k.

[Hyper_Eye]

Good advice from everyone. I am going to have to try out these tips because I am one of those folks that can only get around 180k...and that was my high, most times I probably average 100k.

 

If I die or use a bomb before 100k I consider the game trashed and restart. This doesn't happen often though.

[NE146]

I dunno man but I only played the game about a dozen times or so before I hit 700k. I really do play it just like Robotron except I waggle the shooter stick wherever I want to shoot (good ol' 360 degree range). Still though I'd like to practice the game for real and score a couple million. I know some guys who's highs are around 3million+ and at least would like to get to that point to challenge them

[Buyatari]

Bah!

 

Ohh no you don't

 

Its one of the only games I have you beat at.

 

Good advice from everyone. I am going to have to try out these tips because I am one of those folks that can only get around 180k...and that was my high, most times I probably average 100k.

[moycon]

I dont know that you have that much to worry about. i tried out this strategy and I scored 134 k on my first man!! I was like....AWESOME!! Then I lost the rest in a couple minutes. Final score was like 160k

[Hyper_Eye]

I dont know that you have that much to worry about. i tried out this strategy and I scored 134 k on my first man!! I was like....AWESOME!! Then I lost the rest in a couple minutes. Final score was like 160k

 

Nice. That is progress. One thing that I have realized about this game and I have found confirmed by other people on the internet (believe it if you will)... after you lose your first life the game will become suddenly harder. I am not talking about the loss of multiplier or the player being shaken. The game will throw situations at you after you lose your first life that would have taken considerably longer to occur had you not died. One question I have for you is, how many bombs did you have remaining when you died? If the answer is anything more then none then your game shouldn't have been over.

[Gabriel]

It follows the same mantra that Defender originated.

 

If you end the game with smart bombs left unused, you were playing wrong.

 

I score myself very poorly on smart bomb use. Sometimes the fine art of perceiving imminent death eludes me.

[Atari5200]

score of 147k, getting better

[Hyper_Eye]

score of 147k, getting better

 

Glad to hear it.