GEON: emotions

"GEON: emotions brings new hope to collect-'em-up's everywhere."

After seeing GameSpot's poor review of GEON: emotions, I had to write up a review. GEON is an XBLA game that caught my eye after playing the demo. I bought it soon after, and knew I had something special on my hands.

Gameplay – 9/10
A game of GEON goes as follows: You and an opponent are cubes with one of eight emotions, and are placed one opposite sides of a flat playing field. The field is scattered with emotes (dots) and power-ups, and the field has one goal on each side. You must roll around the playing field collecting emotes to charge your cube. Once you collect one-fifth of the emotes, you have to flip around the edge of your board onto the enemy's side and run into his goal zone. Power-ups on the board aid you in collecting emotes or hinder your opponent's progress, and the strength of the power-up depends on what emotion you chose. I was surprised how in-depth this game is when it comes to strategy, as getting goals as fast as possible is as important as blocking your opponent from doing the same, and accomplishing both at the same time is a rather daunting task. Fowling up at the wrong moments could set you back in the final moments of the game. For example, collecting emotes in a sloppy pattern for the first few goals will make that last goal take longer than expected. While the game is very well executed when playing against human players, the AI can get very sloppy and easy.

Graphics and Sound – 8/10
The graphics in GEON are great, and really capture the trippy Rez-style theme that the developers were aiming for. The field is transparent, and you can see what's happening on the opponent's side of the field. The power-up that causes your enemy's field to go opaque has a dazzling (read: confusing) effect that makes everything flashy and colorful. Meanwhile, the background audio and color scheme vary depending on what emotion you choose. These themes go hand-in-hand with the emotion you pick, so if you really choose your mood, you won't go unhappy. Aside from the seizure-inducing visuals, nothing about this game is anything special.

Replayability – 7/10
Although the single player aspect of the game is quite shallow, completing the time attack and minigames is a breeze. The real golden egg of this game is the multiplayer modes. If you have a friend willing to learn GEON and become a worthy competitor, then this game could last for hours with the amount of levels and strategy tied into the package. Without any serious competition, and very little activity on Xbox Live as of this writing, it'll be tough to find someone like that online (aside from myself, and a few others on the message board, of course), so the included Local Multiplayer modes are very welcome.

Final Score – 8/10
While GEON: emotions is a great game, it was just not visible enough to the mass market for the game to hit it big. With a larger group of people playing GEON, the game could have had a stronger launch. While it remains an original and innovative game, it lacks strong single player modes and a community for multiplayer modes. However, once you get into the swing of the game, it's hard to put down.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/24/07

Game Release: GEON: emotions (US, 09/19/07)