To gamers, there’s something primal about the high score. Long ago when our ancestors climbed out of the muck and made their way across the evolutionary scales until they finally found themselves in front of an arcade machine, how they must have rejoiced at being able to put their initials in as the high scorer, even if it was just until the next Cro-Magnon bested them. It is this notion which drives Geometry Wars: Galaxies and it’s a hard one to ignore as the game provides some of the most fun and fast paced shooting action on the DS to date.

Staying true to its roots, it doesn’t change things up from the previous Geometry Wars games. You still pilot a ship in a wireframe universe and you’re still beset on all sides by waves upon waves of geometrical shapes. Some shapes actively target your ship; some just mill about and generally get in the way. There are no checkpoints, no save points, no “end” to the level to speak of. You fly around and destroy your enemies until eventually they destroy you. If you’re lucky, you’ll get on the high score leader board in the process.

That’s not to say that the game doesn’t hold new surprises—it does, and in doing so it amps up the “just one more game” factor considerably. Now, instead of just playing the same level over and over again, you can pick different levels, represented as planets in various systems (hence the Galaxies in the title). Each level has different starting requirements, such as no bombs or no extra lives, as well as different scoring requirements for medals. Each level is also physically different with different shapes and sizes and various environmental hazards such as a spinning vortex in the center that changes the direction of spin, whipping your enemies around and around, or moving indestructible blocks that can potentially hem you in as you fly around the screen.

Also different this time around is the concept of geoms, which is the currency of Geometry Wars. When you destroy an opponent, they’ll drop a geom. Picking up the geom not only adds to your total geom count, which is used to purchase access to new systems and new planets, but picking them up also increases your score multiplier. With the highest possible score multiplier being 150, picking up geoms is absolutely necessary for attaining the high scores needed to win medals for the levels. It also somewhat changes the way the game is played as you may have to dart a little closer to enemies than you want to, all in a quest for more cash.

Finally, the game allows you to have a sidekick in the form of a drone, a small, autonomous ship that shadows you and provides valuable services. The basic drone has an attack that can help take out enemies, however as you gain geoms you can purchase additional drones that defend your ship, or zip out and collect geoms, or snipe attackers from a distance. Along with obtaining new drones, you can level up existing drones by winning medals while your drone is helping you out. The higher your score, the more experience points you’ll get for your drone and the better it’ll perform the next time.

All of this geom collecting and drone leveling up can make the game seem, at times, like a bit of a grind, however you do amass geoms pretty quickly, allowing you access to plenty of systems and planets to play around on. Veteran players of the series will probably balk at how easy the score modifiers make it to get high scores in the millions of points, however even if you’ve played the previous games, the thrill of getting 2.5 million points before losing a ship is undeniable as is the heartbreak of losing a ship and seeing your multiplier reset back to one.

For a game that consists of nothing but wireframe shapes flying around, it’s surprising that so many concessions had to be made to fit it on the DS. Gone is the warped background effect that made Geometry Wars Retro Evolved so cool to watch. Levels need more scrolling than the same levels on the Wii version, which can be a bit jarring if you’re jumping between the two versions and there is slowdown on occasion, but this by no means that the DS version looks bad. Between all of the enemies, the geoms and the various shots of your ship there are a lot of things happening on screen and for the most part, the DS handles it admirably. On the audio front, the same music from Retro Evolved is used and the sounds of enemies popping in is done well enough, however they do compete from time to time, but once things get going all fast and furious, you may not even notice that there’s audio in the first place. It’s basically background noise at that point.

The one area where you may notice the limitations of the DS is the control scheme. The control scheme uses the d-pad for ship movement and the stylus for shooting. It’s nothing that DS first person shooter fans aren’t used to; however this game requires much faster movement than most shooters resulting in some pretty cramped hands after playing thirty minutes or so.

Given that the last game in the Geometry Wars series was a five buck download over Xbox Live, it’s only natural to wonder if it’s worth spending 30 dollars to pick up Galaxies on the DS. In a word: absolutely. The fast and frenetic shooting action combined with the number of levels more than makes up the 25 dollar difference. Add to that the ability to get medals for each planet, purchase different drones and level up those drones, all done on a system you can carry around in your pocket makes the game an easy choice to fans of the series, or anyone looking to get back to their high scoring roots.