Spirit review
Spirit attempts to emulate Geometry Wars and its sequel, while attempting to change the gameplay enough to try and convince you that you’re playing something new. While it doesn’t improve on the formula, it offers enough of a diversion from the typical to warrant a look, if you like a challenge.
Ditching the virtual twin sticks in favour of one finger control, Spirit risks a lot on this uniquely simple control system. One finger guides your Spirit around the vectored screen and no guns are fired. It’s all quite serene which is supported by the muted beats of the games soundtrack. You don’t have to touch the actual ship (?!), merely any part of the screen. Whatever swirly shapes your finger makes, it’s remote controlled to your little ghost from your finger.
And swirly shapes are a must, as the omission of violent gunfire is superseded by capturing the little enemy blobs by trapping them inside bubbles that you leave behind once you complete a circle. There’s no limit to the circles size either, though the adventurous will find the bigger the circle attempted the more enemies en route may thwart your efforts. Of course the shapes you draw don’t have to be circular to trap enemies, but 90% of the time you will draw them as that’s what comes naturally.
While attempting a new control scheme is commendable, it doesn’t work flawlessly. Big fingers flying across the screen can obscure enemies, especially during the later chaotic rounds. Also the sensitivity on its lowest setting could do with being “dumbed down” a notch or two. On its highest setting you have to have the hand to eye coordination of a ninja on coke, after being injected with a syringe full of adrenaline.
This is also true of the second difficulty of extreme, which certainly lives up to its name. New enemies of various movement patterns are introduced during normal play in a staggered fashion and are thrown at you from the start, veterans after punishment should alone drive themselves crazy in this mode.
So whilst it looks like a lot like Geometry Wars, it plays very differently from it. But that’s not a good thing. Geometry Wars is a fantastically simple twin stick shooter. Spirit is a nervous twitchy finger-swiping moment of madness. That’s not to say there is no fun to be had. If you can master the tricky control sensitivity, great satisfaction I suspect can be garnered from within the framework of Spirit. And at a fifth of the price it does represent good value for money over its idol.
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http://www.ilisos.eu/ Hunter Diekmann
