Hands On Magnetic Wars

Do you get this feeling of Deja Vú when you put your hands on a twinstick shooter? I do and it´s not that easy to convince me to try one out.

When I posted the trailer of Magnetic Wars a little bit earlier today I wrote that this is a bit different with this game. And the guys from Guma Productions gave me a thumbs up on a little early Hands On with it. I wouldn´t be writing this if I didn´t like what I saw – but I must admit I never expected a game this good.

Read my first impressions of the game after I played it through on easy.

I started the game with normal difficulty, but soon (2nd level) realized I should switch to easy on this one. It is quite hard – but that´s part of the fun with this game. It has a very cool level selection screen that let´s you select each level in the difficulty you like. And once you have finished them all on hard, you will get special versions of each level.

Normaly you start a game, play a level and then you have the gameplay figured out for the rest of the game. There may be the occasional change in game mechanics, but that´s it. Magnetic Wars takes a different approach – each level has something unique and you have to figure out how it works. There are little hints on the pause screen, but that´s it.

The basics stay the same though. Left stick for moving, right stick for shooting. And then there is the magnetic controls – with the right trigger you have the orange color and the left trigger gives you the blue color. This way you either attract or repell objects of the same color. This can be quite helpful, but it also can be a bit of a problem if suddenly a lot of enemies appear and get attracted to you. The magnetic mechanics work great and are a lot fun to play arround with.

blue repells blue

While you are limited in your movements and the border gives a “Geometry Wars” feeling, at the same time it´s a sidescroller – a weird mix that works great. If you are looking for a successor to Geometry Wars you will love this game. It has even cooler enemies that have impressive swarm tactics and a lot more diversity. Believe me – once you get attacked by Tetris pieces you know what I mean.

On the weapons and extras side the game falls a bit short, but I didn´t miss big upgrades while I was playing. You get faster, more powerful or homing shots – and always just for a short while. Then there are mulitplier bonuses and health points flying arround waiting for you to catch them. The ways the game integrates them into the gameplay are really good and enjoyable.

There is a coop mode for 2 players I have not tried out yet and it is only local. Maybe with the higher difficulties …

Conclusion: Magnetic Wars will hit the marketplace soon for only 1$ (80MSP) and I can only strongly advice you to try it out. It took me about an hour to finish it on easy and I will continue to try until I beat all levels on hard to see what comes in the special versions. There is so much variety in the game, that I can only imagine how cool the rewards might be.

The screenshots don´t do the title justice – this game comes to life with motion. Go an check it out – you might get this feeling like when you played Geometry Wars for the first time. I did!

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