If you like your shoot ‘em ups then listen up because I may have a game for you. It’s Geometry Wars: Galaxies on the Nintendo DS and it’s a hectic bit of fun to say the least. The game’s called Geometry wars because you are a little Geometric shape flying round an arena in spce being chased by lots of other geometric shapes that want to bump into you and blow you up. It’s like a mathematician’s bad trip.

You may have played a version of this game on Xbox Live arcade called Geometry Wars Retro Evolved where the aim of the game was to get the highest score possible as wave after wave of shapes attack you. You could also play that multiplayer and you can with this too as retro Evolved is also included here.

Galaxies gives you in essence a single player campaign, with a spiral galaxy to play through, each with a number of areas within. The aim is to keep shooting and surviving long enough to get a gold medal. Get any kind of medal and you unlock new areas to play through.

On the 360 you moved with the left stick and shot with the right stick indepently of where you are moving. Think Smash TV but in space and without men with bombs strapped to their backs. On the DS this translates well as you steer your ship with the d-pad and shoot by draggin the stylus where you want to fire on the touch screen.
As you’d expect the funky backgrounds from the 360 game are missing but the DS game still looks pretty in its own right, even if there’s noticeable slowdown when there’s too much on screen at once.

This game also opens up fantastically when you connect via sharing a game card – thanky you for doing that Sierra – or using Wi-Fi. In Galaxies you can play co-op, simultaneous or versus games. The latter being taking it in turns to survive whilst the other launches attacks at you, a similar game mechanic to Phantom Hourglass which also worked very well. Retro Evolved thankfully has leaderboards online you can add your name to so all that time making your eyes go funny on the bus isn’t wasted.

If you like simple shooters which make you keep coming back for me, this may just be for you. If you want depth, storytelling and plot development, I think you’d better go look elsewhere.

Geometry Wars for the DS gets a very good 7 out of 10.

Get the game now
New: Buy Geometry Wars Galaxies from Buy.com
Preowned: Geometry Wars: Galaxies – Pre-Played from Gamefly.com
Rental: Rent Geometry Wars Galaxies – free rental trial from Gamefly.com

We have a launch date for GTA 4. On April 29th you’ll be able to head back to Liberty City and cause lots of chaos if this news is true. It’s all based on the end of the tax year and other boring things pointing to that date. All you need to know is save your pennies and pop down the shop on that day. Hopefully you’ll be able to pick up a copy. We’ll also be reviewing the game the second we get our hands on it, so subscribe to our weekly Gamesweasel video podcast here for free from iTunes to get the review automatically.

Update – GTA 4 release date 1 day early – _24/04/2008

Related articles: GTA IV downloadable content, Free Microsoft Points with GTA 4, GTA 4 game rating

Rumours are flying around more than Jodie Marsh’s knickers about a GoldenEye remake on Xbox live arcade. There are even apparent videos of a slightly tidied-up version of the N64 classic. Whether this is true remains to be seen but I hope it is.

Then I hope we’re not just viewing the game through rose-tinted specs and we ruin how good it was at the time for ourselves.

The Nintendo Wii is being blamed for injuries in middle-aged parents. Doctors say they are increasingly getting parents coming into their surgery with back and neck problems from getting a bit too heavy-handed with tennis and boxing.

This week on Gamesweasel TV we feature:

• NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams review
• Unreal Tournament 3
• Lost Planet for the PS3

For your chance of winning one of five copies of Tabula Rasa for the PC just watch this episode and check out the question, then email gamesweasel@btpodshow.com with your answer, name, address and BTPodshow username ( sign up here for free – it takes 30 seconds ) and “Competition 32″ in the subject line.

For getting the heads up on competitions and results automatically just subscribe to Gamesweasel TV for free from our page in iTunes (this link automatically loads iTunes, if you haven’t got it installed it will take you to the download page in Apple).

As always send those emails over to gamesweasel@btpodshow.com .

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This week on Gamesweasel we feature:

• Beijing 2008 Olympics videogame
• Videogame sales increase
• Fifa 08 tops the charts
• NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams
• Unreal Tournament 3
• Jackass The Game review

As always send those emails over to gamesweasel@btpodshow.com . For your chance of winning one of five copies of Tabula Rasa for the PC then download this episode and listen out for the question. Check the Gamesweasel web site for full instructions of how to enter.

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