Stephen Cakebread >= Shigeru Miyamoto. This is not just design, this is craftsmanship. This is genius.

For starters, pickups are exactly what the game needed. Having to drop a bomb is no longer a failure, now it’s a descision, because you’ll be surrounded by pickup chips. I found myself doing so on purpose in Deadline mode for speed’s sake. You may start approaching snakes instead of fleeing, because they drop so much. Oh, and making them a multiplier instead of a flat value is another stroke of genius; you want to grab all you can at the start of the game, but toward the end you need to concentrate on killing things so you don’t waste that x1000 at the top of your screen.

Rockets, too, seem deceptively simple - what’s so ingenious about an enemy that only flies in a straight line? Well, combine that with spawn patterns and the gravitational influence of black holes, and suddenly you’ve got a whole slew of unpredictable new behaviors. Even the visuals feed into the gameplay here - the orange color demands your attention, and the elongated shape gives instant feedback on direction of movement.

I don’t think the gates quite live up to their potential - the explosion radius is too small, and reflecting bullets off them too random and ineffective. Maybe further play will reveal some technique I haven’t thought of, though, and they’re interesting regardless.

Geometry Wars was a combination of simple elements that combined to make an incredibly deep game, and each new iteration has only added seasoning. This game is a work of art, worthy to be studied, not just played.

Psst, Stephen! I know you have to be Googling your own name right now - leave a comment if you read this! Consider it an autograph for a fan.